The Challenge
Lucidminds and DML started their research and their work on the ACI Framework earlier in 2020 and had an ongoing collaboration.
Through their work together, they explored different solutions, use cases and theoretical concepts. When we joined the collaboration, it was still focused on the conceptual level, and generating a lot of output in the form of research, conceptual studies, diagrams, and presentations. A major remaining task for the last stage of the project was to explore one part of the research through a concrete and demonstrable form. One way to do this effectively was by prototyping solutions based on the most promising concepts. This came with the additional benefit of producing a convincing visualization of the core ideas for the purpose of seeking future collaborations and development.
The main challenge in this project consisted in bringing all the theoretical knowledge towards the ACI framework to a digital product solution, to make it tangible and testable in a 2-week long Prototyping Sprint, starting from scratch.
The Solution
Through a series of workshops, we worked on several existing use cases together and decided on which one was the most promising in terms of communicating a digital product idea. We converged on a use case with an AI and community collaboration focus.
In this use case, the goal was to empower communities to deliberate and align on collective action in response to the climate crisis. Since these approaches only have positive consequences when they are done in a radical, locally appropriate and guided way, the proposed digital product idea started as a mobile first solution.
Lucidminds and DML worked on the following user journey, and with our help, we boiled it down to the core demonstrable concept. We also did research on existing apps, ecosystems and solutions and incorporated some solutions into our next steps.
User journey steps
Only then did we create wireframes and sketch out mobile first solutions and prototype the wireframes in Framer
. During this step it was important to demonstrate the core concepts and values of the ACI Framework and embed them into the prototype, e.g:
Sense-making, building a collective understanding in community from an ecocentric perspective
Simulating impact, simulations feed on existing interactions and data, and can predict and model potential outcomes of these actions.
Feedback, AI agents and community members interacting to create larger impact through constant feedback on taken actions.
Eventually we delivered a prototype showcasing how a defined persona can accomplish a set of tasks within this framework.
This enabled Lucidminds and DML to incorporate the prototype into their next round of application to make a convincing case. This was achieved in two weeks and helped them move their work further.
Results and Benefits
AI and humans working together is a relatively new topic and poses great challenges. Through this collaboration we helped Lucidminds and Dark Matter Labs to explore and prototype one possible application of their ACI Framework, and proposed mobile first solutions to communicate how it might look like as a digital product in a real world scenario.
The prototype was used to communicate possible applications of these ideas further by Lucidminds and Dark Matter Labs at possible future collaborators (including cities) for solutions on bringing AI and communities together.
About PCG
Public Cloud Group (PCG) supports companies in their digital transformation through the use of public cloud solutions.
With a product portfolio designed to accompany organisations of all sizes in their cloud journey and competence that is a synonym for highly qualified staff that clients and partners like to work with, PCG is positioned as a reliable and trustworthy partner for the hyperscalers, relevant and with repeatedly validated competence and credibility.
We have the highest partnership status with the three relevant hyperscalers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, and Microsoft. As experienced providers, we advise our customers independently with cloud implementation, application development, and managed services.