Tutorial: Envisioning Complex Projects

Over the last two weeks, we’ve worked at a larger scale to build more complex tools: both your multimodal portfolio site and the fine-tuned chatbot represent interactive concepts that could be applied to much bigger problems. As we come to the close of the semester, how does this type of workflow change your potential future approach to large projects?

Iterative Assisted Design

This week, you will be identifying your own large problem or project in the humanities and iterating through the first stages of designing a solution. Examples might include conceputalizing an educational experience, developing an archive, creating an interactive exhibit, redesigning a complicated process, communicating a new concept - think broadly about the type of work you do that involves many moving parts where the different aspects of textual, visual, and procedural generative AI we’ve worked with might play a useful role.

To conceptualize your project, work through these stages:

• Identify and clarify the project. How would you have approached this project before the class, and how has your workflow changed? What aspects of the project have a critical dependence on human expertise, and what pieces might benefit from using an iterative process using generative AI?
• Look for resources to supplement procedural elements. If your project involves web development, software applications, hardware interfaces, or other technology, think about how you would approach those aspects. Try to identify specific tools or languages that are relevant, and test the capacity of the model to handle your goals.
• Develop a prototype as proof of concept. This might include actually building simple interactivity, or a combination of textual and visual brainstorming and design planning. Share that prototype in our discussion, along with your plans for building on it.

As you work, keep in mind our semester’s journey and readings, and be thoughtful about where you focus on human interventions versus potential spaces for deploying these tools - whether indirectly, through generating code and content, or directly, through potentially creating chatbots and other project-specific models as we did in last week’s exercise.

Extra Credit Reminders

This exercise is fully extra credit: you can choose to engage part or all of the prompt depending on your goals and current grade.