Design Fiction: A new Health System

Back as early as my second semester, I attended a course that dealt with artificial intelligence in order to explore possible future scenarios. The result was a poster that describes a scenario in which the network "The Mobile Helpers" exists. Among others, it consists of psychotherapists and psychiatrists who take measures for patients using an AI-based early warning system that predicts illnesses or acute situations. A part of the course was the independent organization of a workshop. This workshop was about making the interaction with an AI more human-like by giving it more personality. I am very grateful that I had a lot of freedom during my studies and was also able to realize several fictional projects that are not focused on the present, but on the future.

COURSE

Machine Learning and the Future of Interface Design

Prof. Reto Wettach

TIME

Summer Semester 2019

TEAM

Self-Directed

Smart City

During the course, we came up with an overarching theme that could be assigned to our individual projects: The Smart City. The course searched for radical changes. What if there were no longer any supermarkets in the city of the future? Would there be stores in each building, customized to the residents, or would a refrigerator predict exactly what the resident wants and deliver their groceries without them noticing? And what if we no longer needed visits to doctors’ offices, but instead had a sophisticated system with doctors who would provide private visits when necessary or provide preventive care, which would be made possible by AI.

Poster and Workshop

Die Mobilen Helfer (the mobile helpers) is a group of psychotherapists, psychiatrists, neurologists and nurses that visit their patients at home whenever the system detects early symptoms of diseases or predicts urgent situations before they even occur. The concept contains an internet platform where you write a diary and wear a wristlet that tracks and analysizes your body data. Therefore it is possible to make accurate statements and predict acute situations.

English translation of the poster: We think you need someone to talk to right now. Based on your body values and your brain activity, we conclude you are about to have an alcohol relapse along with an acute stress reaction. In order to prevent this in time, your psychotherapist Dr. Beck will be visiting you in 10 minutes. Are you OK with that?