Future Erasure
Designing speculative AI interfaces to navigate the ethics of cultural deaccessioning.
Client
CIID Research / University of Newcastle
Year
2018
Role
Interface & Interaction Design Lead
The Brief: Designing for "The Deletion Bureau"
In a future where heritage accumulation is unsustainable, how do we choose what to forget? Future Erasure was a speculative design workshop for 40+ European museum leaders. I was tasked with designing the "Deletion Bureau" ecosystem—a suite of tools that forced participants to physically and digitally "delete" 20% of their collections using algorithmic logic .
Workshop participants seated around a table strewn with printed materials, behind a semi-transparent overlay of “The Deletion Bureau” seal, illustrating the speculative fiction framing used to immerse heritage experts in the Future Erasure scenario.
Interaction Design: Tuning the Algorithm
To make abstract AI decision-making tangible, I designed a browser-based simulation using D3.js. Participants used sliders to weight "Ideas," "History," and "Rarity" . This interface turned invisible algorithmic logic into a high-stakes UX exercise, where adjusting a slider had immediate, visual consequences on what cultural artifacts were earmarked for erasure.
Browser-based AI training interface v2.0 with three sliders for “ideas,” “history,” and “rare,” each set to a weight, illustrating the d3.js–driven interactive simulation for configuring deletion criteria.
Visualizing Erasure: AI vs. Heritage
How does a machine "see" culture? I designed visual simulations of erasure, such as bounding-box overlays on classical masterpieces like "Las Meninas" . By applying modern computer-vision UI patterns to historic art, I created a "visceral friction" that helped participants understand how cold machine logic could reshape human memory.
Detail of Diego Velázquez’s “Las Meninas” overlaid with green face-tag bounding boxes and “add tag” prompts, representing the deletion algorithm simulation where subjects are selectively marked for erasure.
Physical UX: The Tangible Deletion Device
To ground the digital simulation, I led the design of a custom "Field Kit" containing a physical punchcard device . This device acted as the bridge between human intent and algorithmic output. Participants had to physically "process" items, resulting in printed receipts that summarized the generative deletion outcomes—making the loss feel permanent and real .
Close-up of a bright orange field case containing a custom “Punchcard” device prototype, with a participant’s hand reaching to insert a punchcard—demonstrating the tangible prototyping exercise for interacting with erased heritage objects.
Strategic Frameworks: Mapping the Future
Beyond the devices, I designed the workshop's information architecture. I mapped out the service blueprint for the "Deletion Bureau" through a series of escalating tasks . This framework guided heritage experts from simple categorization to complex moral dilemmas, ensuring the experience was intellectually rigorous yet intuitively navigable.
Exercise slide showing three speculative design tasks plotted on axes labeled “keeping the essence” to “reimagine the future,” mapping steps for interacting with erased objects through three escalating exercises.
Outcome & Impact
The workshop successfully shifted the conversation around deaccessioning from a logistical "chore" to a strategic "design challenge." The tools I built allowed experts to confront the future of AI-driven curation, earning the project international recognition for its ability to turn speculative fiction into a powerful tool for institutional change.
