
Commotion consults with creative teams to help them better imagine, prototype, and realize more dynamic and creative interactions, products, ecosystems, and experiences with AI. We focus on Animistic Design, giving personality to AI by developing backstories, characters, and POVs.
Commotion envisions a new future of Animistic Intelligence, creating rich ecologies full of diverse smart POVs - A different approach to AI that's more poetic, humble, and ethical
Commotion advocates using AI to create multiple perspectives for evocative and open outcomes
Commotion consulting offers innovative approaches that enhance your capacity to develop new directions with technology



Commotion offers innovative approaches that enhance your capacity to develop new directions with technology.
Emerging technologies like AI have unexpected affordances, limits, ethical implications, and outcomes: to keep pace with them, you need provocative new visions, tools and methods
Too often, AI is applied in a purely solutions oriented manner, missing out on its creative potential. But as technologies evolve, design must also evolve: experimenting, critically evaluating, and challenging conventions. Led by exploration and inquiry, and informed by our 30 years pushing the boundaries of interaction into new territories, Commotion can help you unlock the hidden value of your data and expertise through AI in ways that others can’t.

Commotion helps organizations embrace:
CRITICAL PROTOTYPING
Tools like our Delft AI Toolkit enable your designers to think through making by sketching prototypes, critically reflecting, and producing new product visions
STRATEGY AND ETHICS
We'll help you define an ethical strategy for AI that aligns with your brand, values, and mission
FORESIGHT & INSIGHT
Adapt your plans to emerging technology and media futures
TRAINING & WORKSHOPS
Equip your creatives, staff, and management with the right expertise to take advantage of AI.
NEW OPPORTUNITIES
Develop creative, valuable, unexpected ways of applying new technologies
Still thinking about @philvanallen's new, great #AI-for-#UX-designers toolkit: http://philvanallen.com/portfolio/delft-ai-toolkit/… (think: Lego Mindstorms for AI w/wizard of Oz puppeting as a key component of the workflow)
As designers move from the #design of individual things to complex ecologies of smart things, some older conceptions that influenced the development of #AI may have renewed relevance https://hubs.ly/H0fYHwl0 @mikekuniavsky, @xeeliz and @philvanallen detail in @interactionsMag
“One of the things we have to think about designing for AI is people’s perceptions of AI (i.e. Smart. Social Inuitive. Alive.) In fact, AI is quite dumb. It’s the exact opposite of what people think it is (i.e. One POV. Not alive. Awkward. Very limited.).” @philvanallen #dwpdx
Artificial Intelligence: “It has to be a designed artifact not just a tech artifact.” @philvanallen Thank you @JLRIncubator for the discussion as part of @DesignWeekPDX.
Animistic Intelligence
Philip van Allen has over 30 years experience with technology innovation and research

Post-Skeuomorphic AI Symposium
What are the new design principles, metaphors and challenges that are part of AI as a design material? How can […]

Jaguar Land Rover – The Fiction of AI
Keynote at Jaguar Land Rover’s Innovation Incubator. I gave the keynote for this event which was part of Portland Design […]

“Useless AI” Symposium
This symposium was hosted at the Media Design Practices MFA program at ArtCenter College of Design. It was curated by […]

Infiniti Interactive Mirror
An installation for Infiniti at the International Auto Show (Detroit, Chicago, NYC, , the Infiniti Interactive Mirror is a 3 screen […]

The New Ecology of Things
The New Ecology of Things publication is a research initiative to explore emerging forms of interactive communication brought about by […]

Acura – Race Your Heart Out
RACE YOUR HEART OUT An award-winning digital and social campaign for Acura’s winter sales event. This project was a fun […]

Reimagining the Goals and Methods of UX for ML/AI
This article was presented as part of the 2017 Spring AAAI Symposium at Standford University – It challenges UX conventions […]

Articles for ACM Interactions Magazine
Special Topic: Designing AI – As part of the AAAI Symposia series (2017–2018), Elizabeth Churchill (Google), Molly Steenson (CMU), Mike […]

Critical Prototyping – A New Approach
This article defines a new approach for prototyping that’s appropriate for designing with new technologies like AI and XR. Critical […]

Animistic Collaborators in Mixed Reality
This project explored how virtual, AI based, non-anthropomorphic animistic entities could work as colleagues and collaborators in Mixed Reality, especially in […]

Delft AI Toolkit
The Delft AI Toolkit is a system for designing and researching smart things.
CONTACT
To arrange a consultation or workshop, send us a message.