Understanding meaningfulness in AI-infused artefacts

Creating meaningful artefacts translates into creating meaningful experiences for the consumers going beyond the artefact’s functional features to reach people intrinsic motivation and their symbolic values. This process would require acquiring an understanding of how people come to understand in their own terms and for their own reasons the meaning attached to the designed artefacts. Despite the advances on the market of AI-infused products, the sophistication of modern tech-nologies of these designed artefacts and the complexity of modern social behaviors would make simplistic to continue to consider the user experience (UX) mostly characterized by the performance of its users or in terms of interaction quality. Relatively little empirical work has instead focused on understanding why designed artefacts are seen as salient choice criteria, that is, understanding the reason why do consumers perceive AI-infused artefacts to be personally relevant for their needs. The understanding of the concept of meaningful-ness discussed in this chapter suggests that the consideration of target values and meanings is important as a strategy towards defining the relational role of AI-infused artefacts in the lives of their owners for which artefacts are not simply functional tools, but are also relational mediators which shape the long term aims, objectives and behaviors of an individual or of a group. The research presented in this chapter aims to set the basic considerations regarding the term “meaning” used by commercially active designers and introduces the concept of “meaningfication” for the purpose of designing AI-infused artefacts based on new meanings.