The interplay between ethics and aesthetics in intelligent systems-users interaction

In this paper, I address the interplay between ethics and aesthetics, in the context of everyday interaction with smart systems. This study is the result of a year’s time development of my PhD research, whose general aim is to understand how people’s beliefs and behaviours come to be shaped by the aesthetic experience with smart things. The expected outcome is a set of design strategies to integrate moral reasoning in the framework of design for behaviour change, relying on aesthetics in interaction. Preliminary results are presented, based on a literature review in the area of aesthetics of interaction. Although basic, these findings are helpful for they suggest that ethics and aesthetics in users-smart systems interaction are interdependent. This insight holds promise for the development of an aesthetics of moral reasoning, in the context of users-smart systems interaction. A researchthrough- design approach will be adopted in the remaining two years, with the aim of testing assumptions by means of working prototypes.