Anniek Jansen
Design researcher
Welcome!
I am Anniek Jansen, a design researcher working at the intersection of design and artificial intelligence. In September 2024, I started as a PhD candidate at Tilburg University within the Department of Communication and Cognition. In this PhD, I will work on the topic of the “Responsible Democratization of AI through Design Research”.

About me
To blossom, I need challenging topics to dive into, as well as a way to use my knowledge and skills to help others. Learning is something that comes very easily to me, and I quickly learned in school that I needed to find challenges myself as the pace did not match my own. Currently, I am finding these challenges by conducting design research on the cross-section of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and design.
I love doing research, the goal of creating new knowledge and using this to create advancements on a societal or individual level is something that appeals to me since it always provides new learning opportunities. Moreover, I quickly notice patterns and see relations between seemingly unrelated topics. I use this as a strength when conducting research but also in programming. My analytical nature is also what triggered my interest in AI, and I am developing skills to both understand the design and technical perspective. By understanding both languages, I will be better equipped to work on bridging the gap between designers and AI experts.
Next to this analytical side, I enjoy creating interactive prototypes, especially tangible or hybrid prototypes as I feel that the tangible component can create more intuitive interactions and I have always been making things. While I do not consider myself to be very creative in the general understanding, I am skilled in looking creatively at challenges to find solutions.
In projects, I will always make sure to be aware of the planning and plan in some buffer time to prevent stress and take setbacks into account. Next to that, you can expect me to come prepared and work organized, and if needed, take on a managing role to ensure effective and clear meetings.
About me
To blossom, I need challenging topics to dive into, as well as a way to use my knowledge and skills to help others. Learning is something that comes very easily to me, and I quickly learned in school that I needed to find challenges myself as the pace did not match my own. Currently, I am finding these challenges by conducting design research on the cross-section of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and design.
I love doing research, the goal of creating new knowledge and using this to create advancements on a societal or individual level is something that appeals to me since it always provides new learning opportunities. Moreover, I quickly notice patterns and see relations between seemingly unrelated topics. I use this as a strength when conducting research but also in programming. My analytical nature is also what triggered my interest in AI, and I am developing skills to both understand the design and technical perspective. By understanding both languages, I will be better equipped to work on bridging the gap between designers and AI experts.
Next to this analytical side, I enjoy creating interactive prototypes, especially tangible or hybrid prototypes as I feel that the tangible component can create more intuitive interactions and I have always been making things. While I do not consider myself to be very creative in the general understanding, I am skilled in looking creatively at challenges to find solutions.
In projects, I will always make sure to be aware of the planning and plan in some buffer time to prevent stress and take setbacks into account. Next to that, you can expect me to come prepared and work organized, and if needed, take on a managing role to ensure effective and clear meetings.
Vision
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be found everywhere in our everyday lives. Yet, many people are unaware of what it is, what it can do, and perhaps most importantly what it cannot (yet) do. Since governments are only just starting to play catch-up with guides and rules, I believe that for the upcoming years, best practices should be developed bottom-up. An important part of this is increasing awareness among designers and the general public as AI is becoming more accessible after for example the introduction of ChatGPT.
For designers, I see an important role in designing ethical, human-centred products that do not use AI for the sake of AI but to improve the interaction. Moreover, once implemented, design can be leveraged to explain the AI to users and to ensure that it can fail gracefully. One challenge I focus on with my design research is how we can equip designers with the needed skills and processes to be set up for success.
Next to that, the awareness among the general public should be increased in order to empower people to make informed decisions. Again design plays a role in this, as well as the development of explainable AI methods and of course education.
I strive to contribute to this cross-section of design and AI with design research and education by developing methods, processes and tools. Since it is a challenging topic I strive to make, preferably tangible, prototypes that can be used intuitively so the cognitive effort can be directed to the content.
Research
Anniek Jansen, François Leborgne, Qiurui Wang, and Chao Zhang. 2024. Contextualizing the “Why”: The Potential of Using Visual Map As a Novel XAI Method for Users with Low AI-literacy. In Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 87, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3650812
Tianqin Lu, Anniek Jansen, Sichen Guo, and François Leborgne. 2024. WonderMap: Capturing and Connecting the Edges of Cultures. In Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 110, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1145/3623509.3635865
Anniek Jansen, Jules Sinsel, and Sara Colombo. 2024 Facebook Data Shield: An interactive tangible interface for user data control, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.739
Anniek Jansen and Sara Colombo. 2023. Mix & Match Machine Learning: An Ideation Toolkit to Design Machine Learning-Enabled Solutions. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 8, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1145/3569009.3572739
Jules Sinsel, Anniek Jansen, and Sara Colombo. 2023. Facebook Data Shield: Increasing Awareness and Control over Data used by Newsfeed-Generating Algorithms. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 46, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3569009.3573116
Anniek Jansen and Sara Colombo. 2022. Wizard of Errors: Introducing and Evaluating Machine Learning Errors in Wizard of Oz Studies. In Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 426, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519684