Supporting Developers and Designers in the Era of Generative AI

Bio: Ruijia “Regina”Cheng is a researcher in Human–Computer Interaction whose work explores programming support, creativity tools, and social computing. She is currently a research scientist in the Human Centered Machine Intelligence group at Apple, where she develops and researches generative AI technologies to support developers and designers. She received her PhD from the Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) department at University of Washington, where she was part of the Community Data Science Collective research group. She also holds Bachelor of Science degrees from University of California, San Diego.

Abstract: The rise of generative AI opens a new era of assistance for software developers and designers, while also raising questions about human creative agency. What is the future of creative work in this new landscape? In this talk, I will present a series of projects exploring how we can design generative AI systems that support developers and designers in their creative practices. I will share a set of tools designed to support individual developers and designers, including Keyframer, which enables designers to iteratively explore and refine 2D animation ideas, BISCUIT, which generates ephemeral UIs to help developers understand and guide code generation, as well as frameworks and interfaces that support the design and iteration of AI-powered systems. Beyond support for individuals, I will discuss how developers in online communities collectively build trust and understanding of code generation, and how we can design socio-technical scaffolds to assist user interaction with generative AI technologies.

This seminar is both online and in-person:
Zoom Link