The Science of Designing Humans
Two ideas run through everything I do: treating people as systems you can model, and using fiction to design things that don't exist yet.
Humics: The Physics of People
Pascal Bornet came up with the idea. I was the catalyst and lead inventor who turned it into a working, patent-pending system: prototyping agents, running user tests, and pushing for the architecture that made it real.
The Core Idea
Humics is Pascal Bornet's concept for modeling how humans and AI work together. Most people leave it at the philosophy level, a management theory. I took it further: I designed the agent prototypes, ran the user testing, and pushed for the architecture that actually measures trust, rapport, and emotional state in real-time VR interactions. I turned a philosophy into a product.
Trust Dynamics
How trust goes up and down based on what you say, when you say it, and whether you follow through.
Emotional State
The agent tracks how the person is feeling along valence, arousal, and dominance dimensions. And it changes over time.
Hidden Facts
Things the agent knows but won't tell you. A backstory, a grudge, a secret. It shapes how they react.
Rapport Metrics
Are you mirroring their language? Acknowledging what they said? The agent notices.
The Humics Equation
Nothing is pre-written. The agent looks at trust, emotion, hidden knowledge, and what you just said, then figures out what to do.
Speculative Design
I use science fiction not just to tell stories, but to design systems that don't exist yet.
Design for the Decade
My PhD pointed out that interactive storytelling games might span more than a decade of player experience. You can't design for that timescale with normal methods. Speculative Design uses sci-fi scenarios to prototype experiences that won't be technically feasible for years, so you're building toward the right future, not just the nearest one.
Envision the Future
Write sci-fi scenarios about the system you want to build, set 10–20 years out.
Work Backwards
Figure out what tech and social infrastructure you'd need to get there.
Prototype the Gap
Build the pieces you can build now, aimed at that future.
Iterate with Fiction
Run your design through narrative scenarios before you write any code.
Where This Comes From
Tabletop RPGs, science fiction, and AI systems design have more in common than you'd think.
The way Microscope builds fractal histories? That's how I think about giving agents coherent backstories.
Character stats, action economies, goal hierarchies. RPG design maps straight onto agent behavior.
I use sci-fi stories as functional design docs for systems that don't exist yet.
“Whether it's building a Microscope history of a fictional world or figuring out how an agent should react when trust drops below 40%? It's all the same problem to me.”
The unifying thread across all my work
See It In Action
These aren't just ideas. They're running in production at Axon.