Designing how people work with AI at Parai

At a Rotterdam civic-tech startup that turns citizens' stories into AI voice carriers, I own a municipal client project end to end and design, from zero, how people and AI agents should work together.

The company

Parai is a civic-tech startup in Rotterdam that researches how technology can strengthen democracy. It collects real stories from residents and turns them into stemdragers, or voice carriers: digital characters, grounded in real conversations, that decision-makers can talk with to test their plans against perspectives they haven’t heard yet. Every position a voice carrier takes is traceable to what real people actually said. Parai works with the Sociaal AI Lab at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

I work there part-time, about 16 hours a week, writing Go.

Designing how people and AI work together

I’m designing, from zero, how working alongside an AI agent should feel. Most applied AI today is a chat box bolted onto an existing product. I’m rethinking that interaction from the ground up, starting with a data analysis module that helps recognise patterns in qualitative surveys of citizens.

Product, not just code

I bring product questions to the table as much as code: why we’d build something a certain way, and how it should feel to use. Our CEO gives me the room to push on those questions, and is a great sparring partner when I do.