Building a thriving future for creatives in a rapidly changing landscape
Art Experience Lab is a research and design firm that collaborates with practitioners, communities, and organizations to discover new ways to support creative work.
Projects that put creative people at the center
Art Here
A community arts initiative that connects artists with their neighbors through events and digital infrastructure — building the foundation for local creative economies. Currently piloting in Portland, Oregon.
Design Workshops
We design and facilitate workshops and co-design sessions as part of our research and design projects — bringing together diverse stakeholders around the questions that matter to them.
Generative Furniture
Embedded research with the Ross Lovegrove design studio and Google DeepMind, documenting how a world-class industrial designer integrated AI image generation into his creative process. What it unlocked, what it demanded, and what it still couldn't do — insights that shaped how DeepMind approached building AI tools for professional creatives.
How Creators Use AI
Foundational research with image and video creators — from hobbyists to professionals — exploring how generative AI was entering, or not, their actual workflows. What felt beneficial, what felt concerning, and where tools consistently fell short. Conducted with Google DeepMind; findings informed the development of Imagen and Veo.
Participatory Research
We collaborate with communities, organizations, and local government to understand how to support creatives: how they work, what they need, and how they are navigating disrupted fields. We design with, not for, creative practitioners.
Product & Service Design
We build experiences, products, and digital infrastructure grounded in research and co-designed with impacted communities — to help people learn, create, and thrive.
Workshop Design & Facilitation
We craft and facilitate experiences: workshops, events, and design sessions that bring people together to learn, co-design, and build community.
Multimedia Storytelling & Experience Design
We use video and multimedia as both research tools and storytelling media — creating narratives, experiences, and installations that bring ideas to life, from community stories to historical archives.
Art Experience Lab (AXLab) is dedicated to ensuring that creative people, and the communities around them, can grow and thrive. AXLab was founded in 2023 by Maryanna Rogers, a mixed-methods researcher and designer whose career spans Google DeepMind, Stanford d.school, Mozilla, and The Tech Museum of Innovation. A Northwestern film graduate and Stanford PhD, she grew up on the Gulf Coast, lived in the Bay Area for 15 years, and is currently based in Portland, Oregon.
Let's work together
Looking forward to collaborating!
hello@axlab.io