Rebecca Currano

Re-representation: Affordances of Shared Models in Team-Based Design

The use of media within the process of designing new products has not been directed by rigorous research findings. In this chapter a media-model framework is discussed, which categorizes media according to levels of resolution and abstraction. This framework can be used to assess characteristics of various models and as a general guide for discerning differences between media types. Designers can utilize the media-model framework to make informed judgments about appropriate prototyping and modeling approaches within various stages of the design process. New research in the application of media-models to Business Process Modeling (BPM), which traditionally employs electronic media (in the form of complex computer-generated flow-charts) aids in the generation of Business Process Models. This research has resulted in the development of an innovative modeling tool, called Tangible Business Process Modeling, or TBPM.

Where to look and who to be: designing attention and identity for search-and-rescue robots

Participants taking cover from a simulated earthquake interacted with a search-and-rescue robot that paid attention either to them or to the environment, and that they thought was either controlled by a person or autonomous. In general, the robot elicited the strongest positive responses when it focused on participants who thought they were interacting with a person.

Design Loupes: A Bifocal Study to Improve the Management of Engineering Design Innovation by Co-evaluation of the Design Process and Information Sharing Activity

After having identified the existence and having conceptually modeled the nature of general design loupes in the past year’s project, this year’s focus lies on the systematic exploration of the individual designer’s inherent reflective loupe. Based on analyzing artifacts, surveying experts, conducting inductive and deductive conceptual framing rounds, and observing controlled explorative experiments we were able to: (1) show the existence of reflective loupes; (2) identify actual practices in use by designers; (3) use reflective practices as meaningful proxies for reflective loupes that are not directly observable; and (4) create, capture and analyze concrete reflective practices in the controlled experimental environment of a laboratory. We next proceed to build upon these results to deepen our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms of reflective design loupes.

Visual Attention During Simulated Autonomous Driving in the US and Japan

To explore cultural differences in driver behavior for the purposes of vehicle automation, we used eye tracking to measure fixation patterns of Japanese and US participants (N = 98) viewing video simulations of automated driving through San Francisco and Osaka. After each drive, we asked participants questions about objects and events from the video. Japanese participants showed higher fixation counts and durations than US participants for salient foreground objects in the traffic scene, and answered questions about those objects more correctly. US participants showed higher fixation counts than Japanese participants on visually prominent background features, and gave more correct answers about those. Consistency between fixation count and fixation duration on an object or feature, and recall of that object or feature, suggests that situation awareness during simulated automated driving proceeds from patterns of visual fixation on elements of the traffic scene.

AnalyzeD: A Virtual Design Observatory, Project Launch Year

This chapter describes the launch year activities of the analyzed project where we aim to quantify engineering design behavior to such an extent that use statistical algorithm to discover, describe and model fundamental design thinking behavior paradigm. It is a joint research endeavor with the EPIC chair of Prof. Hasso Plattner at the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), University of Postdam. As main result from the Stanford side, we were able to generate several proofs of concepts on gathering and analyzing design process data from various sources and in various data quality. Especially noteworthy is the analysis of CAD data in a novel and comprehensive way. Collaborating with a leading CAD software supplier, we are able to firstly extract every single engineer-system interaction and secondly, using genetic algorithms, we are able to statically identify patterns without an a priori model assumption.