Supporting Collaborative Privacy-Observant Information Sharing Using RFID-Tagged Objects

RFID technology provides an economically feasible means to embed computing and communication capabilities in numerous physical objects around us, thereby allowing anyone to effortlessly announce and expose varieties of information anywhere at any time. As the technology is increasingly used in everyday environments, there is a heightening tension in the design and shaping of social boundaries in the digitally enhanced real world. Our experiments of RFID-triggered information sharing have identified usability, deployment, and privacy issues of physically based information systems. We discuss awareness issues and cognitive costs in regulating RFID-triggered information flows and propose a framework for privacy-observant RFID applications. The proposed framework supports users' in situ privacy boundary control by allowing users to (1) see how their information is socially disclosed and viewed by others, (2) dynamically negotiate their privacy boundaries, and (3) automate certain information disclosure processes

Training architectural computational critics by example

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-65).This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.New building technologies and materials coupled with a modular construction system offer consumers an unprecedented chance to customize their living spaces. At the center of this customization process is a computational tool that guides consumers through the process of designing a home or apartment. Algorithms for architectural computational critics that are trained by a designer through examples and that can then critique designs is proposed as part of the design tool. A prototype system encompassing two apartment design scenarios is built and tested. The prototype demonstrates the ability to learn architectural concepts through training.by Reid E. Williams.M.Eng

From personal experience to design : externalizing the homeowner's needs assessment process

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-215).This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Advances in building and computational technologies, coupled with a reorganized and integrated system of residential design, may make custom homes a possibility for a larger segment of the population in the years to come. While tools and materials that embody building and design expertise are necessary for making such a system workable, how the homeowner is supported and represented will determine whether the resulting houses are not just custom, but personally meaningful. The particular focus of this work is on how to externalize the layperson's task of establishing needs and setting goals as an essential stage within a sophisticated design process. The work is informed by interviews with homeowners and a participant study of constructive and interpretative exercises. One such exercise asked participants to serve as investigators into their own practices through use of simple sensors placed in the home environment. The work concludes with a proposal for tools and approaches to collect rich requirement data and prime users for design decisions by helping them to identify their perspective, needs, and goals. KEYWORDS: home design, mass customization, participatory design, constructionism, reflective practice, adult learning, architectural program, HCI.by Jennifer Suzanne Beaudin.S.M

Education and Technology: Future Visions

This paper summarizes the workshop discussion and contains the commissioned papers in their entirety. In June 1995, the contractors and a number of other prominent educators were invited to OTA for an all-day workshop to discuss these papers and the issues more broadly

Analytical and interpretive practices in design and new product development : evidence from the automobile industry

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-271).Product design and development have been studied from both positivist and interpretivist paradigms. From the positivist perspective, design and product development are seen as technical transformation or production processes, which take customer requirements and existing technological possibilities as inputs and produce an objectively optimal product, one that is not influenced by the designer's preferences or biases. The result of this research is a focus on measuring the voice of the customer with "high fidelity", and on streamlining and optimizing this production process. From the intrepretivist perspective, product design and development are seen as relatively open-ended discursive processes, to which human participants from different backgrounds bring their unique worldviews and prejudices. Models of these processes are seen as metaphors intended to help people come to understanding by shedding light on and thus bridging the different worldviews, not as mathematical constructs to be optimized. In real life, empirical evidence shows that practitioners rely on a number of approaches that do not fit easily into one or the other of these paradigms. As a result, many analytical models and methodologies need to be modified to make them useful in real-world applications and, coniverscly, empirical research that accurately captures the richness and complexity of the design and development process fits uneasily in these traditional paradigms which researchers feel compelled to use. This dissertation addresses this shortcoming by developing a vocabulary for describing product design and development practices, which bridges the divide between the strictly positivist and strictly interpretivist views. The research approach used is one of theory building from case studies. The industry chosen for the case studies is the automobile industry. The thesis reports on three study sites. The first is an American manufacturer based in Detroit, known for its innovative product designs and its pioneering reliance on dedicated platform development teams. The second is the American design subsidiary of a Japanese manufacturer, one of the first to set up such a design operation in US. The third site is the Japanese design and development organization of the same manufacturer, based in a technical center outside of Tokyo. The theoretical framework presented in this dissertation, which co-evolved with the above case studies, takes the form of a taxonomy of product development practices. This taxonomy draws upon concepts from linguistics and the philosophy of language. In a first step, the distinction within linguistics between the structural sub fields (e.g., syntax and semantics) and the functional sub field of Pragmatics is used to sharpen the difference between analytical/structural practices on the one hand, and interpretive practices on the other. In a second step. two views of interpretation, one grounded in linguistics (Pragmatics. specifically). the other in the philosophical hermeneutics of Heidegger and Gadamer are used to expand the interpretive category into two, referred to as pragmatic interpretation and hermeneutic interpretation, respectively. Each of the three case studies provides a good illustration of a product development organization that relies predominantly on one of the types of practices and approaches captured by the taxonomy. The findings suggest a number of recommendations for design and product development managers and practitioners, as well as several directions for future research.by Kamal M. Malek.Ph.D

Learning design thinking online : studying students' learning experience in shared virtual reality

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

A knowledge-level model for concurrent design.

The concurrent approach to engineering design, concurrent design, implies that expert knowledge regarding a number of different downstream life-cycle perspectives (such as assembly, manufacture, maintainability etc) should all be considered at the design stage of a product's life-cycle. Extensive and valuable work has been done in developing computer aids to both the design and concurrent design processes. However, a criticism of such tools is that their development has been driven by computational considerations and that the tools are not based on a generally accepted model of the design process. Different models of design have been developed that fall into a number of paradigms, including cognitive and knowledge-level models. However, while there is no generally accepted cognitive model describing the way designers and design teams think, the concept of the knowledge-level has enabled a more pragmatic approach to be taken to the development of models of problem-solving activity.Different researchers have developed knowledge-level models for the design process, particularly as part of the CommonKADS methodology (one of the principal knowledge-based system development methodologies currently in use). These design models have significantly extended design thinking in this area. However, the models do not explicitly support the concurrent design process. I have developed top-down knowledge-level models of the concurrent design process by analysis of published research and discussions with academics. However some researchers have criticised models for design that are not based on analysis of 'real-life' design. Hence I wished to validate my top-down models by analysing how concurrent design actually occurs in a real-life industrial setting.Analysing concurrent design activity is a complex process and there are no definitive methodological guidelines as to the 'right way' to do it. Therefore I have developed and utilised a novel method of knowledge elicitation and analysis to develop 'bottom-up' models for concurrent design. This is based on a number of different approaches and was done in collaboration with a number of different design teams and organisations who are engaged in the concurrent design of mechanically based products.My resulting knowledge-level models are an original contribution to knowledge. They suggest that the concurrent design process consists of a number of discrete sub-tasks of propose, critique and negotiate. These models have been instantiated as generic model templates, using the modelling formalisms specified by CommonYADS. These models have been implemented on a software tool, the CommonKADS workbench, in order to provide support for developers of computer-based systems for concurrent design