ucsd design lab mikael Walhström

Designer in Residence & Social Psychologist Mikael Wahlström Leads Projects to Explore Autonomous Ships

Designer in Residence & Social Psychologist Mikael Wahlström Leads Projects to Explore Autonomous Ships

Designer in Residence & Social Psychologist Mikael Wahlström Leads Projects to Explore Autonomous Ships

The Design Lab welcomed Mikael Wahlström as a Designer in Residence this past fall. Wahlström hails from Finland where he received his PhD in social psychology from the University of Helsinki. While pursuing his doctorate, he worked at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT) where he studied human-computer interaction. He currently works on complex systems including robotics and plants research at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, a leading international research and technology company.

Wahlström was drawn to working at The Design Lab given that UC San Diego is a leading university for his interests in distributed cognition and context-focused research.  While at The Design Lab, Wahlström led an ongoing project to explore autonomous ships, a research initiative started during his studies at HIIT. The project examines the “ship-bridge” concept and specifically how user research can be leveraged to imagine futuristic bridges. Through speaking with expert navigators, Wahlström identified the needs and challenges of real-life navigation. One of the project’s main objectives is to analyze the communication and interaction between ships as unified entities. After presenting an article written about his work, Wahlström is excited for how the project will continue to progress.

Previously, Wahlström worked within the field of robotics surgery to understand how we navigate within our own bodies. Through task analysis, he studied a concept known as auto-confrontation, which describes explaining one’s own activities through different representations of media.

As he reflects on his work, Wahlström expresses gratitude for having had the opportunity to learn about how distributed cognition can be applied on a more profound level.

It’s been a very positive experience. I received good feedback from Don [Norman] on the autonomous ship project. I’ve also enjoyed meeting everyone and learning about their work to identify possibilities for future studies and collaborations.

The Design Lab welcomed Mikael Wahlström as a Designer in Residence this past fall. Wahlström hails from Finland where he received his PhD in social psychology from the University of Helsinki. While pursuing his doctorate, he worked at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT) where he studied human-computer interaction. He currently works on complex systems including robotics and plants research at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, a leading international research and technology company.

Wahlström was drawn to working at The Design Lab given that UC San Diego is a leading university for his interests in distributed cognition and context-focused research.  While at The Design Lab, Wahlström led an ongoing project to explore autonomous ships, a research initiative started during his studies at HIIT. The project examines the “ship-bridge” concept and specifically how user research can be leveraged to imagine futuristic bridges. Through speaking with expert navigators, Wahlström identified the needs and challenges of real-life navigation. One of the project’s main objectives is to analyze the communication and interaction between ships as unified entities. After presenting an article written about his work, Wahlström is excited for how the project will continue to progress.

Previously, Wahlström worked within the field of robotics surgery to understand how we navigate within our own bodies. Through task analysis, he studied a concept known as auto-confrontation, which describes explaining one’s own activities through different representations of media.

As he reflects on his work, Wahlström expresses gratitude for having had the opportunity to learn about how distributed cognition can be applied on a more profound level.

It’s been a very positive experience. I received good feedback from Don [Norman] on the autonomous ship project. I’ve also enjoyed meeting everyone and learning about their work to identify possibilities for future studies and collaborations.

The Design Lab welcomed Mikael Wahlström as a Designer in Residence this past fall. Wahlström hails from Finland where he received his PhD in social psychology from the University of Helsinki. While pursuing his doctorate, he worked at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT) where he studied human-computer interaction. He currently works on complex systems including robotics and plants research at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, a leading international research and technology company.

Wahlström was drawn to working at The Design Lab given that UC San Diego is a leading university for his interests in distributed cognition and context-focused research.  While at The Design Lab, Wahlström led an ongoing project to explore autonomous ships, a research initiative started during his studies at HIIT. The project examines the “ship-bridge” concept and specifically how user research can be leveraged to imagine futuristic bridges. Through speaking with expert navigators, Wahlström identified the needs and challenges of real-life navigation. One of the project’s main objectives is to analyze the communication and interaction between ships as unified entities. After presenting an article written about his work, Wahlström is excited for how the project will continue to progress.

Previously, Wahlström worked within the field of robotics surgery to understand how we navigate within our own bodies. Through task analysis, he studied a concept known as auto-confrontation, which describes explaining one’s own activities through different representations of media.

As he reflects on his work, Wahlström expresses gratitude for having had the opportunity to learn about how distributed cognition can be applied on a more profound level.

It’s been a very positive experience. I received good feedback from Don [Norman] on the autonomous ship project. I’ve also enjoyed meeting everyone and learning about their work to identify possibilities for future studies and collaborations.

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Design Lab’s Edward Wang wins NIH R21 for work on Smartphone-based Alzheimer’s Screening

Design Lab’s Edward Wang, who is a jointly appointed professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering in Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, wins a National Institutes of Health (NIH) R21 through the National Institute of Aging (NIA) for his work around transforming smartphones into pocket-sized personal health monitors. 

The NIA has selected Design Lab’s Edward Wang, who directs the Digital Health Lab, to receive NIH R21 funding for his work with Co-investigator Eric Granholm, Director of UCSD’s Center for Mental Health Technology (MHTech), to develop a smartphone app that can screen for early signs of cognitive decline indicative of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). An NIH R21, also known as the Exploratory/Development Grant, provides support in the early and conceptual stages of a project’s development. As part of a national push towards combating the debilitating effects of AD, the National Institute of Aging looked towards funding novel ways to screen for AD through the use of digital technologies. 

Design and Innovation Building Grand Opening: UCSD’s front door to community collaborations

In November of 2021, the UC San Diego Design Lab unveiled their long-awaited new home in the recently constructed Design and Innovation Building, or as it is affectionately referred to, the DIB. The DIB will serve as a hub for academia, industry and community innovators to participate in design events, lectures, and other working partnerships within the design community that aim to create human-centered solutions to the complex problems facing our region and beyond. The grand opening of the DIB showcased the potential for such gatherings, boasting the presence of organizations like the UCSD Design Co., Girls Who Code, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, to name a few. Such groups showcased current and past projects to the students, professors, and industry leaders in attendance. 

The opening of the DIB marks a momentous occasion in the history of the Design Lab, as the building itself, which is a multi-use environment bringing together multiple disciplines under one roof, represents the journey and philosophy at the heart of the Design Lab’s mission–making UC San Diego a world center for design research and education that fosters a new way of thinking, which addresses the core issues with a systems point of view, and emphasizing the role of people in the complex systems of the modern world.
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J. Tanner Cusick joins the Design Lab as a Designer-in-Residence

When J. Tanner Cusick took a class called Social Architectures, he never expected that the trajectory of his career would change forever. While pursuing his MFA at UC San Diego, Cusick explains that it was in this class that he and his classmates designed “interventions” around campus. "Basically, we would change the environment and see how it influenced human behavior,” says Cusick. “I did a piece under Geisel that challenged people to use the space differently by creating a game of human Candy Land. I colored all the blocks beneath the library, and everyone came in costumes.” He reflects that what he didn’t realize at the time was that they were really practicing experience design.

It was the combination of this event and Cusick’s experience as a teaching assistant (TA) that taught him what User Experience (UX) was. “While I was a TA, I taught a digital art class and students were assigned The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman. I'd never read the book before and I was amazed by it," said Cusick. It was the ideas in the book that influenced Cusick to shift the context of his work. “I ended up teaching myself about the discipline and doing a lot of UX design and content design. And that's what I have been doing since then."
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Design Lab and MIT Media Lab Join Forces to Organize a Design·a·Hack·a·thon

No hackathon would be complete without cardboard prototypes strewn about the room, laptop screens glowing with code, and the edgy excitement of teams working against the clock. Hackathons concentrate the efforts of talented, highly motivated participants eager to develop new technologies. There is, however, often one key element missing from this picture: the people for whom these technologies might serve. This inspired The Design Lab to ask, “How might we make designing for people the central element of a hackathon?” Answer: we needed to make “design” a central component. Designathons and Design Swarms exist, but they didn’t quite fit our need to combine both designing and doing (hacking) in a very short, highly condensed manner. Eventually we ended up with Design·a·Hack·a·thon.

Meet Member of Postdoctoral Fellowship Program’s Debut Cohort: Jane E

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San Diego council committee unanimously approves ordinances targeting surveillance technology

Photo courtesy of John Gibbins/The San Diego Union-Tribune

A City Council committee on Wednesday unanimously approved two proposed ordinances geared at governing surveillance technologies in the city, an action sparked by sustained pushback from activists and others who were surprised and upset last year when it was revealed that San Diego had quietly installed cameras on streetlights throughout the city.

Lilly Irani, an associate professor at UC San Diego (and Design Lab faculty) who specializes in the ethics of technology, called the vote “a win for better governance in the long term.”

Irani helped draft the ordinances and assisted the organized opposition dubbed the TRUST San Diego coalition, which focuses on responsible surveillance in the region. The coalition was born out of concerns about one specific technology — so-called smart streetlights — and ultimately landed a seat at the table to draft the proposals.

“Without Councilmember Monica Montgomery championing this... there would be no table,” Irani said.
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