don norman zdnet over automating uc san diego

Software Developers and Designers Risk Over-Automating Enterprises

Don Norman of Cognitive Science and the Design Lab argues for human-technology teamwork among designers in a recent Research-Technology Management article, ZDNet reports. ZDNet also includes in its story a video in which Normans says “we want to design technology to be a collaborator, a team worker, with people. And yet, we still think that people are somehow deficient, and we have to replace them with machines.”

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Experiencing Cancer in Appalachian Kentucky

A new paper from The Design Lab's Melanie McComsey and Eliah Aronoff-Spencer describes a new framework for improving #cancer care in Appalachian Kentucky. The project would leverage broadband connectivity and cancer communication research to make a difference in the lives of patients and their families.

Nothing tells the story of people working together better than a community quilt. A diversity of talents, colors, and materials brought together through skill and shared purpose. Perhaps never before have we as Americans needed a stronger reminder that many hands make short work of big problems. The work presented here by the L.A.U.N.C.H. Collaborative offers a new framework for health care that could be compared to a digital quilt, powered by community-based participatory design, with lived expertise and the newest advances in broadband-enabled connected health solutions. This work demonstrates the value and need to engage local communities and what can be learned when beneficiaries and traditional caregivers work together to develop healthcare solutions.

Ford Gifts $50K to Design Lab People-Centered Automation

Colleen Emmenegger, Head of People-Centered Automation at The Design Lab, was recently the recipient of a $50,000 grant from Ford Motor Company. The grant was awarded for her work regarding how drivers can understand, negotiate, and manage shared autonomy with their vehicles in a way that is accessible and easily translatable.

“We're trying to figure out if you can build a contract with the driver and her automated vehicle co-pilot so the driver knows exactly what they need to do and what the system does," says Emmenegger. "We're trying to build something that explicitly and continuously communicates, and that doesn't act as an invisible ‘controlling entity’ of the car. A system that provides dynamic, yet constant feedback to the driver and not sudden, startling warnings."

IBM Design Thinking Workshop at The Design Lab

IBM believes in design thinking. And design doing. So much so that throughout the company,…

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."