Eli

        Uber introduced its self-driving car service in Pittsburgh two week ago

In an op-ed article featured in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Obama lauded the efforts of tech giants that are developing self-driving technology to make transportation safer and more accessible.

While Obama said the government must play a huge role in nurturing the development of self-driving technology, he cautioned that the government must ensure consumers' safety without hampering the industry with too much regulation.

By Barack Obama

Things are a little different today than when I first moved into the White House. Back then, my watch told me the time. Today, it reminds me to exercise. In my first year, I couldn’t take pictures with my phone. Last year, I posted on Instagram from Alaska.

Of course, American innovation is driving bigger changes, too: In the seven-and-a-half years of my presidency, self-driving cars have gone from sci-fi fantasy to an emerging reality with the potential to transform the way we live.

Right now, too many people die on our roads – 35,200 last year alone – with 94 percent of those the result of human error or choice. Automated vehicles have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives each year. And right now, for too many senior citizens and Americans with disabilities, driving isn’t an option. Automated vehicles could change their lives.

Safer, more accessible driving. Less congested, less polluted roads. That’s what harnessing technology for good can look like. But we have to get it right. Americans deserve to know they’ll be safe today even as we develop and deploy the technologies of tomorrow.

That’s why my administration is rolling out new rules of the road for automated vehicles – guidance that the manufacturers developing self-driving cars should follow to keep us safe. And we’re asking them to sign a 15-point safety checklist showing not just the government, but every interested American, how they’re doing it.

We’re also giving guidance to states on how to wisely regulate these new technologies, so that when a self-driving car crosses from Ohio into Pennsylvania, its passengers can be confident that other vehicles will be just as responsibly deployed and just as safe.

Regulation can go too far. Government sometimes gets it wrong when it comes to rapidly changing technologies. That’s why this new policy is flexible and designed to evolve with new advances.

There are always those who argue that government should stay out of free enterprise entirely, but I think most Americans would agree we still need rules to keep our air and water clean, and our food and medicine safe. That’s the general principle here. What’s more, the quickest way to slam the brakes on innovation is for the public to lose confidence in the safety of new technologies.

Both government and industry have a responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen. And make no mistake: If a self-driving car isn’t safe, we have the authority to pull it off the road. We won’t hesitate to protect the American public’s safety.

Even as we focus on the safety of automated vehicles, we know that this technology, as with any new technology, has the potential to create new jobs and render other jobs obsolete. So it’s critical that we also provide new resources and job training to prepare every American for the good-paying jobs of tomorrow.

We’re determined to help the private sector get this technology right from the start. Because technology isn’t just about the latest gadget or app – it’s about making people’s lives better. That’s going to be the focus of the first-ever White House Frontiers Conference on Oct. 13. And what better place to hold it than Pittsburgh – a city that has harnessed innovation to redefine itself as a center for technology, health care and education.

We’ll explore the future of innovation in America and around the world, focusing on building our capacity in science, technology and innovation, as well as the new technologies, challenges and goals that will shape the next century.

The progress we’ve seen in automated vehicles over the past several years shows what our country is capable of when our engineers and entrepreneurs, our scientists and our students – backed by federal and private investment – pour their best work and brightest ideas toward a big, bold goal. That’s the spirit that has propelled us forward since before the automobile was invented. Now it’s up to us to keep driving toward a better future for everyone.

                              “1999 A.D.” -The future prediction

Watching the film made by 1960s’ to see how people predict the future in 30 years later in 1999 is kind of funny. And it’s also interesting to stand on a further timeline and head back to review those predictions and talk about what kind of predictions have been brought to reality and what haven’t.

Let’s talk about what was shown in this film.The story happens on the beach and the little boy is building the house where he lives-a honeycomb structure modules house.From the film we know that in 1999, people lives in the house with the oldest, strongest modules structure and the unit can grow with the family size and interest. Personally, I really love this idea, but I have to say, until nowadays, the honeycomb structure building is still unusual.

Then the boy asked his mother how does the computer know everything and his mother said she is too old to understand it. The boy said ‘You’re not too old, just 43 years old.’ Sure thing, 43 years old, not old at all. But why did she say that? I believe the film wants to through this part to express the idea that technology is developing incredibly fast, today, our parents quiet like this white mother.

Summer's over! Just can't blieve thesis year is out there!

For the following thesis year, I'll use here to record everything not only related to my thesis, ideas, brainstorms, researches, reading notes, but also how I feel what I thought and waht I've learned during the thesis in each different steps. I hope one day when I head back to review this time, I'll be proud of myself. So, fighting!

First step: general idea brainstrom round one

For the thesis general topic, There's one significant thing need to be considered.

Before I start, be clear, no matter what topic I'll choose, it has to be the one that I'd love to and willing to pursue and put the effort in for the whole thesis year. Make sure I'm really interested in that topic I picked.

Quick review my last 5-years' projects. My graduation project smart E-bike (A eletric smart bicycle aim to bring people who lives in urben city back to healthy life and make bike more fit into nowadays entire traffic system)left me a deep impression. Not only just because I spent 10 months to bring it to reality, but also until today I still believe this topic worth to be thought about and solved.

After reading the article "What is Amazon's approach to product development and product management?" I totally understand why we need try to use a approach which is called"working backwards"to get strat for our personal $1000 project. It makes a lot of sense. Actually, I had some personal experience when I as an industrial design student.

Here is a story I want to share. I still remember that when I was in my second year of college, I devoted myself to take part in different kinds of design competations in order to prove myslef. During that time, everyday I just looked for different types of unsolved or unserved problems without too much researches,there is no need to say write down something like press release, all I did was tring to give a quick but permanent solution.(Sometimes, they are not a real problems but I just strong believe that it is!) After spent a few minutes to make a desicion and then spent next few days to excute it , built the 3D modeling and rendering , use some technologies or the terms to describe the idea which I didn't even understand it. I felt very satisfied and excietd with my work when I made some really cool modelings or renderings, I thought now I'm a designer and all what I did for my project is about design, every time when I finished my work, I'll show it to my classmates and my professor and strong believed that everybody will like it, appreciate it when they saw my work. But when I herad people's feedback, suggentions or differnt voices which I thougt is cool, I just brought my work back and added those new functions directly based on the previous one without any filter which I called it "iterate". Because of that, even though it was a real problem with a great idea, but excute it along the wrong development process I usually did overdesign which lead to a bad output.

Starting from one of my personal bad user experience. A Laser Printer, for a long time, I refuse to use printer by myself because the professional laser printer is one of the product which I'm afraid of. There have lots of buttons on the top of the printer, each of them has a different function, some of them has multi functions, and it’s hard to understand how to use. I can spend some time to learn it, but if I move to a new environment, meet a new laser printer, I still don't know how to use it. Frustrated, I was wondering who didn't consider this situation in the product development and why nobody account for this bad user

experience? Who should think about the possibility of somebody will get stuck in their product and having this bad experience? Industrial designer? Of course, because they build this laser printer. Only them? No, Because we are talking about user experience and interactivity. User experience designer. Maybe... Nowadays, UX has already grown as a specialized discipline, but when the printer appeared, UX designer they were still studying at school. So my topic is from industrial design to interaction design. In this example, I mentioned industrial design, and user experience design. What are they?

“The process of design applied to products that are to be manufactured through techniques of mass production. Exploring the relationship between people and objects. Considering physical qualities, ergonomics, semantics, form language, aesthetic, and beauty.”

Here are some quotes which I found on the websites, I just pull them together help people easy to understand this subject. Here I just want mention that more people believe that industrial design is focusing on manufacturing, from concepts to objects, using form language and taking care of aesthetics. Later, I will talk about it in detail. The experience-driven design has made "experience" the new hot buzzword. But is it new? Through this article, I just want to share some thoughts about Industrial design and user experience design, UX practice today, its in parallels to industrial design practice. UX design as a growing specialization, I’ll attempt to position it in established design disciplines.

Let’s have a look at this picture: “Automobile Seat Adjustment Control. This is an excellent example of natural mapping. The control is in the shape of the seat itself: the mapping is straightforward. To move the front edge of the seat higher, lift up on the front part of the button. To make the seat back recline, move the button back. This device is easy to use because the set of possible actions is visible, the controls and displays with natural mappings. The principles are simple but rarely incorporated into design. This is a great example of industrial design, takes care, planning, thought, and an understanding of how people behave. ” from ‘The design of everyday things’. When we mentioned how people behave, we realized that we’re talking about the main point of user-centered design which has a strong connection with user experience design. Okay, Let’s go back to our question, is it really new?

Speaking of history of design, people used to talk about Bauhaus which founded in 1919, but today I want to talk about another one of the oldest design school RISD, which was funded in 1877. I feel very lucky I was studying there for a while as an industrial design student, I remember in my first class, my professor told us all design is human-centered. If it's not human- centered, then it's not design. If it's not design, it's something else and we won’t teach you here, we do this since the school was funded. Our entire semester will try to explore the relationship between people and objects. There’s no doubt that you’ll devote yourselves to create magical forms for your objects, But, think about it : What will impact this object? What do you intend it to do in someone's life? If your answer is “ It should be ergonomic and easy to use.” Congratulations, you can be an industrial designer. So, what will this thing do once you bring it into the world? “It should improve the user’s live with high quality in some way.” In our minds we transfer our thinking from making to designing that help facilitate actions, behaviors and experiences. It's a basic transformation to think about an object's form should following the function. This is the main point of human-centered design, considering the relationship of people with their products in the context of their activities. It's also the core of user experience design. Even if today, the term "human-centered design" are more applied to mobile application design or service, But the perspective of "user experience" has been here longer than the terminology.

The early 1900s: The Industrial Revolution Winslow Taylor, a mechanical engineer, pressed "The Principles of Scientific Management," a widely influential study of engineering efficiency. Along with Henry Ford’s pioneering mass-production techniques, Taylor with his team members shaped the early model of what interactions between laborers and their tools should be like.

In1948: Toyota and their Toyota’s production system (TPS) While Toyota, they do management and care about efficiency in engineering and production, they were trying to seek a way to improve their assembly workers’ efficiency by technology. TPS, is to make and deliver vehicles in the quickest and most efficient way possible. Organizes manufacturing and logistics for the automobile manufacturer, including interaction with suppliers and customers. The significant success that Toyota experienced, as a result, brought new attention to the role of human interaction with technology. Originally called "just-in-time production," it builds on the approach created by the founder of Toyota, Sakichi Toyoda, an Industrial engineer, developed by his son Eiiji Toyoda, industrial engineer as well.

Dreyfuss is considered the founding father of industrial design in the past century. Born in New York City in 1904, he has lots of widely influential design, including the model 300 Bell telephone, the Twentieth Century Limited locomotive, and RCA televisions. But the most significants of his contribution is : He wrote the classic text Designing for People. In it, he writes: “When the point of contact between the product and the people becomes a point of friction, then the industrial designer has failed. On the other hand, if people are made safer, more comfortable, easier to purchase, more efficient—or just plain happier—by contact with the product, then the designer has succeeded. ”

In a very early-stage declaration of what will the Disney World looks like, Mr. Walt Disney described a big picture of their project as "always in the state of becoming, a place where the latest technology can be used to improve the lives of people." His imaginative use of technology to bring people joy continues to inspire user experience designers today.

In1970s: PARC (Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated) and their personal computers. 

PARC, gave form and function to the design of computers for human use. Bob Taylor, a trained psychologist, and engineer building some of the most important tools of human-computer interaction, including the GUI design and the mouse.Steve Jobs, when he visit PARC and he wrote down this comments: “They showed me some things. One of the things they showed me was object-oriented programming. Another one they showed me was a networked computer system ... they had over a hundred Alto computers all networked using email etc. I didn't even see that. I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me which was the graphical user interface. You know, ten minutes, it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this some day."

With the development of computers in the early 1990s, user experience became an important concern for designers. Don Norman joined Apple to help with the research and design of its upcoming line of human-centered products. He asked to be called "User Experience Architect," marking the first use of the term in a job title and also brought the term user experience to wider knowledge. By this time Don Norman had also written his classic book, The Design of Everyday Things, Emotional design.

Naoto Fukasawa He believe that Designing shape is to give form to values that people share and wish for. Naoto Fukasawa visually captures these values and he draws the exact outline of them. His ability for visualizing such unseen outlines for things is not easily worded and described. Nonetheless, people are convinced with his ability when they experience his design. Fukasawa’s notions and expressions to approach essential values of things through design travel beyond borders or domains and his thoughts are well respected internationally. His concept for finding hints in a subconscious behavior of people which he named “Without Thought” which is most known. Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at 2007, calling it a "leapfrog product" that announced that iPhone to be far easier to use than any other smartphone on the market. It changed the landscape of mobile devices forever, help Apple became one of the world’s most successful companies. Through its hardware and software to provide and pursue more simply, excellent user experience, making iPhone’s user experience far superior than any other contemporary phones. And it led to a current business focus on user experience. From the time, UX became a hot buzzword.

From Winslow Taylor, Sakichi Toyoda to Dreyfuss, Don Norman and Steve Jobs , Those industrial designers and company have most influenced the evolution of UX design over the years and industrial design also played an important role and have made this transition.

My background was Industrial design. Before I come to SVA IxD Department. I was studying at RISD as an Industrial Designer.

Speaking of why I choose to pursue my graduate degree as an Interaction designer not keep continue to be an Industrial Designer. I think it has lots of reasons. I can't say to be an interaction designer has totally changed my career path, because, in my personal previous perspective and working experience, Interaction design is a branch subject comes from Industrial design related field. It’s just a subject focus on a particular realm about the way how to interact with people and the experience when the user uses the products.I remember when I was studying in China as an industrial design undergraduate student from 2009-2010, I focused on 3C electronic product sand the transportation products. During that time, I think probably it was just my second-year study industrial design, I was interested in 3D Modeling, rendering, 2D sketching, hand sketching, and handmade woodcrafts, etc. I thought these are all about industrial design; I disliked design principle and any other theories of design. I thought the design is based on practicing not reading and writing. Well, thanks for that time, because the passionate of studying those design skills, I could get the opportunity to do the real project with my professor much earlier than other classmates. When I start to try to create, I found things was entirely different from what I thought before. I mean, when I worked with my professor and his team, the way that how to do a real design project for a company completely changed the way of thinking about design. Design skills are just a basic tools which help you to achieve your goals and it is also a little tiny element of the entire design processing. I mean, it is always easy to execute but hard to use the right way to think. But how to train the way when I think, I need to not only practicing, gaining experience from each project but also studying design theory knowledge. Therefore, I start to focus on the design principles, how to execute design from beginning to the end, from zero to one, I need to care about user experience, design period cycle, organize the entire system, framework, from front-end to back-end. That is my first-time self-change.