About Us

The Automation Playground applies a People-Centered Design Thinking approach, grounded in the theory of Distributed Cognition and employing speculative design ideation practices.

History

Our research group stemmed from an intense Design Lab project, after which our group of students wanted to keep engaged in this interdisciplinary area of research. The Automation Playground Research group was created as an opportunity to develop research and training modules, as well as teach research ethics.

We take the approach of participatory design where students are co-designing this space.

Our students are always craving more training and real-world experiences. At Automation Playground, we offer our research associates the opportunity to see the whole project from beginning to end so that they can actively participate and understand the research process.

Our Research Approach

Stakeholders in today’s shifting mobility and healthcare landscapes are trying to anticipate the future, but their over-simplified technology-centered questions lead to a misreading of both current and future mobility conditions. Our design approach, a unique combination of People-Centered Design (PCD) and the theory of Distributed Cognition with Pragmatic Speculative Design ideation practices, allows for the identification of design-critical questions.

People-Centered Design Research

A people-centered perspective, at its core, engages technology by examining how it fits into people’s daily lives, on their own terms – through their eyes and in their own voice. This perspective forces us to engage the impact of automation interventions in terms of the meaning people make of their own experience. These first person perspectives are collected and assembled into socio-ecological tiers – individuals, peers & family, neighborhoods, communities, etc. – as the specific socio-technical complex systems require.

Distributed Cognition

Specifically, the theory of Distributed Cognition, centers on embeddedness and embodiment (EE) of human experience in complex socio-technical systems. In our work as design researchers we leverage EE in identifying the right research questions, as well as in the methods we employ to address them. One method we use is visual diagramming at a basic human scale, Day-In-A-Life (DIAL), to help articulate the questions and develop insights into patterns of daily decision making and selection of mobility options.

The theory of Distributed Cognition (D-Cog) developed by Ed Hutchins (see Cognition in the Wild, 1995. MIT press) centers on

Speculative Design Ideation

These practices enable us to also view possible or preferable Futures – implications of broader shifts on mobility and other topics/issues.

What is People-Centered Design to us?

1. Engage with the messy world first through unique methodologies

2. Reframe the research question and challenge limiting assumptions – look at the perspective of the human and the system from the theory of distributed cognition

3. Self research – through pragmatic speculative design

4. Parse the world from a human centered perspective rather than tech centered one to see how the system fits into people’s daily lives

What We Do

Before intervention is implemented

How, in the real-world, do people accomplish the tasks without the added automation.

During intervention implementation

How, in the real-world, do people accomplish their tasks with the addition of the new system.

After intervention has been removed

How, in the real-world, do people accomplish their tasks now that the intervention has disappeared?

How We Do It

1. Collect Ethnographic Qualitative Data

Conduct observations through video and audio of people traveling or conducting their daily lives, in the real-world, before, during and after an intervention is deployed.

2. Auto Confrontation Interviews

Conduct observations through video and audio of people traveling or conducting their daily lives, in the real-world, before, during and after an intervention is deployed.

3. Speculative Design Methods

Speculative design explores near, far and distant futures through explorations of probable, possible and preferable futures and working backward from those preferable futures to how we can begin now.

Projects

Ford "The Contract"

Roles and responsibilities between drivers and autonomous systems across different driving situations and activities.

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Multiple Road-User Roles

Understanding how people having different modes of transportation share the road, using a fixed-base simulator and an eyetracker.

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Research Operations

Improving how senior researchers and students collect, manage, and retrieve research data for an optimized project workflow.

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UnBiased

No case study at this time.

Using Social Signal Processing to understand and detect implicit bias in physician-patient interactions in real-time.

Autonomous Shuttles

No case study at this time.

Smart Installation GIS-Based Mobility Map

No case study at this time.

Developing a multi-layered interactive Mobility Map for the MCAS Miramar Installation using the Geographical Information System, ArcGIS platform by Esri.

Funding and Support

Current research is funded by the Berkeley Institute for Transportation Studies (ITS), Ford Motor Company, the US Army Corps of Engineers, Engineering Research & Development Center (ERDC), the National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, and the Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWIC). Additional funding for previous projects was provided by Nissan, Hyundai Motor Company, the Toyota Motor Company, and Dexcom.