Reflections and Projections

The end of a semester calls for a reflection of the past 4 months—they flew by! For the class, “Human Machine System Design”, we have covered a wide array of topics, including:

• Automated Systems

• Task Analyses

• Signal Detection

• Information Theory

• The ‘Future Human’

• Big Data, AI, and ML

• Emotive Displays and Social Robotics

• GPS and GIS

• The Internet of Things

• Conversational Interfaces

To supplement these lectures and class discussions, we had various projects that allowed us to design systems and machines and apply previous weeks’ topics in the design process. These projects included designing:

• An automated shakshuka cook

• A ‘Future Human’ augmented reality contact lens for travellers

• An automated voting recommender system to help individuals make a decision on a ballot based on their personal values and beliefs

• A social robot to help children with autism establish a nighttime routine and sleep through the night

• An IoT system to understand the relationship between stress and activity levels in apartment common spaces

From all of these lectures, discussions, and projects, I thoroughly enjoyed having the freedom to apply our classroom learnings in the group projects. At times the projects felt very unstructured and open-ended, but this allowed us to be creative throughout our design process. I really enjoyed working in groups as well, because collectively, we were able to design systems much more complex and interesting than any one of us could have brainstormed alone. Having a group also allowed for interesting discussions on every decision made for our system design.

Overall, this class has further stressed the importance of human-centered design when creating a successful system that requires human interaction. In all designs, I have found that task analyses are always relevant and helpful; breaking things down into manageable components really helps me conceptualize where the system can aid the efficiency of any process.

Looking forwards, I plan to use my learnings from this course in all design processes—whether that's conducting task analyses, discussing the benefits of automation in system design, or considering the pros and cons of realism in the design of a social robot with an emotive display.