Reading Response 8—The future lives with technology

If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

                                                                                       ----Norman, P227

The time has come to concentrate on making the world a Human-tech Revolution could have a profound impact on modern times. Technology that has a close affinity with human nature is capable of creating tremendous social changes, on a global scale. It could radically improve our lives and those of our children and grandchildren.

                                                                                        ----Vicente, P305

Finishing reading the last chapters of both Norman’s and Vicente’s book, I could not help imaging our future lives filled with emotional design and a Human-tech revolution. What will our lives look like? Perhaps, one day, all of the following imaginations will be turned into reality. We don’t need to be upset for the errors or accidents caused by the inconsiderate ill-designs, as human-tech make an optimization for human beings. We don’t need to worry about the traffic jams in a rush hour, as all of us drive our own air vehicles, something like the combination of a mini-couper and a helicopter. We don’t have to take time for boring chores, as our robot housekeepers are responsible for them without our reminders, so on and so forth.

You might tease me that the dream is too big to be true, but, can those people living in 1970s imagine the development of computer technology, such as internet, dramatically changes the world as we are currently experiencing? No matter which technology of industry that was talked about in Norman’s and Vicent’s book, it is the design matters. The purpose for any design or technology is to have better lives for human beings. We are all designers, every of us can make a difference for the world, not only those engineers who grasp advanced technology on software and hardware can design and produce objects, but we, as a ordinary custom, can make each ready-made object personalization and customization.

Certainly, as for the development of a certain technology and its application, to a large extent, it is the manufacturers, organizations, governments and a country to make the final decision. However, as citizens, we absolutely have rights to call for the well-design filled with consideration of human-tech, as “we may not have any control over the design of the many objects we purchase, we do control which we select and how, where, and when they are to be used (Norman, P224). ” In other words, our decisions have a great impact on the marketing, which greatly affect designer’s ideas and behaviours. In return, their designs fit us and benefit human beings.

We can try to do our best to make a difference for our future lives. Below is a video clip for the future lives in 2050. It visions nearly all the aspect of our future lives. That’s so cool. With well-designed technology, it is not just a dream!  

Reading Response 7—Emotional Machines

Intrigued by the title of the chapter--“Emotional machines”, I cannot help starting with the journey of imagination that what on earth was those machines with emotions that are only described for human-beings. Guided by some fancy ideas, I was led by these main questions explicitly demonstrated by Norman.

• Why do robots have to have emotions?
• What emotions will a robot need to have?
• How can robots show their emotions and then interactive with us?

According to Norman, machines, specifically Robots, should indeed both have and display emotions so that we human-beings can better interact with them. In addition, they can continuously deal with more complex and sophisticate situations and works when there is no assistance from people. Like human-beings, facial expressions and body motions are indispensable parts of robots to show their pleasure, anger, surprise, frustration, etc., although it is still a difficulty for nowadays technology to allow them to display full facial emotions. Interestingly, however, we have already had Eliza, Kismet, and Sony robot dogs, which are computer-driven machines or robots with certain emotions. They benefit us a lot and enrich our lives.   

And, another questions was also raised by Norman which need to be further explored and examined in the future research: How do robots detect human-beings’ emotions and how to determine the most appropriate way of responding? In other words, while we struggle to determine how to make machines respond appropriately to signs of emotions, people aren’t particularly good at it either, as it is so common for people to be insensitive to emotional states of others, even to misunderstand their own friends. Back to me, I sometimes misunderstood my friends and could not figure it out caused by culture issues. Therefore, it is a huge challenge to allow robots to respond us properly and perfect. But, I still dream big and I am definitely optimistic to the future development of science and technology.

Personally, Norman’s robots recall me of Wall-E, an adorable robot as the leading character in Disney movie “Wall-E” of 2008. He is dutiful, optimistic, compassionate and righteous. He not only has a feeling with a seedling plant, but falls in love with another female robot, which usually happened in human-beings. Obviously, the filmmaker applied an image of robot to represent human-beings as well as to express our dreams. From Wall-E, we saw ourselves. From this movie, I could also see that emotions make everything possible. With high-tech development, who can deny that there will be a real Wall-E with us in future?

I am not a fan of science fiction, but one day, I still wish I had my own robot, somewhat akin to man Friday. She could be a good housekeeper in my house, meanwhile, she could emotionally interact with me and provide me with assistance like a buddy. Frankly, I don’t like the look of Kismet at all, which is showed in Figure 6.6, p192. It is not cute and lovely, to some extent, a bit ugly. I prefer my robot looks like a fancy doll, at least looks like Wall-E—Oh, sorry, it is my own emotional interpretation.

                                                                                                                            

Reading Response 6--Management Matters

Designing an effective new organizational structure to enable an entire safety-critical industry to learn from experience, foresee and prevent accidents and prevent needless deaths was a huge challenge.

                                                      -------Vicente Chapter 7, P 200

Regarding technology design, before I read this chapter, in my mind, I had no very clear idea that “The design of technology and the management of technology aren’t two separate things (p 190). ” I did not realize that they correlate each other as Vicente elaborated in this chapter.

Enlightened by the true stories he showed to us, when I recalled my Olympic experience to respond Vicente’s opinion, what I could say and respond in my mind is Yes! Yes! And Yes! As a supervisor, I once worked at the Arrival and Departures Desk in the Olympic village during the Games time. Apart from supervising the daily issues running by this desk, one of my main responsibilities was to create daily operational reports for the direct manager. Even though there was no unexpected incident, I was still required to create the daily report as usual, including any suggestions, details of solved problems, to make sure information was shared smoothly and everything was on the right track. I indeed remembered how we encountered and solved an urgent issue that a sensitive delegation arriving in Beijing international airport at midnight without providing their final arrival information, so that there were no arranged vehicles by us to deliver them to the Olympic village, which made them detained in the airport for nearly two hours. Unfortunately, the chef of Mission was annoyed by it and complained it to their country’s Embassy in China. Although it was not concerned with the fatal accidents like medical errors or aviation failures mentioned by Vicente, it was something to do with the reputation of this kind of international event, as diplomacy is no small matter. This incident was absolutely reported in the daily report and was well-known widespread in the inner functional departments in Olympic village. “The goal is to find out what’s to blame, not who’s to blame (P 201). ” It did give us a lesson to pay attention to develop our plans with contingencies as well as provide us valuable experience from it. How helpful and useful the daily report is! And how great it is to make a reasonable and usable management design. We could not imagine how many of these similar incidents would occur again in the village if we did not share this lesson with all, and namely, we were not able to count how many of these similar or worse incidents were avoided by this important sharing.  

As Vicente claimed that all the well-tailored design might go down the drain if organizational considerations aren’t also dealt with effectively, organizational decisions, such as information flow, allocation of functions, reward structures and staffing decisions can have a significant impact, not just on a single individual or a single team of individuals, but on all of the individuals in an organization (P 227).

Designing an organizational structure that allows its members to learn from experience, that lays emphasis on the receiving and communication of information that would help prevent errors, is closer to being realized than ever before (P 222). Certainly, there is still a huge challenge to make a satisfying management design in different originations due to various concerns, such as marketing competition, budget, etc. Even the design is already made, implementation issue might lead it to the opposite direction which is out of our expectations. However, we still wish as Vicente wishes that “Tomorrow, like today, we will be human. The remedy is in changing systems of work. The remedy is in design. ” (p 220)