The Design of Future Things (25 page)

 

 

My books always owe a large debt to many people and institutions. During the several years of research on this book, I corresponded with many helpful colleagues and visited research laboratories across the United States, Asia, and Europe. This allowed me to experience firsthand much of the work discussed here, to drive in numerous automobile simulators, including several full-motion simulators, and to visit numerous experimental deployments of smart homes, ambient environments, and automated assistants for everyday living. I am very appreciative to everyone who assisted me. My apologies for the fact that I will probably fail to acknowledge everyone's contribution.

I start by thanking the several classes of students at Northwestern University who suffered through early versions of my material, offering their critiques in many different ways, but always
most helpfully. Ben Watson, now in the Computer Science Department at North Carolina State University, cotaught a graduate course with me titled “The Design of Intelligent Systems,” which had a dramatic impact on the material in the book. My colleague in design studies at Northwestern University, Ed Colgate of the Mechanical Engineering Department (and codirector with me of the Segal Design Institute), has been most helpful, as has Michael Peshkin, who codirects their research lab (see my discussion of their “Cobot” in
chapter 3
). Larry Birnbaum and Ken Forbus have contributed their expertise about things artificially intelligent, and my graduate student, assistant, and colleague Conrad Albrecht-Buehler has been a great help in the development of my ideas (and the running of my classes).

Michael Mozer, a colleague and former student now at the Computer Science Department of the University of Colorado, Boulder has graciously allowed me to poke gentle fun at his “smart home,” even though I knew it was a research project to study the potential capabilities of neural networks, not a suggestion for how future homes should be constructed.

My collaborators during the symposium “The Social Life of Machines,” presented by the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania on my behalf, included Judith Donath of the MIT Media Laboratory, Paul Feltovich of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), Rand Spiro of Michigan State University, and David Woods of Ohio State University. Beth Adelson of Rutgers did all the work behind the scenes, and Jeff Bradshaw (from IHMC) participated by e-mail. This led to a subsequent visit to IHMC in Pensacola, Florida, where I was graciously hosted by its director,
John Ford, along with Paul Feltovich and Jeff Bradshaw. The work there is wonderful to behold.

My work always benefits from the critiques of my long-time friend and collaborator Danny Bobrow of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Jonathan Grudin of Microsoft Research (Redmond, Washington), another long-time collaborator and friend, has provided a continuing stream of e-mails, thoughts, and deep, insightful discussions. Asaf Degani of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Ames Research Center spent time with me and Stuart Card (of PARC) discussing formal methods of assessing the role of automation in the cockpit, cruise ship, and automobile. Dagani's analysis of the grounding of the cruise ship
Royal Majesty
and his book,
Taming HAL
, are important contributions to our understanding of automation.

It is difficult to keep track of all the universities and research laboratories I have visited. I spend a lot of time in the Human-Computer Interactions laboratory at Stanford University with Terry Winograd and Scott Klemmer. In addition, there are Chukyo University in Toyota, Japan, where Naomi Miyake, Yoshio Miyake, and the university administration always provide a warm welcome; Akira Okamoto's Research Center on Educational Media at the Tsukuba College of Technology, Japan; Michiaki (Mike) Yasumura's laboratory at Keio University at Shonan Fujisawa, Japan (where the president of the university, Naoki Ohnuma, fed us lunch and provided my wife with valuable advice about hearing aids).

Stephen Gilbert was my host during my visit to Iowa State University, where Jim Oliver spent the entire day with me in his newly inaugurated Virtual Reality Applications Center. (Brett
Schnepf, an X-Box “evangelist” from Microsoft accompanied us and took the photographs of me inside that facility that appear in
chapter 7
.)

Kun-Pyo Lee at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejon was a gracious host during my visit to his Industrial Design Department (where he promptly made me a member of his external advisory board). Similarly, Pieter Jan Stappers, Charles van der Mast, and Paul Hekkert of the Delft University of Technology (TUD, in Delft, the Netherlands) hosted me on several different occasions. Pieter Jan Stappers has been a valuable colleague. David Keyson's work at TUD has been especially relevant to the work discussed here. Kees Over-beeke of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE, in Eindhoven, the Netherlands) has also been a frequent collaborator and host during my visits to Eindhoven. Jan and Marleen Vanthienen kindly guided my wife and me through many cities in Belgium and waited patiently in Bruges while I took photographs of horse-driven carriages and their drivers (see
Figure 3.2
). Jan was then my host during my visit to the University at Leuven. David Geerts from Leuven gave me the wonderful advertisement “Transaction refused” in
chapter 7
(see
Figure 7.2
) and helped me track down the permission required to reproduce it here.

Frank Flemisch, Anna Schieben, and Julian Schindler were my gracious hosts during my visit to Flemisch's laboratory, the Institut für Verkehrsführung und Fahr in Braunschweig, Germany, where we discussed at length his development of the “H-metaphor,” or horse metaphor (see
chapter 3
), and where I was able to drive his automobile simulator that implemented the
H-met-aphor's loose- and tight-rein modes of controlling the “intelligent” automobile.

Neville Stanton and Mark Young of Brunel University, Uxbridge, United Kingdom, provided me with a continual stream of stimulating articles about the role of attention in driving, especially underattention (discussed briefly in
chapter 4
). I promised them a visit, so this is a reminder to them that I haven't forgotten. I had several gracious hosts during my visit to the Microsoft Research facilities in Cambridge, United Kingdom, where I gave a talk at their “Intelligent Environments Symposium,” in particular Marco Combetto, Abi Sellen, and Richard Harper—and Bill Buxton, who for over three decades has continually and mysteriously appeared in the places I visit.

In the United States, I have visited far too many universities to remember which I visited for which book. Ed Hutchins, Jim Hollan, and David Kirsh from the Cognitive Science Department on the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) continually provide inspirational ideas and publications. Hal Pashler of UCSD's Psychology Department provided valuable discussions of the role of attention in driving. Bob Glushko, now at the University of California, Berkeley, was my gracious host during a visit and listened patiently and understandingly to my discussions. MIT provides a constant source of people for me to interact with, the relevant ones for this book being Tom Sheridan, Roz Picard, Ted Selker, and Missy Cummings.

Many people from the automobile industry have been especially helpful. I thank the staff at the Toyota InfoTechnology Center (ITC) for their assistance: Tadao Saito, Hiroshi Miyata, Tadao Mitsuda, and Hiroshi Igata from Tokyo, Japan, and
Norikazu (Jack) Endo, Akio Orii, and Roger Melen from Palo Alto, California. Venkatesh Prasad, Jeff Greenberg, and Louis Tijerina from the Ford Motor Company Research and Innovation Center provided ideas, discussions, readings, and a full-motion simulator. Mike Ippoliti of Volvo has been most helpful and provided introductions to Ford. The story that opens the book took place at the Nissan Motor Corporation's advanced planning and strategy facilities in Gardena, California, in a meeting organized by the Global Business Network.

Ryan Borroff, former editor of the magazine
Interior Motives
, convinced me to write a column for automobile designers and was my host during a visit to London.

Jo Ann Miller, my editor at Basic Books, kept her faith through more iterations of these chapters than either of us can remember. And, of course, my long-term literary agent, Sandy Dijkstra of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency in Del Mar, California, deserves much credit for her constant encouragement.

The people who suffer the most, and benefit the least, from the writing of a book are always an author's family, and this is no exception. Thank you!

Note: I have a research contract with Ford Motor Company through Northwestern University, and I am on the advisory board of Toyota ITC (Palo Alto). Microsoft and Nissan (through the Global Business Network) have been clients of mine via the Nielsen Norman Group. They have not screened the material in this book; nor are they responsible for its contents—which they may or may not agree with.

 

 

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3