Maxims are true, until they are not

I was reading Business Week article analyzing the potential Microsoft+Yahoo merger and the article was talking about how common wisdom regarding the mega-mergers between TimeWarner+AOL was proven wrong with none of the billions in efficiencies and synergies materializing. It got me thinking about the maxims’ of business. The ones you often hear being bandied about by folks that are supposed to embody common wisdom. It’s also used when someone tries to sound smart but knows very little.

Here’s a common example.

“It’s best to be first to market”

Now think about how many times that doesn’t hold true. Examples from the iPod, VHS to the US Space program all disprove the maxim.

Which is why I’m glad that I across this great article today in Core77 where a similar designer maxim “Designers must draw” was challenged.

“The applicability of the statement, “Designers must draw,” becomes a little problematic in this light. Must they? The answer depends a lot on what comes to mind when you imagine a designer doing her job. Someone sitting at a table with a pile of markers and pencils, making marks on paper, constitutes an important but small fraction of the design process. The rest of it involves research, reviewing prototypes, writing briefs, driving CAD, talking to clients, and a hundred other things. There are plenty of designers–good ones–who haven’t picked up a marker in years.”

So while maxims might be convenient, don’t accept one at face value or risk misunderstanding what’s happening around you.

Here are links to other interesting articles on the subject

Top 5 business maxims that need to go

The problem with truisms

Future of Robotics

I’ve reposted an exapanded and slightly edited version of a recent short article I wrote for my school newsletter, The New Idiom

Future of Robotics

I’ve been fascinated by the robotics industry, and a workshop taught by Professor Sato has brought me a lot closer to understanding the this industry. The class focuses on understanding and developing a systemic approach to deploying social robotics in North America, targeted at specific industries such as health care, mobility and home support. The class has given me the opportunity to try to understand the evolving industry of robotics and its potential application to our everyday lives.

Elektro, World’s first robot, 1939

What are robots?
There is no universally accepted definition of what a robot is. The word comes from the Czech word “robota” for “forced labor” and was first used in a 1920s play [2].. Robots can of course conjure up images ranging anywhere from massive, world destroying machines to the lowly robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba which is currently in 3 million U.S households. American and Japanese experts both have different interpretations of the word, but I prefer the one cited by Joseph Engelberger, widely considered the father of Robots, who said “I can’t define a robot, but I know one when I see one”.

Why don’t we have robots doing our laundry already?

It is interesting to note the parallels in development between computation and robotics. Both computers and robots emerged in nascent stages fifty years ago, and in the past half century, computers went from calculating trajectories for naval shells to becoming the supercomputers of today. In comparison, robots have advanced relatively little; clearly, creating intelligent robots seems to be a more complicated problem. Early “roboticists”, however, felt differently and have been predicting for over a half century that robots at home, performing mundane tasks, would be just around the corner.

So why has it taken so long? It’s certainly not hard to create robots that can repeat tasks within a fixed area such as in an industrial manufacturing setting, a capability that has existed for the past 20 years or more. What is hard, however, is to create robots that can exist within a social context. Social robots depend on the ability to see, to walk, to hear and respond, without every specific environment having been programmed into the robot’s brains. It is these abilities that most humans take for granted that have proved the most challenging to mimic in robots.

iRobot Roomba 570.

Why should designers care about robots?
Much like the computer industry in its infancy, the development of the robotics industry has been led by researchers in universities trying to “situate the robot” in it’s environment. This means solving challenges such as refining robots’ ability to walk. recognize the environment, adapt to change, and understand the semantics of language. Researchers have recently, however, begun to commercialize their research and apply robotics to social contexts such as home care, healthcare, mobility, and search and rescue. Moving the development of robotics from the lab to the home provides a real environment to develop their abilities to situate themselves. It is here that designers can play a valuable role, for the ability to develop “user centered” applications of robotics will differentiate companies in this space.

Another challenge to the acceptance of social robots within households is due to cultural preconceptions. Unlike computers[P1] , which were integrated into society with few societal preconceptions, many societies have already been introduced to the idea of robots through popular literature and movies. These cultural influences have colored the reception that social robots will get when introduced to society. For example, the Japanese practically grew up with the notion of humanoid robots and have very different perceptions and preconceptions of robots than their European and North American counterparts. They are perfectly comfortable with the idea of humanoid and friendly robots. However, mention the word “robots” in North America and the inevitable reference to killer robots will emerge. Trying to observe and understand the cultural perceptions and preconceptions of social robots will therefore be crucial in successfully finding applications of robots within these societies.

Sonny, from the movie iRobot

What next?
The robotics industry, while in development for half a century, is still relatively in its infancy and faces a number of challenges in the years ahead. Besides the technological and cultural hurdles to overcome, questions remain unanswered regarding their economic and environmental impacts as well as the ethical issues of human and robot interaction. What is obvious is that robots, whatever form they take, will increasingly play a role in societies around the world and that the ecosystem of services and capabilities will offer increasing opportunities for designers in the years to come.

Interesting Research in Robotics

Robotics is an interdisciplinary field that combines disciplines such as artificial intelligence, biomimicry, computation and cognition, nanotechnology, biology & bionics and many more. Here are some examples of interesting cross-discipline research currently ongoing in robotics:Bionics: The discipline of studying nature to learn principles and apply them to develop more efficient mechanical machines which has lead to advances in gripping technology through the study of geckos.
Researcher: Ronald Fearing – Millirobots
http://lis.epfl.ch/resources/podcast/2007/10/ronald-fearing-millirobots.html

Bioethics: Studying the eventual legal implications of social robotics within human societies. The idea of robotics laws was made popular through Asimov’s three laws of robotics but there have been recent attempt to develop formal laws for social robots. [6]
Researcher: Gianmarco Veruggio – http://robots.net/article/2437.html

Self replications / Self-evolution: Instead of programming how robots should walk, etc – provide robots with the ability to self-generate a model of their behavior in order to allow robots to evolve walking motions which could allow them to continue to operate when they are damaged.
Researchers: Hod Lipson and Josh Bongard – http://lis.epfl.ch/resources/podcast/2006/12/josh-bongard-and-hod-lipson-resilient.html

Behavioral Robotics: For over three decades, the approach to developing social robots was to assume that they had to use sensors to create an accurate representation of the world, and to plan carefully, their navigation and interaction in the world. However, this approach would fall apart if the carefully constructed model was changed before the robot could interact with it. Rodney A. Brooks, head of MIT’s robotics lab and current CTO and co-founder of iRobot studied the behavior of insects and realized that they were able to do some amazing tasks with a very limited neural and cognitive capability. Using these insects as an inspiration, he developed the “subsumption behavior” model of robotics which layers basic behaviors onto each other and which allows robots to more accurately respond to a changing environment.
Researcher: Rodney A. Brooks – http://lis.epfl.ch/resources/podcast/2007/04/rodney-brooks-past-and-future-of.html

There are many more areas of research that are currently underway in robotics. Interviews with researchers in these areas can be found at: http://lis.epfl.ch/index.html?content=resources/podcast/

 

By Sriram Thodla

References
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot
3. Flesh and Machines by Rodney Brooks.
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsumption_architecture
5. http://lis.epfl.ch/resources/podcast/
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
7. http://robots.net/article/2437.html

Cross cultural vs culturally specific

I saw this headline this morning and first scratched my head.

MWC 2008: Spice Movie Phone has a built-in optical disc drive

The question that everyone seemed to ask was why UMD? My guess, probably cause it was cheaper and easier than to license Sony’s proprietary UMD format, not to mention that UMD’s (and therefore this phone’s) future would be held hostage to Sony’s whim. What was more interesting than the question of why UMD was the question that none of the commentary picked up on.

It’s really unlikely that this Movie Phone from the Indian cellphone maker Spice would make it anywhere besides India, but it’s an amazing phone because of what it’s got on the back: an optical drive“

I’m currently in the cultural human factors class taught by Judith Gregory at the Institute of design. This class provides tools and frameworks to allow designers to develop culturally aware products. A comment like the one above shrieks of cultural bias and technological adoration, assuming that since the west has moved on to SD, microSD and nanoSD (just kidding), that somehow a phone such as this would never work.

Rather than worry about the UMD aspect of this phone, my question would be how well this phone would sell in markets that might share similar characteristics to India (a large domestic film industry, manufacturing infrastructure. a large upcoming middle class and deep mobile penetration).

Team work over time

I had written a note to myself to write about the idea of decision making over time – specifically jotting down “What happens when the team that seemed functional till now, suddenly devolves into a morass?”. This little note marinated for over a month till I discovered it, neatly tucked away in the drafts section of wordpress.

This thought was triggered during a class on decision making taught by Jeremy Alexis. At the Institute of Design, there’s a lot of emphasis on teamwork and rightly so. Working together in three to four teams during a semester represents a challenge all in itself and while it can be frustrating at times, I consider it practice for the future. One aspect of team work that I found interesting was the idea of having guiding rules and key words which would allow the group to forge ahead, even when all members might not agree on a specific point.

These rules are usually agreed upon at the start and hopefully relied upon throughout the course of group work. This might be true in some cases but in my experience, when team members are acquaintances, these guidelines are rarely stated and agreed upon. Instead, the group members assumed implicitly that everyone is on the same page and respects the same rules. This assumption can lead to surprising conflict much later in the project when you realize that the members have very different expectations from the project than you do, and behave therefore very differently.

So what do you do when you find that an otherwise functioning group is suddenly breaking down? My experience has been varied. With groups where there’s mutual trust and friendship, it’s been immensely helpful to “clear the air” – that is to sit down and state explicitly, each member’s expectations which makes it far easier to isolate a point of contention. In other groups, it has worked less effectively,

So how do you all cope when groups you are in, suddenly don’t work well anymore?