All BEST Lab seminars will be in 230 Hesse Hall, unless otherwise noted. Lunch served, if at noon or 1:00 pm using this sign-up sheet: https://docs.google.com/a/berkeley.edu/spreadsheet
Tuesday, May 21, 2:00 pm BEST talk: User-centric and model predictive smart lighting retrofit system
This is a practice talk for the national competiton called MaxTech and Beyond 2013. We are the only UC Berkeley team in the competition. Abstract: Wireless sensor network enabled intelligent lighting system that optimize indoor lighting for individual user preference and energy savings was demonstrated by a former PhD student of BEST Lab (Yao-Jung Wen) and is currently a well recognized technology. However, the current cost of wireless sensor platforms for intelligent lighting systems is beyond the affordability of most small and medium commercial and residential buildings, that has limited the market penetration of these systems. The goal of our project is to widen the adoption of intelligent lighting systems by reducing the cost of such wireless sensor network platforms by 50% through guided minimal sensor deployment and by leveraging true plug and play nature of these platforms. The guided minimal sensor deployment algorithm is used to replace actual sensing by piece-wise linear regression and Gaussian process models of indoor light distribution which we refer to as virtual sensor models.
Tuesday, May 14, noon, BiD talk: Revisiting Distributed Collaboration around Physical Representations: Digital Fabrication and Rubik's Cubes
BEST Labber Lora Oehlberg is currently a Post-Doctoral researcher working with Wendy Mackay in the in|situ research group at INRIA Saclay. She will discuss her current research focus (see below) as well as general reflections on conducting research in France.
Abstract: Through digital fabrication, designers and makers can rapidly create physical representations of their digital designs. When designers in remote locations collaborate with one another, they can not only discuss digital design representations, but also ground their conversation in locally-fabricated physical representations of their designs. What happens to collaboration when experts are able to create a local copy of the physical object under discussion? Does the experts' access to a local physical copy of the design help or hinder their ability to communicate? We conducted a study of pairs of expert and novice Rubik's cube solvers to look at how task performance and novice attention is affected by the remote expert's access to a physical representation. We also discuss planned sessions with expert-novice pairs of distributed digital fabricators.
Friday, May 10, 2:30-4:00 pm: BiD talk: Balancing Design and Technology to Tackle Global Grand Challenges
Abstract: There are many urgent problems facing the planet: a degrading environment, a healthcare system in crisis, and educational systems that are failing to produce creative, innovative thinkers to solven tomorrow’s problems. Technology influences behavior, and I believe when we balance it with revolutionary design, we can reduce a family’s energy and water use by 50%, double most people’s daily physical activity, and educate any child anywhere in the world to a level of proficiency on par with the planet’s best students. My research program tackles these grand challenges by using a new model of interdisciplinary research that takes a long view and encourages risk-taking and creativity. I will illustrate how we are addressing these grand challenges in our research by building systems that balance innovative user interfaces with novel activity inference technology. These systems have helped individuals stay fit, led families to be more sustainable in their everyday lives, and supported learners in acquiring second languages. I will also introduce the World Lab, a cross cultural institute that embodies my balanced approach to attack the world’s biggest problems today, while preparing the technology and design leaders of tomorrow.
Bio: James Landay is the Short-Dooley Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, specializing in human-computer interaction. He is the founder and co-director of the World Lab, a joint research and educational effort with Tsinghua University in Beijing. Prof. Landay is also the co-founder of the dub group at the University of Washington. From 2003 through 2006 he was also the Laboratory Director of Intel Labs Seattle, a university affiliated research lab exploring ubiquitous computing. His current research interests include Technology to Support Behavior Change, Demonstrational Interfaces, Mobile & Ubiquitous Computing, and User Interface Design Tools. He spent his 2009-2011 sabbatical at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, where he was also a Visiting Professor in the Computer Science Department of Tsinghua University. Landay received his BS in EECS from UC Berkeley in 1990 and MS and PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1993 and 1996, respectively. His PhD dissertation was the first to demonstrate the use of sketching in user interface design tools. He was also the chief scientist and co-founder of NetRaker. In 1997 he joined the faculty in EECS at UC Berkeley, leaving as an Associate Professor in 2003. He was named to the ACM SIGCHI Academy in 2011. He currently serves on the NSF CISE Advisory Committee. More information can be found at https://www.cs.washington.edu/people/faculty/landay
Friday, May 10, 1-2:00 pm: Bud Peters and Kevin Tee Give Talks on Design Informatics, BEST Lab
Speaker: Bud Peters
Title: Case-based Design Method Recommendation Systems
Abstract: We present a tool for designers that takes information about design problems and recommends design methods for solving them. Using data collected from IDEO's HCDConnect project, we explore the most commonly used design methods and segment them by location and focus area. A statistical model is trained for predicting method relevance for novel design problems. Using a collaborative filtering algorithm that optimizes using stochastic gradient descent, the model achieves high levels of accuracy when compared against human recommendation benchmarks.
Speaker: Kevin Tee
Title: Network Science and Analysis in Collaborative Design Challenges
Abstract: The recent emergence of decentralized design challenges has ushered in new communities where users develop and collaborate on solutions to various design problems. This research focuses on understanding the relationship between users in these distributed networks, how they communicate and interact, and ultimately what distinguishes a good design from a great design within these communities. To investigate this problem, we analyze the network structure of these challenges in two realms: how users interact, and how concepts are built upon existing ideas. We identify the crucial elements for each user that ultimately measure how active they are in the community as well as for a single challenge. We find that the structure of both networks across challenges share a similar structure - a few nodes with large degree centrality and a large number of nodes with a small degree centrality on the periphery of the network. Applications of this work include creating methodologies to organize large groups in a decentralized setting to produce high quality designs and spur open innovation.
Friday, May 10, 11:00 am: Co-Designing Sustainable Communities: The Identification and Incorporation of Social Performance Metrics in Native American Sustainable Housing and Renewable Energy System
Ryan Shelby will give his dissertation talk in the 4th floor conference room of Sutardja Dai Hall (room 450, knock to get into locked area).
Committee Chair: Prof. Alice Agogino (ME)
Inside Members: Prof. Alastair T Iles (MCESD) and Prof. Lisa Pruitt (ME)
Outside Member: Prof. Daniel M Kammen (CE)
Abstract: This dissertation is a case study of a design research project with the Pinoleville Pomo Nation (PPN), a federal recognized, self-governing Native American tribe located near Ukiah, California, to determine their framework for sustainability framework, to identify their needs as it relates to their sustainability framework, and to co-design housing and renewable energy power systems to meet their needs.
The co-design methodological framework presented in this dissertation represents a discourse contribution in the areas of eliciting end user needs/metrics, situating sustainability knowledge bases, the role of citizens in the design of engineering systems, and community-based design approaches for the development of sustainable communities. This dissertation operationalizes the identification of a local sustainability framework(s), the identification of needs for sustainability, the identification of social performance metrics for sustainability, and the co-design of solutions to meet local sustainability framework (s) within the aforementioned discourse areas.
Friday, May 3, 2:30 pm in Berkeley Institute of Design (354 Hearst Mining): TinyTeRP: A Tiny Terrestrial Robotic Platform with Modular Sensing, Andrew Sabelhaus
The TinyTeRP is a small, low-cost, modular robotics platform used to study robot sensing and control in large numbers of miniature robots. A fully assembled TinyTeRP costs approximately $50, is 1.7 x 1.8 x 2 cm^3, and can move at speeds up to 50 cm/s. The robot is designed around a wheeled platform onto which different circuit boards can be stacked providing hardware modularity. The base module integrates a microcontroller with an 802.15.4 radio used for both sensing and communication between robots. An inertial sensing module used to improve single robot control is provided as an example of an additional sensing board. A simple 'rendezvous' algorithm using received signal strength indicator (RSSI) data from the radio illustrates a distributed control algorithm with the TinyTeRP.
Friday, May 3 1 pm in BEST Lab: Decoding as a Scaffold for Computational Thinking, Omooju Miller
Friday, April 26 1 pm in the Cal Design Lab: Workshop on Business Models
This design workshop on business models will be run by two Cal Alumni:
- Gabe Cohn prides himself in creating elegant solutions to complex problems, and mixing creativity with empirical data to produce results that exceed his customers' expectations. He launched Empirical Design, an engineering services firm geared toward assisting technology companies in the Bay Area to bring new products to market. Prior to this venture, Gabe worked as a product design engineer with Argyle Design in Berkeley, a consultancy specializing in commercial and consumer electronics.
- Nicole Ballin considers herself a social entrepreneur on training wheels. She started a sustainability venture called Refill Revolution and was largely considered a failure by Nicole and her co-founders when the venture failed to raise funding before the team graduated in 2010. Much to everyone's surprise, Refill was given a second lease on life when it was acquired by True2o in 2012. After graduation Nicole joined the founding team of UpEnergy, a social enterprise that distributes clean energy appliances in the developing world. UpEnergy now supports a team of 20 employees and has sold over 20,000 cookstoves in Uganda. Nicole is a 2013 Unreasonable Institute Fellow and founder of the Last Mile Distribution Bay Area group.
Friday, April 26 noon: TinyTeRP: A Tiny Terrestrial Robotic Platform with Modular Sensing by Andrew Sabelhaus
The TinyTeRP is a small, low-cost, modular robotics platform used to study robot sensing and control in large numbers of miniature robots. A fully assembled TinyTeRP costs approximately $50, is 1.7 x 1.8 x 2 cm^3, and can move at speeds up to 50 cm/s. The robot is designed around a wheeled platform onto which different circuit boards can be stacked providing hardware modularity. The base module integrates a microcontroller with an 802.15.4 radio used for both sensing and communication between robots. An inertial sensing module used to improve single robot control is provided as an example of an additional sensing board. A simple 'rendezvous' algorithm using received signal strength indicator (RSSI) data from the radio illustrates a distributed control algorithm with the TinyTeRP.
Friday, April 19 noon: Sustainability at a National Lab, John Elliott, LBNL
This is a CITRIS i4Energy talk to be held in 250 Sutardja Dai Hall.
Friday, April 12 noon: Yoon Jeong Jung, Design of a Low Profile Lower Extremity Exoskeleton
Abstract. Walking at least 30 minutes a day is recommended by doctors for long-term positive health effects and studies have proven that too much sitting is risky even for those who exercise regularly1-2. However, more than a quarter million people in the United States alone become helpless every year, being paralyzed due to spinal cord injuries3. Once they lose their ability to walk and stand upright, they have to rely on wheelchairs. Due to the nature of the human body, prolonged sitting in a wheelchair can cause many kinds of secondary injuries. Moreover, the patient’s reduced mobility often brings negative effects to their social life4. The goal of this study is to develop a new technology that enables paralyzed patients to get out of the wheelchair, stand upright, walk, and to achieve independence in their daily lives. Here, I discuss the design of the lower limb exoskeleton device, and the interactions among the designer, users, and the device. This device is designed to have as low a profile as possible to increase usability and user’s acceptance. The device has been tested by three paraplegic test pilots with different levels of injuries, and evaluated to be an effective method for rehabilitation. The device also has shown to increase one's mobility as the user gets accustomed to it. It should also be noted that this technology has the potential to help with mobility of non-injured users, such as elderly people, which is a growing population in this aging society. Therefore, for future studies, it will be necessary to further optimize the exoskeleton device to meet the needs of a diverse group of potential users and test under various situations in order to maximize the impact of this beneficial technology.
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One new album (A Melody So Sweet). One Bicycle. One banjo. One Month. 1000 miles. Erin Inglish received her BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley and has just produced a new CD and Kickstarter venture. JOIN US in celebration of Earth Month 2013 by joining us for Erin Inglish's Earth*BikeBanjo 2013 Tour & Album Release! Erin is touring - with her banjo - by bicycle along the coast of California almost 1000 miles from Arcata down to San Diego over the entire month of April, playing scheduled gigs in the evenings and visiting/partnering with schools, local organizations, farms, bike coalitions, etc. during the days to talk about sustainability and share music. Join her as she rides the Earth * Bike * Banjo - Earth Month Tour 2013. More on her blog (www.erininglish.com/Blog) or on on Facebook (www.facebook.com/ErinInglishMusic)! Erin will also be playing a full concernt later in the evening as a benefit for the UCB student chapter of Engineers for a Sustainable World: 6:00 pm in 240 Bechtel.
Abstract: There is a fundamental connection between understanding our daily human experience and understanding how we move. Our brains exist to coordinate motion, so if we wish to understand how we think, feel, and relate to others, we should start by understanding how we move. The control of human and robotic motion is intimately tied to the structure that is being moved, and emerging theories of vertebrate physiology are overturning the traditional bone-centric model of the body in favor of a fascia-centric model where the primary load paths are in the continuous tension network of the soft-tissue. Tensegrity structures distribute forces globally through a continuous tension network while their compression elements do not touch or pass compressive loads to each other. They have many physical properties, such as high strength to weight and multi-path force distribution, which make them ideally suited for robust motion through dynamic natural settings, yet pose new challenges for controls.This talk will discuss the unique properties of tensegrity structures and how they appear to be a foundational part of our bodies and how we move. Challenges in controlling tensegrities will be discussed, including thoughts on how they may be especially appropriate for neurologically inspired Central Pattern Generator (CPG) based oscillatory control networks, enabling a natural coupling from controller to structure to environment. The talk will include an overview of current research into dynamic tensegrity structures, both physical robots and physics based simulations, focusing on robust mobility. A map for the seminar room is at: http://bds.berkeley.edu/sites/bds.berkeley.edu/files/images/vlsb/2ndbw.gif
Bio: Vytas SunSpiral is a Senior Robotics Researcher in the Intelligent Robotics Group within the Intelligent Systems Division at NASA Ames Research Center. He is currently leading efforts within the group to develop new biologically inspired approaches to robotic systems which interact safely with humans and the environment. Recently, Vytas initiated efforts at Ames to develop the next generation Free Flying Robots for crew assistance and ground control telepresence to the International Space Station. Vytas also led development and field-testing of the Footfall Planning Software, which enables operators to plan walking sequences over complex terrain for the ATHLETE family of six-legged lunar robots. Vytas has been developing new robotic technologies and leading start-ups since he graduated from Stanford University in 1998. Most recently he took at 1.5-year break from NASA to be the CTO of Apisphere Inc, a Berkeley based startup that built a cloud-based system for delivering location triggered services to mobile devices. His first start-up in 1998 was Mobot Inc., which built fully autonomous robotic tour guides for museums – some of the first publicly deployed social robots to autonomously interact with the public. In parallel with his career in Robotics Research, Vytas has been a life-long student of human motion in many forms, including yoga, dance, martial arts, and (consequently) many forms of physical therapy and emerging ideas in fascia-centric physiology.
Friday, April 5, 1-2:00 pm: Erin Inglish will give perform and give advice on sustainability and kickstarter, 494 Wurster Cal Design Lab
Erin is a former Sustainable Product Design student at UC Berkeley and an honorary BEST Labber! Please join us for her Friday workhop.
Wednesday, April 3, noon pm: NSTAR [INertial STorage And Recovery] System, Daniel Talancon
Daniel Talancon: The INSTAR [INertial STorage And Recovery] System: A flywheel energy storage system for improved hybrid and electric vehicle fuel efficiency. The INSTAR system is a high-power, cost-effective, flywheel energy storage system (FESS) with immediate energy capture and reuse applications in improved electric and hybrid-electric vehicle regenerative braking capabilities. Regenerative braking in hybrid and fully-electric vehicles is an emergent technology that has successfully increased vehicle fuel economy by utilizing the bi-directional energy flow capability of electric motors to capture and reuse the vehicle’s kinetic energy normally dissipated during braking. However, regenerative braking has been hampered by current chemical battery technology; only 40% of the available braking energy is captured and reused, limited by the relatively poor charge rate of popular battery technologies, including lithium-ion. Excess energy the batteries cannot accept is still simply lost. Flywheels are mechanical batteries not limited by the cell chemistry kinetics of current battery technology and can accept energy at a substantially higher rate of power flow. This superior power rating allows the flywheel energy storage system to capture much more of the available braking energy generated during the rapid and repeated accelerations of typical urban driving. Coupled with a brushless DC (BLDC) motor, the INSTAR system efficiently stores and reuses the captured flywheel energy by either powering the electric drive motors for vehicle acceleration or by charging the chemical batteries at an optimized rate for extended vehicle range. This innovative power management scheme requires only short storage periods, the key to a cost-effective, reliable system design. Compared to the regenerative braking systems on PEVs and HEVs today, the addition of the INSTAR flywheel energy storage system (FESS) will allow for 50% more braking energy to be both captured and reused at minimal added cost, extending total vehicle range by 10-15%.
Friday, March 22, 1:00 pm: Liver Fluke Infection and Fish Consumption in Khon Kaen, Thailand: A Case Study on Negotiating the Middle Ground between Eastern & Western Medicine, Sara Samiphak
This practice qualifying exam with SESAME student Sara Samiphak will cover:
- The Fundamentals of Opisthorchis viverrini's Life Cycle and Its Transmission to Humans
- Theories in Health Research and Behavioral Decision Making
- Sociocultural Perspective on Science Education
Wednesday 20 March, 5-6pm: Applications of Machine Learning to Art and Design, Michael Fink, Google Israel, 254 Sutardja Dai Hall
In this talk at the Berkeley Institute of Design, Michael Fink will presents several applications of machine learning to various fields of design in an attempt to challenge the machine-learning community to expand towards non-traditional domains. Through eleven investigations in architecture, psychology, social media, graphical design, industrial design and political art, he will show that machine learning can evolve to become a powerful tool in augmenting artistic statements and enhancing product usability and personalization. He will also describe the new Bezalel Center for Design and Technology at the Jerusalem Historical Leper Colony.
Michael Fink’s work bridges media research, machine learning and cognitive science. His PhD research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem focused on large scale object recognition in humans and machines (generating publications ranging from machine learning, computer vision and artificial intelligence to cognitive science, justice and economics). In mid 2005, Michael joined Google Research where he started the “Mass Personalization” effort. Later in 2007, Michael conceived and built YouTube's Interactive Video Annotations System. In 2009 Michael started leading Google's data visualization team and in 2012 joined Google Search, where he's responsible for data sourcing via webmaster relations. Recently, Michael originated a new program integrating computer science in the Hebrew University and design studies in the Bezalel Academy. He also teaches two of the core courses in the program: "Visualization & Sonification" and "Machine-Learning-for-Interactive-Products".
Friday, March 15, noon: Precipitation Effects in Ion Implanted Aluminum Nitride, Fatima Alleyne
One of the more attractive sources of green energy has roots in the popular recycling theme of other green technologies, now known as "energy scavenging." In its most promising conformation, energy scavenging converts cyclic mechanical vibrations in the environment or random mechanical pressure pulses, caused by sources ranging from operating machinery to human footfalls, into electrical energy via piezoelectric transducers. Commercial piezoelectrics have evolved to favor lead zirconate titanate (PZT) for its combination of superior properties; these materials, however, do not meet the criteria for “green” nanotechnology due to potential health implications. Fortunately, the search for alternative piezoelectrics has been underway for several years, generating renewed interest in silica (SiO2) and more recently aluminum nitride (AlN), the object of the present study. Working on the hypothesis that buried conducting layers can both mitigate delamination problems and generate sufficient electric fields to engage the operation of resonator devices, we have undertaken a study of silver (Ag) ion implantation to experimentally assess their feasibility in AlN devices. The ion-implanted sample is subjected to a thermal treatment, encouraging diffusion-assisted phase transformations. The objective of this study is to understand these phase transformations with the intent to ultimately control the electrical operation of AlN piezoelectric resonators in energy scavenging applications. Data reveals that computer simulation models provide reliable predictions of silver dose and depth while microscopic analysis reveals the fate of the ion implanted Ag. Sputtered AlN films are also found to grow epitaxially in a columnar morphology with acceptable crystalline quality of the epilayer. It is concluded that the Ag implanted region does indeed have potential as a buried contact layer for piezoelectric based
MEMS devices.
March 8 Friday noon: i4Energy Seminar Sustainable Community Economic Development, Hunter Lovins, Sutardja Dai Hall (CITRIS)
Abstract: Energy is key to effective community economic development. From energy efficiency as the foundation, keeping money at home, to renewable energy generating profits for German towns to entrepreneurs like Mosaic generating jobs and prosperity, clean energy will be the key to revitalizing our economies. Hunter Lovins will review the basic principles of effective local economic development, describe inspiring examples from around the world and present tools for building sustainable local economies here at home. Webcast by CITRIS: http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/citris.html?event_ID=63548&date=2013-03-08&filter=Secondary%20Event%20Type&filtersel=
L. Hunter Lovins is President and founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions (NCS). NCS educates senior decision-makers in business, government and civil society to restore and enhance the natural and human capital while increasing prosperity and quality of life. In partnership with leading thinkers and Implementers, NCS creates innovative, practical tools and strategies to enable companies, communities, and countries to become more sustainable. Trained as a sociologist and lawyer (JD), Hunter is also currently a professor of sustainable business management at Bainbridge Graduate Institute, Bard College, and Denver University; and the chief insurgent of the madrone project. Recipient of such honors as the Right Livelihood Award, Lindbergh Award and Leadership in Business, she was named Time Magazine 2000 Hero of the Planet and in 2009 Newsweek dubbed her a “Green Business Icon.” She has co-authored nine books and hundreds of papers, including the 1999 book, Natural Capitalism, 2006 e-book, Climate Protection Manual for Cities, and the 2009 Transforming Industry in Asia. She has served on the boards of governments, non- and for profit companies.
March 6, Wednesday, noon, followed by reception (noon-2:00 pm), Hunter Lovins, Blum Center for Developing Economies.
Regents Lecture: Building a New Development Paradigm: Happiness, Economics & Sustainability: Global warming, rising inequality, economic instability....What if you could transform the dominant economic paradigm to solve all these crises and drive enhanced prosperity and human well being? This is the challenge put to an International Expert Working Group convened by the King and Prime Minister of Bhutan to build a New Development Paradigm. Hunter Lovins, Co-editor of the Sustainable Economy section of the IEWG, will deliver the 2012 Regents lecture on the opportunities and pitfalls of constructing a replacement for the UN's Millennium Development Goals.
Youtube video of her talk at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QbVABaQhZc
Friday, March 1, noon-2:00 pm: Double Decker with Jason Trager and Sohyeong Kim
Jason Trager: Bounding Mass Consumption using lessons learned from Mass Production. Buildings use 40% of the energy that the United States uses, and are a significant contributor to global warming in the form of CO2emissions. In recent years, research has begun to look at the methodology for revamping individual building’s software such that these buildings operate more efficiently. This procedure, henceforth known as “Software Retrofit” is an intelligent way to save energy in buildings, as their consumption is highly dependent on the software that runs them. This talk will begin to explore the hypothesis that we can achieve statistically driven energy savings in building by applying manufacturing principles to the problem of software retrofit. The design framework proposed will be discussed in the context of some specific technological examples.
Sohyeong Kim: Open Innovation Ecosystem: Case Study of California Cuisine Ecosystem. The concept of Open Innovation has been highly popularized both in academia and industry for the last ten years. Various industries and corporations have been studied from high tech to service sectors. However, the ecosystem that practices open innovation collectively rarely has been reported in academic field. In particular, little research exists on how a business ecosystem has been generated, how it adopts open innovation in its business practice, and what makes an ecosystem sustained over time. My research demonstrates how one ecosystem started its business journey and how it practiced an open innovation within its community. In order to do so, I closely observed and participated in understanding California Cuisine ecosystem to collect data. I employ a mixed research method to understand this ecosystem from quantitative to qualitative methodology. The research findings indicate that (1) knowledge spillover was a conduit to expand and grow its ecosystem and (2) co-creation of product and service with ecosystem participants contributed its innovation collectively, and (3) social innovation was one of key factors to sustain and bond the participants within its ecosystem for several decades. These results reinforce that an open innovation practice is one of the most important factors on growth and expansion of business ecosystems. The research outcomes suggest that business practitioners would consider open innovation approaches when they design a business ecosystem and maintain it. These results additionally indicates that participants of a business ecosystem get stayed because of social innovation aspects, therefore it is very important to consider a role of social innovation in an open innovation ecosystem.
Friday, Feb. 22, 2013 at 1:00 pm: Exploring Decision-Making Methods For Sustainable Design in Commercial Buildings
Paz Arroyo will give a practice quals on her research. Abstract: Stakeholders in the AEC industry need to select a decision-making method for effectively incorporate sustainability in the problem of choosing an alternative in commercial building design. As Jim Suhr states “Among the most important of all the decisions the world's people will ever make are their decisions about how to make decisions”. This research shows that the distinctions between methods matter; we will compare some of them including Choosing By Advantages (CBA) and Value-Based methods for choosing a sustainable alternative in commercial building design.
Friday, Feb. 15, 2013 at 1:00 pm: Case for Diversity
Omoju Miller will talk about her experience conulting at the White House.
Friday, Feb. 8, A Balloon-Borne Platform for Measuring Vertically Resolved Concentrations of Black Carbon in the Troposphere, Danny Wilson
Sunlight-absorbing black carbon (BC) particles emitted during combustion of fossil and biomass fuels contribute to climate change. Modeling studies agree that the climate impact of BC depends on its vertical distribution in the atmosphere. This project is developing a balloon-borne platform for the routine vertical profiling of aerosols that aircraft-based platforms cannot perform because they are too costly. Our current platform includes an improved micro-Aethalometer and a miniaturized optical particle counter integrated with a data acquisition and tracking system, altogether weighing less than six pounds. At this weight, the payload is unrestricted by the Federal Aviation Administration. Compared to its predecessor, the improved micro-Aethalometer has increased sample flow rate, inlet humidity control, and improved firmware, all of which increase stability and sensitivity for high altitude operation. In addition to aerosol data, temperature, pressure, humidity and location are recorded. At 12 km, the payload is released from the balloon, a parachute deploys, and the payload descends gently back to the Earth’s surface. Transceivers incorporated into the instrument package transmit the location of the payload to a ground operator’s laptop throughout the flight allowing the payload to be recovered after each mission. This presentation will feature a description of the technology and several test flights in California. See recent BEST Lab news and videos of recent experiments. Also see recent article in the LBNL News.
Monday, Oct. 29, 3:45: Optimization in Power Plant Engineering
The BEST Lab will be hosting an informal talk by former BEST Lab visiting scholar Masao Arakawa with abstract below.
In this talk, I would like to explain on how industrial people accept optimization in power plant engineering. We have done two different themes. Which are the problem of start-up of power plants and layout problem of buildings in power plants. In Japan, electric companies are divided severely, so that all power plants can run as scheduled. So that there are no needs to add start up scheduling at all. However, especially in mid-Asian countries, they are selling electricity around the nations, and start-up scheduling becomes quite important. And the managers in each power plant must decide their schedule in about 15 minutes. However, it took about two hours to carry out one simulation. Thus, it seemed that they do not have any chance to optimize scheduling. To overcome this problem, we have introduced meta-modeling by using RBF networks. And we have made approximate-multi-objective optimization. As a results, we have achieved the results which are quite similar to the experts and even more. For the layout problem, which is known as one of the most difficult one for mathematical programming. In this problem, we have introduced rule-based placement of each building. Then the problem turns placement problem to scheduling problem together of choice of rules for each building. With this step, we can most likely overcome the problem breaking constraints and we can search quasi-optimum results. We add PSO after this step and tried to find true optimum results. As a result, we have achieved the better solution than experts who has more than 15 years of experience.
Influencing Design Through the Effective Communication of Design Research
Celeste Roschuni
Ph.D. Candidate
Friday, July 27, 2012
2:00 P.M.
6153 Etcheverry Hall
(Vogt Room)
Abstract: Human-centered design has emerged as an important strategy in product and service design and development over the past forty years, as it has become recognized that understanding user needs is critical to product success.
That understanding typically emerges through user research: the systematic study of the attitudes, behaviors, and desires of potential users. The impact of user research depends on its visibility and credibility to decision-makers. However, there are challenges to this visibility and credibility when there are organizational separations between those conducting the research and those involved in the product development. A specific team or company may conduct user research, and then pass what they learn to another team of industrial designers or engineers. Since the second team often neither conducts research activities nor participates in data analysis, they may not necessarily be aware of the research nor feel responsible to it. For that reason, the impact of user research in distributed human-centered design processes depends not only on how well researchers communicate the findings to other stakeholders in the design process, but also on how well they are able to convince those stakeholders of the relevance and importance of the research findings.
This work draws on a tradition of treating design as a social process where dialogue and argumentation enable stakeholders from different disciplines to collaboratively assemble a coherent and believable “story” about the product and the context of its use. In-situ interviews, workplace tours, and case studies drawing on the experiences of fifteen expert user researchers and four design engineers were used to investigate the processes by which user research is propagated to other design stakeholders, and used to explore whether persuasive and motivational principles are used in this process. The analysis of communication strategies employed by expert user researchers suggests approaching user research communication as a design problem, one amenable to the philosophies and skills of human-centered design. The researchers in this study used the tools and methods of human-centered design in a similar and parallel design process, treating the other stakeholders as users of user research. They first investigate their audiences’ needs as they investigate end users’ needs in a double ethnography, and then iteratively design and test their communication pieces to create actionable research deliverables, taking into account the audiences’ needs identified in the double ethnography. In the course of this mini human-centered design process, user researchers employ several communication tactics. It is argued that these tactics be treated as a form of design method and be integrated into the overall design process as a distinct but important activity. A summary of effective and persuasive communication methods for user research will be presented.
Committee Chair: Prof. Alice Agogino (ME)
Inside Member: Prof. Paul Wright (ME)
Outside Member: Prof. Sara Beckman (Haas)
Poster Session Preview:The Role of Social Media in Design for Pomo Nation Community Center and Evaluating Sustainability Guidelines and Design Tools
Both at 3 pm in the Mezzanine of Hesse Hall, July 24, 2012. Note final poster session will be at 6:00pm at the UC Berkeley Alumni House, July 27.
The Role of Social Media in Design for Pomo Nation Community Center
Globalization has allowed for designers and architects to design for remote places without them being physically present on site. However, it has also created some designs that have not worked as Architects are usually unable to completely understand the culture, the needs and the wants of the people that they are designing for. A possible solution could be social media. By providing a virtual space in which designers and people can interact, social media could bridge the gap between designers and the place. In ParticiPlace 2012, an international design competition for designing a living culture center for the Pinoleville Pomo Nation (PPN), the effectiveness of social media has been tested. After setting up social media and providing information and updates through social media, designers were asked to rate the effectiveness in the end of the design competition. Designers stated that Facebook and twitter were not very effectual while responses were mixed for video posts and pictures. However, there were several unavoidable variables that might have produced biased results in this study and more studies need to be conducted to analyze how effective specific social media can be to help remote designing. The usefulness of social media in remote design, however, cannot be disregarded.
Evaluating Sustainability Guidelines and Design Tools
The road to developing sustainably-built environments is driven by a variety of its constituents’ incentives, including but not limited to cultural, ecological, and economic. Architectural designers’ task is to understand the sometimes competing nature of a client’s incentives, and then deliver solutions which articulate their synergy. In the United States today there are several sets of guidelines which provide systematic approaches to this problem: U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), HOK Architecture’s Fully Integrated Thinking (FIT) lenses, Biomimicry Guild’s Life’s Principles, and the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) Living Building Challenge, to name a few. The effectiveness of these systems in practice can be assessed by how they aid the design process, final product performance, and end-user satisfaction. Within the context of an international design competition (ParticiPlace 2012) to produce an off-grid, living cultural center for the Pinoleville Pomo Nation (PPN), we considered the question of sustainability guidelines as design tools. ParticiPlace’s competition brief detailed for designers the tribe’s objectives, and sanctioned HOK’s FIT lenses as a guide to achieving them. Through questionnaires and interviews with ParticiPlace designers, we learned that the lenses themselves were useful insofar as they expressed the client’s goals, but otherwise of marginal practical utility. Despite this ostensibly mixed result, the study does validate the use of prescribed sustainable building guidelines primarily because they provide a language through which client/designer dialogue may occur, in addition to metrics which facilitate design evaluation.
Design of Technology for Collective Improvement and New Engineering Design Frameworks, Wed., July 18, 3:00 pm, BEST Lab, Mezzanine of Hesse Hall
Abtract: Social Intelligence Design (SID) as a research and practice field attempts to integrate and understand the intelligent and coordinated interactions among humans, artifacts, and environments. SID can be a potential approach to make positive exponential social changes and a tool to solve global challenges. SID-based technology innovation has been developed since 4+ years in a meta-multidisciplinary design and innovation process. 50+ innovative concepts have been developed under this paradigm. In the talk, we will present the SID-based innovation process and its related issues, then we will provide examples and initial extensions to the design of Personal/Body Area Networks, Virtual Reality Systems and a social intelligent city with Internet of Everything and WEB 4.0. We will mention new engineering design frameworks and provide other social impact concepts.
Bio: César Cárdenas is currently Short Term Scholar at UC Berkeley, he holds a PhD’10 (hons) in Telecomunications (Telecom ParisTech), Summer Session Program at the International Space University (ISU-SSP’97/Rice University and NASA JSC), MBA’99 studies, MSc’95, BSc’91 (hons). He is passionated by technology development for social improvement, internet and WEB of the future, and converging technologies (NBIC or BANG). Researcher in México and teacher at undergraduate and graduate both in engineering and business. More info: http://goo.gl/siFcB
The Role of Social Media in Design for Pomo Nation Community Center
Globalization has allowed for designers and architects to design for remote places without them being physically present on site. However, it has also created some designs that have not worked as Architects are usually unable to completely understand the culture, the needs and the wants of the people that they are designing for. A possible solution could be social media. By providing a virtual space in which designers and people can interact, social media could bridge the gap between designers and the place. In ParticiPlace 2012, an international design competition for designing a living culture center for the Pinoleville Pomo Nation (PPN), the effectiveness of social media has been tested. After setting up social media and providing information and updates through social media, designers were asked to rate the effectiveness in the end of the design competition. Designers stated that Facebook and twitter were not very effectual while responses were mixed for video posts and pictures. However, there were several unavoidable variables that might have produced biased results in this study and more studies need to be conducted to analyze how effective specific social media can be to help remote designing. The usefulness of social media in remote design, however, cannot be disregarded.
Mapping the Life Cycle Analysis and Sustainability Impact of Design for Environment Principles
Cindy Bayley will be giving a practice talk for her presentation next week at the LCE CIRP conference. Where: New BEST Lab in the mezzanine of Hesse Hall. When: May 16th, noon.
Abstract:
As engineers make decisions on how resources are allocated, used, and disposed in pursuit of a product, they impact sustainability’s triple bottom line of social, environmental, and economic factors. Design for Environment (DfE) principles help engineers identify possible sustainable paths forward. We collected over 300 DfE principles from 29 different sources, including textbooks, academic references, and industry resources on sustainable design. We coded each principleaccording to where it impacts the Product Lifecycle, and which Sustainability Impacts it addresses. Future work includes eliciting additional DfE principles for sparse categories, and developing DfE tools to inform sustainable decision making.
Wed., May 9, 2012, noon, Hesse Mezzanine, "Smart Windows: A Nano Approach," Guillermo (Memo) Garcia, Mechanical Engineering, UC Berkeley
Abstract: Residential and commercial buildings represent a prime opportunity to improve energy efficiency and sustainability worldwide. Currently, lighting and thermal management within buildings account for 20% of the United State’s yearly energy consumption. It is estimated that the use of smart windows can achieve a 50% reduction in peak energy demand and a 30% reduction in overall energy use. Yet, smart windows have not reached their market potential due to their high cost (~$50-80/ft2). In this talk, an overview of current smart window technologies will be discussed and a solution to market penetration will be presented via a nano-based smart window coating with enhanced performance and cost reduction. Memo is finishing his dissertation and is aiming for the May deadline. He is also in the process of commercializing the technology he will talk about.
"Passive and Low Energy Architecture: The Israeli Approach within the Sustainable Building Standard, "May 8, noon, 250 Sutardja Dai Hall
Abstract: Current environmental assessment methods commonly use simple ‘point hunting’ approach. As a result, developers and design teams try to obtain “cheap and easy points”. Consequently, they avoid choosing “Energy points”. Additionally, “Energy points” are mainly achieved by improving the mechanical, electrical and hot water systems, since they are easier points to handle than designing low energy buildings, especially at the advanced design stages. This is in contrast with the fact that buildings are designed to last 50 to 100 years and the mechanical systems only 15 to 20 years, at most. The new Israeli “Sustainable Building (Green Building) Standard SI5281” attempts to overcome the deficiencies presented above by dividing the energy chapter into two parts; “Building energy performance” and “Building services systems”. Moreover, it tries to make the “Building performance points” easier to handle at the early design stages by using simple CAD tools for the performance based method, as well as providing simple design guidelines for the prescriptive-based method. The seminar presents the criteria and rules that Israeli Green Building standard applied in order to guarantee that green buildings will save energy and in order to avoid the faults of present situation that the minimum required points for energy saving may be achieved with no need to design the building as a low energy one. The seminar is devoted to the presentation and discussions of the evaluation methods as well as presenting the design guidelines and tools proposed for the early design stages.
Bio: Prof. Edna Shaviv is a professor emeritus of Architecture and Town planning and former Dean at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. She has many honors, including Pioneer in Renewable Energy in 1997 by the World Renewable Energy Network and as a Pioneer in Passive Solar Energy by the American Solar Energy Society in 2012 (and the reason for her visit to the SF Bay area to accept the award). Jointly sponsored with CITRIS.
Practice Quals: Manufacturing processes are very resource intensive. With rising costs, consumer awareness, and an increase in legislation, industry is driven to reduce their resource consumption. Currently within industry, they do not have a way to accurately assess the resource consumption of the process chains used to manufacture a product. As a result, this information is not taken into account when making decisions about which processes to implement to manufacture a product. The research proposed will develop a methodology to assess the economic and environmental impacts of steel fabrication process chains. Streamlined life cycle methodology will be used to evaluate the impacts of steel fabrication process chains. This research will enable manufacturing engineers to assess the resource consumption of steel fabrication process chains used in their factories. This information will allow them to gain insight into the economic and environmental impacts associated with the use phase of manufacturing processes. The outcomes of this research can be used to make more informed decisions when choosing the manufacturing processes to make a product.
Abstract:My qualifying exam focuses on three areas: the duality of design and learning, visitors and facilitators at science centers, and designing learning environments. These three areas will help prepare me for my future dissertation work. My dissertation project aims to study an engineering education program as well as the roles and impacts on its participants at the Lawrence Hall of Science, an informal learning science center. The context is an engineering design program currently open to the public on a drop-in basis during weekends. This project will build on the current program by developing and implementing a collaboration model with industry engineers, engineering students, and museum educators to develop open-ended engineering design challenges for the program.
Abstract: Information and monitoring systems are of critical importance in achieving optimal low-energy building performance. Advanced monitoring and analysis technologies with high energy saving potential are widely available in the commercial market, yet with low adoption rates, are still considered an 'emerging technology'. This presentation focuses on recent and current LBNL research in energy information systems, including: development of the Energy Information Handbook, and integration of lab-developed model-based diagnostics with commercial tools.
Bio: Dr. Jessica Granderson is a Research Scientist and Deputy Department Head of Building Technology and Urban Systems at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She is a member of the Commercial Buildings and Lighting research groups. Dr. Granderson holds a PhD and MS in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley, and an AB in Mechanical Engineering from Harvard University. Her research focuses on intelligent lighting controls and building energy performance monitoring and diagnostics
Abstract:This study will examine ergonomic design of computer input devices. The study has two main objectives: To evaluate keyboard and tablet design for musculoskeletal well-being and productivity. The first study will evaluate the effects of vertical key spacing on a conventional computer keyboard on productivity, usability, forearm and shoulder muscle activity, and upper body posture. Keyboards with smaller vertical key spacing than the current standard may improve the usability, comfort, and biomechanics of the keyboard, especially for people with small hands. The second portion of the research will evaluate tablet design. The increased use of tablets and mobile devices may increase ergonomic risks: neck flexion, sustained pinch, and sustained shoulder loads. This study will evaluate standing hand held PC tablet size and weight, coupling, stylus diameter, and texture effects on productivity, usability, muscle activity, and posture. Results will provide designers with ergonomic guidelines for stylus diameter, design features that improve hand coupling, and texture for tablets based on usability, muscle activity, and posture.
Residential electric loads such as air conditioners, electric water heaters, and refrigerators can be aggregated and used to help the electricity grid by reducing peak loads and providing power systems services such as fast time-scale energy balancing. We refer to these actions as Demand Response (DR), in which customers get financial compensation for changing either how much electricity they consume or when they consume it in order to help the grid. Residential thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) are particularly useful for fast timescale DR because they operate within a hysteretic ON/OFF dead-band and therefore can act much like energy storage devices, modulating power use around their baseline consumptions. Carefully designed DR schemes allow us to both control aggregations of TCLs to track a DR signal and ensure that they provide the service requested by the consumer. In this talk, I will describe some key opportunities related to DR. Then I will describe some recent work to estimate the size of the potential resource in California; the potential revenue from participation in markets; and break-even costs associated with deploying DR-enabling technologies. We find that current TCL energy storage capacity in California is 8–11 GWh, with refrigerators contributing the most. Annual revenues from participation in power regulation vary from $10 to $220 per TCL per year depending upon the type of TCL and climate zone, while load following and energy arbitrage revenues are more modest. All toll, our results point towards a number of policy recommendations including the design of new energy markets and communications/appliance standards that will make it easier to engage residential loads in fast timescale DR. Download Slides.
Abstract
Currently, there is a shift towards the usage of renewable energy and energy efficiency systems for the development of sustainable building within Native American nations. The optimal strategies and decisions, however, vary with the social, geographical and economic conditions of each community, yet few building infrastructure projects take into account the local social performance metrics during the new product development of these projects. This paper describes a research partnership between the Pinoleville Pomo Nation (PPN) and UC Berkeley‘s Community Assessment of Renewable Energy and Sustainability (CARES) team during the co- design and development of sustainable housing that embeds geothermal heat pumps, photovoltaic systems, as well as the long-standing culture and traditions of the PPN. We present the co-design methodology created for this partnership, the Pinoleville Pomo Nation’s framework for sustainability, and the social performance metrics utilized by the PPN to develop sustainable housing that incorporate the latest sustainability best practices and renewable energy technologies as well as reflect the long-standing culture and traditions of the PPN.
Biography
Ryan Shelby is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include sustainability, renewable energy, energy systems modeling, decision support systems, co-design, ethnographic methods, user needs assessment, community based design, public participation, and environmental conflict resolution. Mr. Shelby’s dissertation research lies at the intersection engineering, policy, and society. The main outcome is a methodological framework that allows engineers and members of Native American nations to create a shared understanding of the social performance metrics in sustainability systems associated with the co-design and implementation of housing and renewable energy systems that meet the cultural, economic, and tribal sovereignty needs and goals of Native American nations. Mr. Shelby is the co-founder and project manager for the Community Assessment of Renewable Energy and Sustainability (CARES), a multidisciplinary team of engineers, architects and environmental specialists founded in 2007 with a grant from the NCIIA to address the disconnect between the creation of sustainability technological innovations by engineers and the needs of end users.
Abstract
Developing innovative products and services benefits from collaboration within multidisciplinary design teams. Design teams gather and generate large quantities of information, including user research, information about competing products and applicable technologies, and new design ideas; however, teams often struggle to synthesize this diverse design information. Collaboration can break down if they cannot form a shared understanding of the design problem. My work examines current design practices to construct theoretical models of the design process and to develop new tools to help design teams create, communicate, and collaborate.
In this talk, I will explore how individual information tools are used to support collaborative design processes, and suggest forms for future tools. I will present a series of qualitative research studies, including interviews of individual designers and observations of face-to-face team meetings, that characterize how design teams operate in practice. These studies informed a series of conceptual frameworks that describe information sharing throughout individual and collaborative design tasks. I will also describe the development of Dazzle, an information sharing tool for face-to-face design teams that allows teammates to share, log, and annotate their shared design resources. Finally, I will explore the implications for future design tools, and discuss how we can improve creative practice by strengthening collaborative discussion and shared understanding.
Biography
Lora Oehlberg is a PhD Candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on design theory and methodology, and frequently extends into human-computer interaction and engineering design education. She has worked in product design and development at Apple Inc., Squid Labs, and Autodesk. She has been recognized for her teaching at UC Berkeley with an Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award (2009) and a Teaching Effectiveness Award (2010). She is a member of the Berkeley Institute of Design and a former editor-in-chief of Ambidextrous Magazine. She has an MS from UC Berkeley and a BS from Stanford University in Mechanical Engineering.
Abstract
The design of complex “engineered” systems in the 21st century poses a set of common challenges, to name a few, the complexity and computational cost of system analysis, the heterogeneity of information at different levels of abstraction, the various sources of uncertainties, the multidisciplinary organization with conflicting goals, and the difficulty in understanding the socio-technical interfaces. Classical systems engineering approaches which focus on processes for cascading engineering requirements from higher to lower system levels is no longer suited to dealing with the global and socio-technical aspects of the 21st century complex systems. This presentation will first explore the research challenges and opportunities in designing complex “engineered” systems, next provide some examples of research projects on complex systems in the field of engineering design, and then focus on two specific topics, i.e., (1) design of multiscale systems and (2) integrating heterogeneous consumer preference into enterprise-driven product design. Research in multiscale design presents the significant benefits of using computational design techniques for designing novel materials, new products, and new processes with exceptional system performance across diverse application domains such as material, energy, and medicine. Integrating consumer choice models into product design demonstrates the potential of combining analytical choice modeling with social networks for studying the social influence on new product adoption. It is concluded in this presentation that as systems continue to grow with increased complexity and more stringent requirements, many unanswered questions can be tackled using rigorous design methodologies.
Biography
Dr. Wei Chen is the Wilson-Cook Chair Professor in Engineering Design at Northwestern University. Affiliated with the Segal Design Institute as a Faculty Fellow, she is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, with courtesy appointment in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management. Directing the Integrated DEsign Automation Laboratory (IDEAL- http://ideal.mech.northwestern.edu/), her current research involves issues such as simulation-based design under uncertainty, model validation, stochastic multiscale analysis and design, robust shape and topology optimization, multidisciplinary optimization, consumer choice modeling and enterprise-driven decision-based design. She is the co-founder and Director of the interdisciplinary doctoral cluster in Predictive Science and Engineering Design (PSED) at Northwestern, a program aiming for integrating scientific, physics-based modeling and simulation into design of innovative “engineered” systems.
Dr. Chen received her Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1995. She is an elected member of the ASME Design Engineering Division (DED) Executive Committee and currently serving as the DED executive chair of the Technical Committees. She is also an elected Advisory Board member of the Design Society, an international design research community. She is an Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design and serves as the review editor of Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization.
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