Hasta La Ideas

In anticipation of Device Design Day 2011, we’ve partnered with Kicker Studio to bring you a series where speakers from this year’s conference reflect on six questions about design and their practice. D3 brings together visual, interaction and industrial designers for a multi-disciplinary conversation about the design of consumer electronics and objects with embedded technology.

As a special thank you to Core77 readers, get 10% off registration for this year’s Device Design Day with the code: FOC77! Register today!!

At this week’s MoMA opening of Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects , we were excited to see some more conceptual devices and ideas that have helped drive our contemporary expectation for objects to interact and communicate with us. In two weeks, people who work every day to enrich our experience with technology will be gathering for the multi-disciplinary symposium, Device Design Day 2011! We’ve been chatting with all of this year’s speakers (see below) and today we’re excited to introduce Leila Takayama, a social scientist who’s work focuses on the way people interact with robots! Learn about the importance of flipping a coin, human-robot interaction experiments and the joys of sharing research with the world.

Leila Takayama joined Willow Garage in January 2009 as a Research Scientist in the area of human-robot interaction. With a background in Cognitive Science, Psychology, and Human-Computer Interaction, her current focus is understanding human encounters with robots in terms of how they perceive, understand and interact with robots. Among other things, she is working on teaching the robots some manners.

Read on for more from this year’s Device Design Day speakers:
Six Questions for Liz Bacon, Devise
Six Questions for Charles Goran, T-Mobile
Six Questions for Karen Kaushansky, Jawbone
Six Questions for Mike Kruzeniski, Microsoft
Six Questions for Branko Lukic, NONOBJECT
Six Questions for Cori Schauer, NASA

Kicker Studio: What is the most cherished product in your life? Why?

Leila Takayama: My coffee mug from New Zealand. This was a gift that was given to me to celebrate the publication of my first research paper when as an undergrad at UC Berkeley. My friend and co-author who gave me the mug is from New Zealand. I’m from Hawaii so we bonded over all things Pacific Islander.

She showed me how research is actually done, letting me learn by doing. She was extremely supportive and patient with me, even though she had no historical evidence that I’d actually be able to become a scientist. This was not a time efficient way for her to work on her dissertation, but she took the time out to mentor me through the research process anyway.

This mug is not only a very functional part of my research routine, holding the hot drinks that keep me going, but it’s also a sentimental reminder of what it was like that first time we had a success in getting to share our research findings with the rest of the world. It happens to have a nice fit for my hands, feels substantial without being too heavy and has survived many years of my clumsiness.

What’s the one product you wish you’d designed, and why?

I wish I’d designed the AeroPress. I’ve been using this beautifully simple coffee maker for many years now. It’s self-powered, quiet, easily washable, durable and doesn’t let me make bad coffee.

What excites you about being a social scientist? Why do you keep doing it?

I love learning about people and the seemingly nonsensical things they do, especially when encountering new technologies. I like to be able to prove myself wrong (as often happens with human-robot interaction experiments) and to really test out ideas.

(more…)