Designing for Engaging with News using Moral Framing towards Bridging Ideological Divides

Society is showing signs of strong ideological polarization. When pushed to seek perspectives different from their own, people often reject diverse ideas or find them unfathomable. Work has shown that framing controversial issues using the values of the audience can improve understanding of opposing views. In this paper, we present our work designing systems for addressing ideological division through educating U.S. news consumers to engage using a framework of fundamental human values known as Moral Foundations. We design and implement a series of new features that encourage users to challenge their understanding of opposing views, including annotation of moral frames in news articles, discussion of those frames via inline comments, and recommendations based on relevant moral frames. We describe two versions of features---the first covering a suite of ways to interact with moral framing in news, and the second tailored towards collaborative annotation and discussion. We conduct a field evaluation of each design iteration with 71 participants in total over a period of 6-8 days, finding evidence suggesting users learned to re-frame their discourse in moral values of the opposing side. Our work provides several design considerations for building systems to engage with moral framing.

Understanding the Effects of Structured Note-taking Systems for Video-based Learners in Individual and Social Learning Contexts

Video-based learning is widely adopted by online learners, yet, learning experience and quality may be negatively affected by asynchronous and remote natures of video-based learning. As note-taking is a common practice employed by video-based learners and is known to be an effective way to trigger active construction and processing of knowledge, yet as a meta-skill, it is challenging to most learners. In this study, we aim to approach the goal of providing cognitive and social scaffolds to video-based learners by structuring their note-taking process. We presented and evaluated structured note-taking systems designed for learners in two contexts, namely, individual learning context and social learning context. With an online controlled study involving 43 participants, we compared the structured note-taking systems with two baseline systems (for individual learning and social learning contexts respectively) and found that structured note-taking significantly improved certain aspects of video-based learning such as and higher cognitive engagement and lower distraction. We discussed our results to inform the design, iteration, and adoption of note-taking tools in video-based learning.

Dynamic Research Design: Iteration in Field-Based Inquiry

This article examines how “iteration”—the dynamic updating of a research design in the course of conducting a study—contributes to making fieldwork a powerful form of inquiry. Considering epistemic disagreement on the utility and acceptability of iteration and drawing on published work, our own experiences, and an original survey and interviews, we contend that iteration is a core aspect of field-based inquiry because such work often examines areas for which theory or empirical knowledge is underdeveloped and requires reacting as the research environment evolves. We demonstrate why iteration is challenging, consider the analytic risks it poses, and offer a framework to help scholars iterate in analytically productive ways. We conclude by outlining the implications for the discipline of embracing and being transparent about iteration.

Smart Webcam Cover

Laptop webcams can be covertly activated by malware and law enforcement agencies. Consequently, 59% percent of Americans manually cover their webcams to avoid being surveilled. However, manual covers are prone to human error---through a survey with 200 users, we found that 61.5% occasionally forget to re-attach their cover after using their webcam. To address this problem, we developed Smart Webcam Cover (SWC): a thin film that covers the webcam (PDLC-overlay) by default until a user manually uncovers the webcam, and automatically covers the webcam when not in use. Through a two-phased design iteration process, we evaluated SWC with 20 webcam cover users through a remote study with a video prototype of SWC, compared to manual operation, and discussed factors that influence users' trust in the effectiveness of SWC and their perceptions of its utility.

Rigid–Soft Interactive Design of a Lobster-Inspired Finger Surface for Enhanced Grasping Underwater

Bio-inspirations from soft-bodied animals provide a rich design source for soft robots, yet limited literature explored the potential enhancement from rigid-bodied ones. This paper draws inspiration from the tooth profiles of the rigid claws of the Boston Lobster, aiming at an enhanced soft finger surface for underwater grasping using an iterative design process. The lobsters distinguish themselves from other marine animals with a pair of claws capable of dexterous object manipulation both on land and underwater. We proposed a 3-stage design iteration process that involves raw imitation, design parametric exploration, and bionic parametric exploitation on the original tooth profiles on the claws of the Boston Lobster. Eventually, 7 finger surface designs were generated and fabricated with soft silicone. We validated each design stage through many vision-based robotic grasping attempts against selected objects from the Evolved Grasping Analysis Dataset (EGAD). Over 14,000 grasp attempts were accumulated on land (71.4%) and underwater (28.6%), where we selected the optimal design through an on-land experiment and further tested its capability underwater. As a result, we observed an 18.2% improvement in grasping success rate at most from a resultant bionic finger surface design, compared with those without the surface, and a 10.4% improvement at most compared with the validation design from the previous literature. Results from this paper are relevant and consistent with the bioresearch earlier in 1911, showing the value of bionics. The results indicate the capability and competence of the optimal bionic finger surface design in an amphibious environment, which can contribute to future research in enhanced underwater grasping using soft robots.

CFD-based curved tip shape design for wind turbine blades

This work presents a high-fidelity shape optimization framework based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The presented work is the first comprehensive curved tip shape study of a wind turbine rotor to date using a direct CFD-based approach. Preceeding the study is a thorough literature survey particularly focused on wind turbine blade tips in order to place the present work in its context. Then follows a comprehensive analysis to quantify mesh dependency and to present needed mesh modifications ensuring a deep convergence of the flow field at each design iteration. The presented modifications allow the framework to produce up to 6 digit accurate finite difference gradients which are verified using the machine accurate Complex-Step method. The accurate gradients result in a tightly converged design optimization problem where the studied problem is to maximize power using 12 design variables while satisfying constraints on geometry as well as on the bending moment at 90 % blade length. The optimized shape has about 1 % r/R blade extension, 2 % r/R flapwise displacement, and slightly below 2 % r/R edgewise displacement resulting in a 1.12 % increase in power. Importantly, the inboard part of the tip is de-loaded using twist and chord design variables as the blade is extended ensuring that the baseline steady-state loads are not exceeded. For both analysis and optimization an industrial scale mesh resolution of above 14 · 106 cells is used which underlines the maturity of the framework.

TOPOLOGY OPTIMIZATION OF PLATE STRUCTURES WITH ANISOTROPIC MATERIALS

This work presents a topology optimization method for the design of structures composed exclusively of rectangular plates made of a predetermined, generally anisotropic material. The geometry projection method is employed to map the highlevel geometry and material properties to a fixed grid for the analysis, thus circumventing the need to re-mesh upon each design iteration. We also impose an overlap constraint in the optimization that reduces waste material when fabricating structures by cutting and joining rectangular plates. We demonstrate our method with a numerical example comparing optimal cantilever beam designs obtained using isotropic- and orthotropic-material plates. For this example, we maximize the stiffness of the structure for a fixed amount of material, and we impose a constraint to reduce overlaps between plates. The examples demonstrate the importance of considering material anisotropy in the design of plate structures. Moreover, it is demonstrated that an optimally stiff design for plates made of an isotropic material can exhibit poor performance if the plates are naively replaced with an anisotropic material.

AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK FOR COLLABORATIVE CLOUD-BASED CAD PLATFORM AFFORDANCES

Cloud computing has had an increasing influence on engineering and design. A hallmark of sites such as Github is the promise of rapid iteration and real-time collaboration. Recently, cloud collaborative software has migrated into the realm of physical product design, with computer-aided design (CAD) software platforms such as PTC's Onshape. In this research, we suppose that the effect of cloud collaborative software is multi-faceted; that this type of tool affords a number of new capabilities and behaviours for design individuals and teams. We develop a framework on how to contextualize the changes to design tasks afforded by the unique attributes of these cloud-based, collaborative design tools. We find evidence in our research of design engineers leveraging many aspects of the framework, particularly in learning and engagement with their team, and with resources available from communities of users. However, we find that real-world design engineers are not yet utilizing the full capability of synchronous cloud-platforms with respect to real-time synchronous design iteration within teams or communities.

SIMULATION OF FEEDBACK LOOPS IN ENGINEERING DESIGN

Feedback loops are a key characteristic of engineering design processes that increase complexity, time to market, and costs. However, some feedback loops, due to design iteration, have a positive impact on design outcomes (i.e., the quality of the final design), so are worth the time and costs incurred. Other loops, resulting from rework, also have a positive impact on the final design but their impact on current projects, in terms of their urgency and so interruption, is high. Thus, overall, and drawing on socio-technical systems literature, some feedback loops are virtuous circles with a positive impact whereas others are vicious circles with a negative impact. In this paper, we report early work exploring these interplays between rework and design iteration through the development of process simulation models.