Independent Design Engineering Projects, Spring 2018

Independent Design Engineering Projects

Spring 2018

Master in Design Engineering GSD / SEAS

Independent Design Engineering Projects

Spring 2018

Master in Design Engineering

Introduction

Martin Bechthold and Woodward Yang

5

The Urdu Keyboard: A Historical Analysis of Compromises Made to Adapt Language to Technology, and Designs to Adapt Technology to Language

Zeerak Ahmed

6

Bio-Based Building Materials: Toward a Circular Economy

Nicole Bakker

7

Urban Innovation Hub Design: Building Bridges to Prosperity

Jeremy Burke and Ramon Gras

8

Room & Mate: A RoommateMatching Platform

Chao Gu

9

Redressing Fashion: A More Ethical Way to Dress

Ngoc Doan

10

Housing Issues in Chinese Megacities: Building a Better Place for Young Professionals to Live in Shanghai

Peter (Kun) Fan

11

Making a New City Image . . . or, an Eye for AI

Brian Ho

12

emma

Julie Loiland and Michael Raspuzzi

13

American Sign Language Educational Tools

Chien-Min Lu

14

Rapid Cartographic

Santiago Aurelio Mota

15

Pushpak: Mobile Workspace for Home-Based Workers in Urban India

Neeti Nayak

16

Pursuing Collective Intelligence in Civic Education and Engagement

Karen Su

17

Introduction

5

The Master in Design Engineering (MDE) program teaches students to examine, understand, and develop solutions to some of the vexing, complex problems of our time. MDE is a two-year, collaborative degree program between the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which have established a dedicated curriculum that is taught collaboratively. The inaugural cohort of 14 students was screened and evaluated by faculties at both schools, and has a wide range of backgrounds, including engineering, computer science, architecture, and design. During the first year of the program, the students took a variety of courses and engaged in the Collaborative Studio, where they learned to work together on complex problems.

This graduating class of 2018 investigated “Food Systems,” and developed solutions for several focused challenges while also understanding the relationship to related issues of health, mobility, waste, or economic disparities. The general approach and methods for examining, understanding, and developing solutions learned in the first year were then applied to their second-year Independent Design Engineering Project (IDEP).

Here each student has completed a project much like a thesis by taking on a real-world, societal challenge of the student’s choice. Working with stakeholders, the projects leverage a combination of design and engineering methods with the goal of presenting a prototype at the end of the two-semester period. Each student is usually guided by two faculty advisors, one from each of the participating schools. Regular meetings with the IDEP faculty and the entire cohort facilitated the exchange of ideas and provided a platform for systematic feedback.

As a program, we are proud to present the 2018 projects. The work covers a diverse set of challenges in the domains of communication, health, spatial analysis, affordable housing, and the circular economy. We hope that the work will continue beyond the confines of Harvard, bringing the MDE mission of “Innovating for Society” into reality!

Martin Bechthold Program Director Master in Design Engineering

Woodward Yang Program Director Master in Design Engineering

The Urdu Keyboard: A Historical Analysis of Compromises Made to Adapt Language to Technology, and Designs to Adapt Technology to Language

Zeerak Ahmed, advised

by Neil Brenner (GSD), Susan Crawford (HLS), and Krzysztof Gajos (SEAS)

6

Keyboards for Urdu conventionally have the same number of keys as a normal QWERTY keyboard. This is nonsensical because Urdu has more letters than English. Further, the standardized layout promulgated by the Pakistani government maps the Urdu alphabet onto QWERTY phonetically. This builds the assumption into the technology that Urdu computing requires a familiarity with English computing. This is only one in a series of compromises made in the history of computing, typewriting, and printing in Urdu, other languages in the Arabic script, and non-Latin languages more broadly. The result is an inescapable belief in Pakistan today that English is the language of computing, implying that Urdu will never be sufficient for computing. Of course, the reality is that current computing is not sufficient for Urdu.

With an outreach initiative to test and provide language models for the keyboard, this project attempts to challenge not only technological designs, but also social conceptions of localized technology, promoting better language technology and rethinking ownership of technology that reflects and promotes a renewed cultural, social, and historical awareness in our practice.

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Bio-Based Building Materials: Toward a Circular Economy

Nicole Bakker, advised

by Joanna Aizenberg (SEAS), Ali Malkawi (GSD), and Joost Vlassak (SEAS)

7

Recent advancements in biotechnology have created new opportunities for the construction sector to reduce carbon emissions, replace fossil-fuel based products, and close material loops. Extraction and processing of raw materials increasingly causes environmental and climate issues. In addition, the supply security of resources will become a problem when our world population reaches the expected 9.7 billion people by 2050. A transition to a circular economy is inevitable and requires a holistic approach to develop new technologies for materials and products that can be created from what we now call waste, and from living cells.

The premise of this thesis is to respond to this challenge and upcycle an industrial bio-based material into an application for the building industry. The chosen biopolymer is an alginate-like-exopolymer (ALE) produced by aerobic bacteria in the cost-effective and sustainable NeredaÂŽ wastewater treatment technology. ALE is a valuable biopolymer with unique material properties that cannot be simulated with petrochemicals. Because the material is derived from wastewater, it cannot be used for applications in the medical and food industry.

Therefore, this study involved intensive experimental work in a wet lab to develop samples in the four material categories of rubber, ceramics, foams, and plastics.

Several production methods were deployed, among them mold making, freezedrying, and additive manufacturing with a syringe pump extruder. The result is a prototype of a composite that can potentially be used as a fire-retardant insulating material.

Urban Innovation Hub Design: Building Bridges to Prosperity

Jeremy Burke and Ramon Gras, advised by Pol AntrĂ s (FAS), Andres Sevtsuk (GSD), and David Weitz (SEAS)

8

A Network Theory-Based Approach to Promote Sustained Cycles of Economic Prosperity by Designing Innovation Districts and Centers in Synergy with Logistics Hubs This project develops a network theory-based, analytical model to inform design criteria for innovation districts and centers operating in synergy with logistics hubs to generate sustained cycles of prosperity. The methodology is based on developing a prototype that operates at three scales: First, a logistics model exploring the nonlinear benefits of upgrading Metropolitan Logistics Hubs’ tier, in networks with a Poisson topology susceptible to host scale-free value flows, thus boosting exports and amplifying economic competitiveness. The main case study is the integration of the HighSpeed Rail Mediterranean Corridor boosting high value-added exports in the Barcelona hinterland.

Second, an analysis of formal and informal innovation districts over the last 20 years in the US and Europe to determine Classification: discern what areas have the potential to host innovation districts; Clustering: group innovation districts with common features and properties; Growth patterns and forecasting models derived from a time series analysis of businesses in the United States from 1997– 2017; Causality models to inform design criteria for future innovation districts.

Third, analyzing the impact of innovations labs on generating successful, high value-added companies, involving variables such as geographic centrality, technical competence, space design, and social networks and support. Case studies include the MIT Martin Trust Center and the Harvard Innovation Lab. This Independent Design Engineering Project will apply the learning acquired to inform design criteria for two case studies: an innovation district and mobility hub in Barcelona, serving the metropolitan hinterland, and a design proposal for the future Harvard-Allston Innovation campus.

Room & Mate: A RoommateMatching Platform

Chao Gu, advised by David Parkes (SEAS) and James Stockard (GSD)

9

The search for rental housing is difficult and time-consuming, especially in a city with a hot housing market like Boston. Finding amazing roommates makes this task even harder. Room & Mate is a roommate-matching platform designed to solve this problem using AI techniques. It helps users find an apartment they like and at the same time matches them with roommates. The project is dedicated to making the housing search process easier, and it also promotes social connections by matching people with similar interests to live together.

Redressing Fashion: A More Ethical Way to Dress

Ngoc Doan, advised by Martin Bechthold (GSD) and Johanna Beyer (SEAS)

10

Behind the clothing we casually buy and wear hide the stories of how the apparel industry exploits workers and pollutes the planet at an alarming rate.

The obsession with cheap and fashionable clothing, known as fast fashion, turned clothing into disposable items that are now filling landfills across the world. We can walk into big-name fast-fashion retailers, such as Forever21 and H&M, and purchase a shirt for less money than a cup of coffee. We get excited about deals and how low a price is, but have not stopped to question how a shirt made halfway across the world with raw materials imported from another country can be a mere $3.99, and the store still makes a margin. The answer is that someone else is picking up the rest of the price tag in terms of inhuman working conditions alongside the abuse of natural resources and chemicals.

The current status quo of the apparel industry does not have to be the status quo of the future. There needs to be a shift in the industry to more sustainable practices. Redressing Fashion rethinks the fashion cycle at every step—from design to afterlife—and starts with initiating a dialogue with consumers. As consumers, we have a powerful voice in what we wear, and small improvements in our personal footprint can impact the industry.

Housing Issues in Chinese Megacities: Building a Better Place for Young Professionals to Live in Shanghai

Peter (Kun) Fan, advised

by Jock Herron (GSD), Peter Rowe (GSD), Robert Wood (SEAS), and Haoxiang Zhu (MIT Sloan)

11

Property fever and speculation are overwhelming Chinese megacities.

The phenomenon of unaffordable real estate prices has hindered young professionals (stakeholders) in living decently and harmoniously, and forces talent out of areas where it is greatly needed. Accordingly, young professionals can lose their sense lose their sense of belonging and find it difficult to build communities in these concrete jungles.

This project looks at Shanghai as a case city to investigate and test feasible solutions: in this case, the design of a co-living space coupled with a digital platform (mobile application) to engage other tenants in building a community.

Given the background of rapid urbanization and demographic migrations in China, the project explains the driving forces and consequences of these phenomena, illustrates the imbalance between supply and demand, and thinks from the macroeconomic perspective of rental market demand as brought about by population changes. It then analyzes the opportunities, challenges, and strategies for the emerging Chinese rental market with solutions that are generalizable for use in other first-tier Chinese cities.

Even though the private space for young professionals has become smaller, their community can become larger. This project collaborates with the largest real estate developers in China to design and build affordable, decent rental living, and provides young professionals with a new rental lifestyle, bringing back their sense of belonging by forming their community.

Making a New City Image . . . or, an Eye for AI

Brian Ho, advised by Krzysztof Gajos (SEAS) and Robert Pietrusko (GSD)

12

Making a New City Image explores the machine-mediated perception of urban form: new ways of seeing, understanding, and experiencing cities in the information age.

Spanning the disciplines of urbanism and computer science, this project fosters a productive dialogue between the two. What might we learn about the city using computer vision, deep learning, and data science? How might the history, theory, and practice of urbanism—which has long viewed the city as a subject of measurement—inform modern applications of computation to cities?

Most importantly, can we ensure that both disciplines understand the city as it is perceived by people?

This thesis also formalizes a practice of computer vision cartography. First, it revisited Kevin Lynch’s Image of the City (1960), applying machine learning models to archival photographs and historical maps of Boston, and classifying from them Lynch’s five elements of the city image. This process was also adapted to the present day. I created instruments and devices for the procedural capture of street-level imagery (on bike or by foot) and the automated identification of new categories of urban environments crowdsourced from human input.

Together, these methods produce a new mode of analysis that balances a comprehensive perspective at the scale of the city with a focus on the texture, color, and details of urban life.

emma

Julie Loiland and Michael Raspuzzi, advised by Jock Herron (GSD) and Peter Stark (SEAS)

13

Taking care of a newborn child is challenging and multifaceted. Information needed to provide the necessary care as a first-time mother is uncurated through online resources, books, conversations with friends, and doctors’ opinions; expensive in both time and money for professional consultation, especially between different dimensions of care such as personal nutrition, fitness, and health; and is often limited to personal intergenerational experience with parents sharing information. The primary focus on care for the newborn ignores the care that the new mother should take to recover properly into a new way of life.

With so many physiological and psychological changes, the new mother is at risk for mental illness and unhealthy habits around sleep, stress management, nutrition, fitness, and social aspects, which could lead to the longer-term health complications of overweight and obesity. This is an important point for intervention because it can negatively influence child growth and development.

Our solution, emma, is a conversational maternal health coach focusing on postpartum health for mothers and their children. emma is not a replacement for doctors or medical specialists, but acts as a first point of contact to encourage conversation and answer questions backed by experts, culminating with a consultation with a qualified professional if needed. The platform integrates machine learning, behavioral science, and user experience design to help new moms adjust after childbirth as well as promote good habits in the home for child-rearing.

American Sign Language Educational Tools

Chien-Min Lu, advised

by Allen Sayegh (GSD)

14

The effect of language deprivation impacts the deaf community. In the United States, statistics have shown that roughly 90 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents, while only about 15 percent of these hearing parents can sign American Sign Language (ASL). Many parents opt for cochlear implants as a medical intervention, but research has found that the average hearing ability of children with cochlear implants is not comparable to a hearing child. The result varies between children, but so far there is no way to predict if the surgery will be successful or not.

Limited resources in the US discourage hearing parents who want to learn ASL. With their focus on language-learning students, the majority of ASL classes do not match the needs of these hearing parents, and parent-infant-programs, which focus on helping hearing parents communicate with their deaf children, are few.

This project aims to design a storytelling game for hearing parents, deaf children, and their siblings to learn ASL step-by-step together. The game covers vocabulary, sentence structure, facial expressions, and body movement. The LEAP motion detector enables deaf children and hearing parents to interact with the story and have a fun time together.

Rapid Cartographic

Santiago Aurelio Mota, advised by Robert Pietrusko (GSD) and Peter Stark (SEAS)

15

There are nearly 1,400 fast-growing, medium-sized cities in the developing world, a fifth of which are in Latin America. Located near agricultural or manufacturing centers, these cities are growing two to three times faster than the region’s megacities. At that pace, they will double in size in 20 years, absorbing more than half of the population growth and migration from rural areas. The speed of urbanization, coupled with a lack of an existing basic cartography and a fragmentation of data sources, is a key challenge for stakeholders, especially government officials, companies, and social organizations, overwhelming the capacity to acquire, process, and inform decision-making processes.

Rapid Cartographic is an exploration into methodologies of representation and analysis of urban environments, operating at the interface between ecology, economy, territory, and community. The project consists of developing an affordable and fast mapping solution tailored for medium-sized cities in developing countries to support decision-making processes. It also aims to empower local stakeholders with spatial intelligence, easy-to-understand metrics, and fast turnaround, ensuring a feasible option against slow and resourceintensive data collection techniques such as ground-based surveys, aircraft flyovers, and satellite imagery services.

The scope of the project is to develop a functional prototype that includes a UAS (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) remote sensing platform capable of creating an integrated dataset of basic cartographic information with high spatial and temporal resolution using sensor technology developed for thermal imaging and precision agriculture.

Pushpak: Mobile Workspace for Home-Based Workers in Urban India

Neeti Nayak, advised

by Martha Chen (HKS), Robert Pietrusko (GSD)

16

Informal employment accounts for 84 percent of nonagricultural employment in India. Within this group, home-based workers (HBWs) make up 15.2 percent of the nonagricultural workforce, producing a wide diversity of products ranging from the more traditional (e.g., incense sticks, bangles) to industrial (e.g., mobile phones, ICs, soccer balls). However, they face extreme poverty because of low and unstable earnings—a property of the unique circumstances in which they work. Coping mechanisms vary from reductive (compromise on health, nutrition, and children’s education) to additive (diversification of products, better packaging, and investment in resources). Worker organizations in urban/rural India deliver limited benefits to home-based workers, in spite of being participatory institutions, because of the necessity of staying at home. Working from home means they can take care of their family, yet poor-quality housing affects product standards, bargaining capability, and their ability to understand market trends.

My project attempts to analyze these unique circumstances to propose the design of a mobile workspace that also serves as an information exchange, raw material supplier, and buyback coordinator. I attempt to apply the network theory of product and economic diversity to the product mixes that are generated in these markets to design the material infrastructure of the workspace. Network theory can be applied by analyzing the raw materials and resources that go into the products produced in a region, and then suggesting strategies to diversify to the “most connected” products that can be easily produced with the same skill set and tools, which can potentially return higher and more stable benefits.

Pursuing Collective Intelligence in Civic Education and Engagement

Karen Su, advised by Krzysztof Gajos (SEAS) and Allen Sayegh (GSD)

17

We have more information than we can process. As we find smarter ways to deal with the information deluge, we are getting better at finding what we look for, but not at finding our unknown unknowns. In understanding current events and politics, filter bubbles and populist rhetoric create increasingly polarized groups that can block civic debate and progress. Resourceful organizations have increasingly sophisticated tools to target and persuade. Individuals are increasingly vulnerable to microtargeting campaigns.

This is a critical problem. Collective problems would benefit from collective interest and input, yet most individuals do not have adequate tools to engage with a system much larger than themselves. Even if we can fact-check, people do not make all of their decisions based on fact and logic alone. How can we engage people as they are, not as we want them to be? How can we make highlevel policy issues more relevant to an individual? How can we help individuals coordinate collectively?

In our current representative democracy, there is a key chicken-and-egg problem: officials cannot easily manage open-ended qualitative feedback at scale. Constituents feel unheard and therefore disincentivized to try and engage.

This project takes a first step toward tackling this problem. It is the beginnings of a software tool that aggregates comments from individual citizens, interest groups, and elected officials around collective issues. Each user can learn, give feedback, and communicate with others at the level of abstraction most relevant to them. I hope to contribute more to this field beyond the Master in Design Engineering program.

Dean, Harvard University Graduate School of Design Mohsen Mostafavi Dean, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Frank Doyle Program Directors Martin Bechthold (GSD) and Woodward Yang (SEAS) Program Staff Janessa Mulepati, Administrator Editorial Support Mikhail Grinwald Design Support Padmini Chandrasekaran Production Manager, Department of Publications Meghan Ryan Sandberg

Š 2018 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

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GSD / SEAS