The Needfinding Machine

IxDA Pittsburgh is a local chapter of the Interaction Design Association serving the design community in Pittsburgh through activities and discussions that facilitate growth, understanding, and development of the profession.Our monthly events include seminars, panels, and workshops. Rather than meeting on a specific day or week, we remain flexible, scheduling events to meet the availability of speakers, hosts, and organizers.Our members include anyone who is interested in facilitating positive and engaging experiences for people. Our practitioners are interaction designers, industrial designers, visual designers, product designers, developers, game designers, roboticists—you name it. To become a member, all you have to do issubscribe to our mailing listto learn about events, and show up. We try to keep all of our events totally free. You can also find us onFacebook,Twitter,LinkedIn,Flickr, andour website. Please join us!

IxDA Pittsburgh

Join IxDA Pittsburgh (virtually) as we discuss remote user research, advanced prototyping, and the Needfinding Machines with Nik Martelaro.

<p>Well, the Carrie Blast Furnaces tour was amazing last week! Thanks to all who joined us, and we hope to see the rest of you at our next in-person event. But in the meantime, we are thrilled to bring you a virtual event with Nik Martelaro.</p><p>“Doors open” at 5:30, and the talk will start at 5:45. Please join us!</p><p></p><h1>About the Talk</h1><p>Designers working on future interactive systems, such as as autonomous cars, personal robots, and digital assistants, have quite a task ahead of them. Designing and developing these contextually situated interactions will require that designers discover new interaction patterns and extensively test user experiences in the real world.</p><p> In this presentation, <a href="http://nikmartelaro.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Nik Martelaro, Ph.D.</a> will discuss the Needfinding Machine, a method that shifts these interactive devices to be not just the products of design but also as the tools to do remote user observation, interaction prototyping, and needfinding from anywhere with a network connection. Nik shows two collaborations with practicing designers who used the Needfinding Machine to understand the interaction design needs for autonomous systems; 1) engineers and designers at Renault exploring currently available advanced driving assistance features and 2) human-agent interaction researchers at Spotify exploring in-car music assistants. Nik will also discuss how such methods could be used in the future, especially given our  increasingly remote working habits.</p>

<h1>About Nik</h1><p>Nik Martelaro is an Assistant Professor at <a href="https://www.hcii.cmu.edu/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute</a>. His lab focuses on augmenting designer’s capabilities through the use of new technology and design methods. </p><p>Nik’s interest in developing new ways to support designers stems from his interest in creating interactive and intelligent products. He blends a background in product design methods, interaction design, human-robot interaction, and mechatronic engineering to build tools and methods that allow designers to understand people better and to create more human-centered products. </p><p>Currently, the lab is exploring new ways to do remote Wizard-of-Oz research, how to design accessible interfaces for people to independently ride autonomous vehicles, and new ways for designers to interact with AI-enabled design tools. </p><p>Before moving to the HCII, Nik was a Digital Experiences researcher at the Accenture Technology Labs in San Francisco. Nik graduated with his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford&#x27;s Center for Design Research, where he was co-advised by Larry Leifer and Wendy Ju. </p>

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The Needfinding Machine

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