No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1989. / Cover title. "August 1989." Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, February, 2020 / Cataloged from student-submitted version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 68-70). / Material serves as the first touchpoint between an object and a person. In current product development, material together with color and finishing is regarded as a separate entity from the form and function design. Every material needs to be paired with a series of optimal manufacturing processes for the desired effect. In many cases, this is handled with material design specialists. People perceive a material primarily by its surface: chromatic, tactile, and decorative identity it displays or the temperature and hardness when touching it. Typically, this material surface can be viewed as a two-dimensional entity that reveals limited-expression and information to be delivered via human intervention. In this thesis, we propose to get away from surface obsession in object and industrial design, by adding another dimension to the material interface. By embedding information into three-dimensional matter, we introduce volumetric material: a new material organization that responds directly to the user intervention or the environment. With multi-material 3D printing, we envision a future in product development where the design of surface detail, texture, reflexivity can finally be merged with the overall product composition from the beginning of the design process. With voxel printing capability, we designed and tested material interface with depth and explored volumetric behavior that is both visually and functionally meaningful to the user, and discussed the results. / by Jiani Zeng. / S.M. in Engineering and Management / S.M.inEngineeringandManagement Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, September, 2020 / Cataloged from the official version of thesis. Vita. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 145-146). / MIT offers many unique opportunities to its students. I chose to take a path less traveled and investigate with a systems view the evolution of MIT's main campus by considering its population, finances, spaces, and their purpose in an integrated way. Over a century of population, building and financial data was integrated dating back to 1940. MIT's main campus, opened in 1916 on a 50-acre site along the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has grown in the past century from a campus of 978,000 to 11,261,000 square feet, or a factor of approximately 11.5. The population has grown from 2,374 students, 117 faculty, and an estimated 726 staff to 11,574 students, 1,056 faculty, and 11,651 staff, or a factor of approximately 7.5. From 1940 to 1946, research expenditures per faculty, in 2019 dollars, grew from $1470/year/faculty member to $231,000/year/faculty member. By 2019 this number was $740,000/year/faculty member. A structured organization of the data into decade-length time periods and detailed analysis of this data confirms the hypothesis that a correlation exists between population and funding as educational and research activities drive the building of functional space as a supply to meet this evolving demand. These data also show an evolution from a university mission of training engineers' mens et manus, - minds and hands - to a mission of state-of-the-art research to advance both science and industry. While the findings are conclusive, they are not so strong as to offer a predictive capability; the future history of MIT's campus is yet to be written. However, the systems analysis presented here should assist in creating realistic scenarios that are grounded in validated ratios of population (faculty, students and staff), finances, spaces and activities that are all linked to each other. I detail possible directions for further research that might strengthen the relationships across the campus-wide systems model so that it can be used to predict or at least bound future scenarios based on varying demand inputs. In light of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, a systems-level understanding of how changes to the campus population and/or funding creates emergent changes to space needs offers MIT's planners the ability to respond more quickly and with more accuracy. / by J. Roland de Filippi. / S.M. in Engineering and Management / S.M. in Engineering and Management Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program

This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2019 / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 87-90). / With the shifting landscape of gender and the blurring gender identities, we are living in the time of a gender revolution. This thesis explores the interrelations of gender and the design of solutions - two of the most fundamental components of the cultural framework which holds together our sense of social identity. Studies show that human brains use correspondence bias - the purported basis of gender stereotypes - to group people and thereby assume behavioral traits based on their activities. This thesis aims to understand whether gender-inclusive design would allow users from all genders to participate in the task at equal capacity. The implication is that equal participation would reduce the gender stereotypes associated with the task. The thesis uses "cooking at home," which is traditionally been associated as a woman's activity, as the case to understand this issue and further extends the analysis to understand whether the design of "meal kit services" is gender-inclusive and how that affects the participation among genders. The research showed that though more men are entering the kitchen, cooking still remained a woman's domain. The inherent needs of men and women were different across different stages of the process of preparing a meal and their perception of cooking also varied. An interplay of existing social constructs related to gender behavior was reflected in these needs and perceptions. Findings from this thesis show that the chosen meal kit service did not cater to the needs of either gender fully, and the service did not alter the levels of cooking participation between the genders. / by Saranya Rukmangadhan. / S.M. in Engineering and Management / S.M.inEngineeringandManagement Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2019 / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "Some pages in the original document contain text that runs off the edge of the page. (See Appendix C)"--Disclaimer Notice page. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 82-84). / The aging population is increasing at an unprecedented rate, and with it, the number of older adults that decide to age in place. Some public and private efforts have been made in order to better understand the mobility and physical needs of older adults in home environments. However, most of these efforts have missed a holistic definition of home and how the human dwelling is influenced by aging. This thesis is composed of three studies: a national survey, a series of in-home interviews, and an intergenerational workshop. The overall objective of these studies was to understand how older adults live and move within their homes, as well as what their emotional and functional expectations of their homes are. The outcome of this work is a set of principles and recommendations that design professionals can use when designing home environments or home-related products. These principles and recommendations are meant to serve as a guide to approach a project with the right mindset-a mindset that augments empathy and understanding for older adults, and that challenges the preconceptions of what a home is and what it should do for us as we age. / by Laura Susana Tort Ayala. / S.M. in Engineering and Management / S.M.inEngineeringandManagement Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2019 / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages R-1 to R-2). / With vast improvements in computational power, increased accessibility to big data, and rapid innovations in computing algorithms, the use of neural networks for both engineering and business purposes was met with a renewed interest beginning in early 2000s. Amidst substantial development, the Softplus and Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) activation functions were introduced in 2000 and 2001 respectively, with the latter emerging as the more popular choice of activation function in neural networks. Notably, the ReLU activation function maintains a high degree of gradient propagation while presenting greater model sparsity and computational efficiency over Softplus. As an alternative to the ReLU, a family of a modified Softplus activation function - the "Smoothing" activation function of the form g(z) = [mu] log(1 + e[superscript z/[mu]) has been proposed. Theoretically, the Smoothing activation function will leverage the high degree of gradient propagation and model simplicity characteristic of the ReLU function, while eliminating possible issues associated with the non-differentiability of ReLU about the origin. In this research, the performance of the Smoothing family of activation functions vis-à-vis the ReLU activation function will be examined. / by Jun Siong Ang. / S.M. in Engineering and Management / S.M.inEngineeringandManagement Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2019 / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 84-85). / Most household consumers in the US are unaware of their electrical usage or the price of electricity until they receive their monthly bill. However, they are concerned about being "wasteful" when it comes to electricity use. But most consumers have no idea what being wasteful means. What if there was a way to show residential consumers their real-time electrical usage in terms of price or in terms of environmental emissions from non-renewable power plants? Would this appeal to their concerns about wastefulness and cause them to change their behavior with household appliance use? To test this question an experiment was designed, and multiple prototypes were built. The experiment consisted of a prototype showing a traffic light color pattern of two lights. The first light indicated the price/emissions metric chosen based on user allegiance. The second light indicated the usage of electricity in their home. / After running this experiment, the key takeaway was that that consumers will change their electrical usage behavior based on a metric that matters to them but will not compromise comfort or convenience over price or emissions. Electric energy trading in the US is a complicated system and fundamentally a business. Electrical energy is predicted and traded the day before, generally using clean energy sources in the US. However, if there is a surge in demand on the predicted day, dirty power is turned on. A dirty power plant is classified as being harmful to the environment by burning coal or oil. Dirty power plants are also expensive to the consumer and inefficient in the electric grid but can be turned on instantly in times of need. Because of this, the trading system is designed to minimize the use of dirty power. The electricity trading models follow a principle called the "duck curve". / The duck curve is a graph of power production over the course of a day that shows the timing imbalance between peak demand and renewable energy production. Generally, grid usage follows the duck curve. / by Saluka Amarasinghe. / S.M. in Engineering and Management / S.M.inEngineeringandManagement Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2019 / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 61-66). / This study examines the experience of blind people in science and art museums. It is important for two reasons. First, museums have the potential to become hotbeds for the development of inclusive technology and practices. Second, improving the experience for a small section of society with special needs, blind visitors in this case, can lead to a better experience for everyone. In the current landscape, museums are already on this path consciously or unconsciously. At this juncture, the right decisions could lead to a better and more inclusive future for everyone. As a first step in this direction, this thesis describes the use of the human centered design process to identify opportunity areas that can improve the experience universally. The three key areas were identified through extensive primary and secondary research involving interviews with key stakeholders and user observation. Major opportunities lie in the areas of Navigation, Multimodal experiences and Social Inclusion. These areas not only represent challenges faced by blind visitors, but also key improvement areas for all visitors. For example, navigation is important for all visitors, but more so for blind visitors because it represents independence. Current layouts of museums force otherwise completely independent visitors to depend on external help. Improvements in any of these areas is very likely to improve the overall experience of museums, while including an often overlooked segment of the population. / by Shakti Shaligram. / S.M. in Engineering and Management / S.M.inEngineeringandManagement Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2019 / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 61-65). / Packaging plays an essential role in protecting a product from damage, attracting consumers to purchase a product, and facilitating storage and consumption. Yet its appreciation and value is quickly eroded once the product is purchased and/or consumed and the package becomes waste. With the passing of China's National Sword policy in 2018, post-consumer materials recycling markets are threatened and resources are not being recovered due to high contamination rates. The development of new packaging material has surged in recent years but has not corresponded with development of the necessary recycling infrastructure. Consumers want to recycle but are confused about how to most effectively do so. Packaging continues to consume our finite resources and pollute our terrestrial and marine environments. This research takes a systems approach to understanding today's emerging waste challenges and identifies key obstacles that society should collectively solve. High impact opportunity areas include alignment amongst all key stakeholders, establishing standardized signage and labels, increasing consumer education, and tackling difficult-to-recycle materials through scaling up technology, enacting policy, providing materials alternatives with corresponding infrastructure, or redesigning packaging. / by Karen Cheng. / S.M. in Engineering and Management / S.M.inEngineeringandManagement Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program