Earlier this summer, my girlfriend, Nichole, and I purchased our first riding lawnmower. It鈥檚 really more Nichole鈥檚 mower: I have a bias toward hand tools, and Nichole was the one with the foresight to see that a push mower wasn鈥檛 adequate to maintain the wild parts of the 7-acre farm we just purchased. With some help from a neighbor, we had the shiny yellow 50-inch rig off the pallet and ready to roll about an hour after delivery. But within a few minutes of firing up the engine, her excitement turned to frustration: About every 20 seconds, the mower blades would turn off and the motor would sputter, seemingly for no reason.
At least half the new things we鈥檝e purchased for our farm don鈥檛 seem to work out of the box, so at first, we thought we were just continuing our streak of bad luck. But then our neighbor, who used to run a mowing business, had an interesting diagnosis: 鈥淚 think she might be too light,鈥 he said. He explained there is a safety sensor under the seat that automatically turns off the blades and engine if you hop off (or fall off) the seat. Was it possible little bumps in the terrain might be lifting her off the seat just enough to trigger the sensor? I have about 35 pounds on her, so as an experiment, I took it for a spin. No issues. When she called the company to see if there was an adjustment for the sensor, they told her there wasn鈥檛 and that since 鈥測our husband鈥 can use it, they didn鈥檛 consider it a manufacturer鈥檚 defect worthy of a return. (We did confirm with them that the mower doesn鈥檛 advertise a minimum operator weight). Nichole also polled other women farmers and quickly found out this frustration wasn鈥檛 hers alone.
51视频-Dearborn Assistant Professors DeLean Tolbert Smith and Georges Ayoub, who both teach in the undergraduate human-centered engineering design program, say this is a pretty classic example of how bias can impact product design. They say in this case, the company has likely judged that its customer base is mostly men, who on average than women, and they鈥檝e designed the safety sensor around that customer, to the frustration of many outside the target group. Indeed, the world of consumer products is full of such problems. In her introductory engineering course, Smith teaches her students about automatic soap dispensers whose sensors wouldn鈥檛 activate for people with darker skin tones; or the Ford Windstar 鈥 a minivan that initially flopped because its male-led design team failed to include features for women with children, its target audience. Ayoub鈥檚 go-to teaching example: autonomous vehicles (AVs) whose cameras 鈥 a design problem that transcends mere inconvenience.
Smith and Ayoub say the sources of such bias are varied. In Ayoub鈥檚 AV example, biased machine learning algorithms were the culprit (a topic unto itself that 51视频-Dearborn artificial intelligence experts Marouane Kessentini and Birhanu Eshete helped us explore a few weeks ago). But human beings are often the more immediate source, especially implicit or hidden biases that aren't conscious but can still have real consequences. Smith says it can occur, for example, in the testing phase if a company doesn鈥檛 include a broad enough range of people. Sometimes a product may reflect systemic norms in a society, like an aisle full of supposedly skin-tone bandages that only blend with lighter skin. Sometimes a company might unknowingly neglect an important user audience altogether. Other times, as in the case of the Ford Windstar, a design team may simply fail to adequately understand its target audience. In fact, in that case, Ford actually to remedy its initial shortcomings. After Ford鈥檚 success, Smith says other companies began to include more women engineers and non-engineers on their design and advisory teams, which paid off in numerous ways, including some of the highest performance on government crash test ratings.
When she teaches this topic, Smith says her students often think the solution to these bias-based challenges is to only design 鈥済eneral products鈥 that work for almost anybody. 鈥淏ut what we teach is that you have to have a thorough understanding of who you鈥檙e designing for and make sure you鈥檙e thinking beyond your own range of experiences,鈥 Smith says. 鈥淒esigning a product for a specific group of people is totally OK,鈥 as is the case, for example, when you鈥檙e creating an adaptive technology for people with a certain disability. 鈥淪o I think what we鈥檙e trying to do is help students recognize how essential it is to have empathy for whomever you鈥檙e designing for and collect a diverse enough set of experiences so you can do it well.鈥
In fact, in the context of the human-centered engineering design program, Ayoub and Smith consider empathy a technical engineering skill that鈥檚 just as essential and teachable as calculus or physics. 鈥淭o be honest, someone who lacks empathy is probably not going to be a successful designer,鈥 Ayoub says. 鈥淎nd empathy is a feeling, and feelings cannot be taught only through books. It needs to be taught through connections and examples and topics that involve students directly in talking with and listening to users. Knowing how to do that well can actually be quite technical,鈥 Ayoub says.
Smith says embedding this process of listening to users鈥 needs more broadly in the manufacturing culture could also help reduce bias, especially over a product鈥檚 lifetime. 鈥淚n engineering, we have well-established processes for improving products when it comes to making them cheaper or lighter or more efficient to produce,鈥 Smith says. 鈥淏ut we don鈥檛 always take the same iterative approach to understanding users鈥 experiences of products, and that can change as society evolves.鈥 A perfect example, Ayoub says: the riding lawnmower. When they were designed decades ago, they were probably used almost exclusively by men. 鈥淏ut come on, to tell someone it鈥檚 OK because your 鈥榟usband鈥 can do the mowing for you? You鈥檙e not following what is happening in the world. Women ride lawnmowers. They participate in this kind of work on farms. So the design could and should be modified.鈥
Nichole did learn to master the lawnmower, by the way 鈥 with a little amateur reengineering. We found that jamming a little piece of cardboard up under the safety sensor forced it farther up into the seat, leaving it less sensitive but still fully operational. As long as she rides it slowly, keeps her body straight up over the seat sensor, and lets her body move with the bumps like she鈥檚 riding a horse, it does the job. It鈥檚 a series of hacks she can live with, but should she really have to?
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Story by Lou Blouin. If you鈥檙e interested in learning more about the undergraduate degree in Human-Centered Engineering Design, check out the official program page. We also have an excellent master鈥檚 program. Or if you鈥檙e a member of the media and would like to interview Assistant Professors DeLean Tolbert Smith or Georges Ayoub on this topic, please give us a shout at [email protected].
