IP: FOR SILICON VALLEY IPers -- Larry Leifer * Distributed Design Team Innovation * Wednesday 4:14 Gates B03

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

>         Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
>         4:15PM, Wednesday, September 26, 2001
>     NEC Auditorium, Gates Computer Science Building B03
>
>
> Topic:          Distributed Design Team Innovation
>                 metrics and the role of collaboration technology
>
> Speaker:        Larry Leifer
>                 Stanford University
>                 Director, Stanford Center for Design Research
>                 Department of Mechanical Engineering
>
> About the talk:
>
> Design team activity is one of the most knowledge intensive of human
> behaviors.  Defining "design" broadly to include both the synthesis
> of new products and the synthesis of new research, we ask one guiding
> question.  What are designers really doing when they do design?
> Using a variety of observation techniques, but preferring
> video-interaction-analysis, we seek insights into their activity,
> thinking strategies and knowledge processing paradigms.  Where
> observation leads to insight, we then ask how can we help them
> improve their own performance using information and communication
> technology?
>
> Given 20 years of increasingly formal study, I would like to share
> several of our major findings, demonstrate how findings were applied
> to measurably improve performance, and finally to outline how the
> next generation of collaborative knowledge sharing tools and services
> can be deployed to accelerate globally distributed team innovation
> and learning.  We believe that the lessons learned and strategies
> deployed are especially relevant to large, multi-disciplinary,
> undertakings like those found in Stanford's Bio-X, Nano-X and
> Management-X initiatives.
>
> About the speaker:
>
> Professor Leifer's formal academic training was obtained at Stanford
> University.  He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical
> Engineering (BS'62), a Master of Science degree in Product Design
> (MS'63) and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering (PhD'69).  From 1969-1973
> his research included electrophysiological measures of human
> information processing during flight simulation at the NASA Ames
> Research Center and the Man-Vehicle Laboratory at MIT.  He was an
> Assistant Professor of Biomedical Systems Analysis at the Swiss
> Federal Institute of Technology in prior to joining the Stanford
> faculty in 1976.  He presently teaches ME310, a high-tech graduate
> course in "Team-based Product Design Innovation with Corporate
> Partners; a Design Theory and Methodology seminar series entitled
> "Leaders in Design Innovation"; and he directs the Engineering Design
> Affiliates Program.  He received the 1997 ASME award for Innovation
> in Engineering Education and is a member of the National Academy of
> Engineering Committee on Engineering Education.
>
> He is founding director of the Stanford Center for Design Research
> (CDR'82) where he works with colleagues in AA, CE, CS, Medicine and
> the Humanities to understand and facilitate creative design-team
> activity.  With a focus on globally distributed product development
> teams on campus and in industry, he is developing objective measures
> of design team performance (learning) under various real-world and
> emulation conditions using a variety of computational tools and
> services.  Based in part on the results of experiments with
> curriculum reform and the NSF sponsored Synthesis Engineering
> Education Coalition, Professor Leifer was appointed founding director
> (1997-2001) of the Stanford Learning Laboratory, an initiative by
> then Stanford president Gerhard Casper to systematically improve
> collaborative learning through the judicious use of information and
> communication technology.  His contributions to human-service
> robotics and design research are documented in approximately 250
> peer-reviewed publications and have been presented internationally in
> over 300 invited lectures.
>
>
> Contact Information
>
> Larry Leifer
> Stanford Center for Design Research
> Department of Mechanical Engineering
> Stanford, California  94305-4026
> 650725-0158 office phone (msgs)
> 650-725-8475 office fax
> 650-493-6481 home fax
> leifer () cdr stanford edu
> URL http://cdr.stanford.edu
> URL http://me310.stanford.edu



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