Walker Engineering

Engineering simulates what it is like to be 75

John — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:30:10 +0000

What’s it like to be 75 years old? The folks at MIT have a way to work with that issue.

Read the full article and see related links, and wonderful things, by J

The U.S. population of persons 65 years or older numbered 39.6 million in 2009 and is expected to increase to 72.1 million by 2030. Coupled with falling birth rates and lengthening age expectancies, the U.S. population is rapidly aging.

For engineers and designers, this creates design challenges that didn’t previously exist with younger populations. Existing and developing products may need to be altered to cater to the older demographic.

Thanks to MIT’s Agelab, young designers may be better equipped to understand the needs of their aging clients. Under the direction of Joe Coughlin, Agelab has created AGNES (Age Gain Now Empathy System), a suit designed to approximate the motor, visual, flexibility, dexterity, and strength of a person in their mid-70s.

AGNES simulates a gerontological atmosphere in retail, public transportation, and workplace environments. Braces and bands mimic joint stiffness and muscular fatigue. Leg straps create slower leg movements, and helmet attachments give the wearer an age-induced curved spine. Yellow eyeglasses make it difficult to read small print, and earplugs simulate difficulty with sounds and tones.

MIT Research Fellow Rozanne Puleo told Fastcodesign.com:

“We’ve suited up students and taken them to the grocery store to purchase foods with low sugar, low sodium, and low fat—foods commonly purchased by older adults. They found that it was very challenging to locate these items on the shelf. That’s valuable information that we can take back to organizations.”

Part of the Engineering Systems Division, MIT AgeLab works to transform technologies into practical solutions that improve how products are designed and services are delivered. In addition to AGNES, the AgeLab has created AwareCar (a vehicle that monitors driver state); Miss Daisy (a driving simulator used for evaluating cognitive distraction and the effects of disease and medication); and Miss Rosie (a Volkswagen Beetle that evaluates a driver’s capacity for vehicle operation), among others.

The Future of Work as it Affects Facilities Managers

John — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:28:06 +0000

I saw this article today on Gigaom by Jessica Stillman as she writes on the changes in the future of work and cautions Facilities Managers not to get left behind (NFMLB?). Walker Engineering provides professional facilities management and we agree with Jim Ware that it isn’t keeping the lights on but supporting work wherever it occurs, and in a much more flexible configuration including employee involvement in selecting where they will perform work. It is going to be fun.

I have a reprint of some of the article below, make sure you head over and read the full text at Gigaom.

Jessica says

The wired, more independent future of work is necessitating changes to how managers coordinate, facilitate and monitor their teams’ work. It’s changing our expectations of HR and our ideas about recruiting and how talent and organizations’ needs can best be matched up. But perhaps there’s one more broad category of professionals that need to wake up to the changing realities of how we work: facilities managers (aka workplace professionals).

She quotes Jim Ware, the founder and executive director of The Future of Work, in a fascinating recent article for Workspace Design magazine. In the piece, Ware says workplace professionals need to shake up their conception of their role to keep up with the times.

I believe it starts with rethinking—from the ground up—the role of a workplace professional. I’ve recently been tracking several debates about the definition of “facilities management” as discussed across a number of LinkedIn groups…. most of the contributors seem to have a very limited view of their jobs. They focus on keeping their buildings open and clean, on controlling costs, on ensuring business continuity, and sometimes on improving sustainability.

In contrast, I believe your job as workplace professional is to support work, wherever and whenever it takes place. And for me “support” means focusing on the work itself, and how it’s being done, almost more than the workplace.

As one senior executive commented to me several years ago, “The most expensive cost of any workplace is the salary of the people who use it.” Thus, the most important measure of workplace effectiveness is workforce productivity, not simple cost control.

This shift in focus, “puts workplace professionals squarely into flexible work programs,” Ware concludes. In order to be effective at providing work spaces that fit with more flexible conceptions of work, Ware says architects, designers and facilities managers shouldn’t shy away from playing futurist: “creating pictures (visions) of alternate possible futures, and then being sure your organization is prepared for any or all of them.”

With the world changing so rapidly and unpredictably, it’s unlikely workplace pros will be able to correctly guess the exact shape of their organizations’ future needs But that’s not the point, according to Ware. Instead of hoping to outdo the neighborhood psychic in accuracy, facilities managers should use scenario planning, envisioning a range of possible futures. What good does this do? The practice enables:

Managers to open their minds to the inherent uncertainties in the future, and to consider a number of ‘what-if’ possibilities without needing to choose or commit exclusively to one most-likely outcome. Scenario analysis enables managers, business planners, and executive teams to develop multiple options for action that can be compared and assessed in advance of the need to implement them.

The bottom line, according to Ware, is that facilities managers shouldn’t just worry about keeping the lights on and the real estate bill down, but should be proactively planning for the future of work. “Enlist your peers in HR, IT, and Finance, and together build the stories of how you believe your employees could be working in three to five years. Then, develop plans for a workplace laboratory where you (and those employees) can experiment with new layouts, new technologies, and new ways of working,” he concludes.

Obvious Science Findings of 2011

John — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:26:56 +0000

Find the full article at uh! 11 Obvious Science Findings of 2011, By Stephanie Pappas and LiveScience | December 31, 2011 |

In science, it’s not enough to think something is so. Researchers must show that what we believe to be true is in fact true, proven through statistically significant and reproducible results. Questioning assumptions is, after all, what science is about.

I know I am glad we have data now on these:

1. Unsafe sex is more likely after drinking

Drinking too much alcohol can impair decision-making.

2. Men appear confident by suppressing fear, pain and empathy

3. Smoking pot and driving isn’t safe4. Pigs love mud

5. Fashion magazines glorify youth

6. People with generous partners have happy marriages

7. Parents don’t think their kids are doing drugsParents are in denial about their own children’s bad habits.

8. People aren’t doing anything in particular on the Internet

9. Restricting driver’s licenses decreases teen fatalities

10. Most shoppers ignore nutrition labels

11. Presidents outlive their contemporaries

Money and knowledge tend to buy health and longevity.

NYTimes: Engineering Majors Most Likely to Burn the Midnight Oil

John — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:29:13 +0000

By REBECCA R. RUIZ

Students who major in engineering and the physical sciences can expect to spend more hours in the library than those who take a concentration of courses in business and social sciences, according to a national survey of more than 400,000 undergraduates at nearly 700 colleges and universities.

The annual survey, known as the National Survey of Student Engagement, is being released Thursday by the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research and offers particular insight this year into university students’ study habits. (And, for our purposes here on The Choice, it also provides something of a reality check for high school seniors who will soon be bound for college.)

The average college student, the researchers reported, studied for 15 hours each week. Engineering students fell on the higher end of the spectrum — devoting roughly 19 hours to class preparation — while students with majors in business and social sciences were on the lower end, spending about 14 hours preparing for class. (Meanwhile, the survey found, students of business were more likely to hold a job during the school year.)

Majors that were moderately demanding were biological sciences, arts and humanities (both requiring about 17 hours of study) and education (requiring 15 hours of study).

Although they tended to study longer, on average, than their peers in other disciplines, engineers were the most likely to head to class without having completed all of their assignments.

Even as seniors, the workload of engineers did not seem to abate, at least for those in the N.S.S.E. sample; they were twice as likely as business majors to spend over 20 hours a week on coursework.

Eighty-five percent of all students surveyed — engineers and business students alike — reported that they took careful notes during class, but only 65 percent said they wound up reviewing those notes afterward.

Students who studied education reported the highest rates of learning (86 percent reported significant gains), while engineering and business students also rated their academic growth highly (80 percent reported what they considered to be great gains). In comparison, about 65 percent of those who studied biological, physical and social sciences or arts and humanities described their learning as significant.

Separately, the survey found that students whose parents had attended college spent more time preparing for class than those who were the first in their families to attend school. At the same time, those first-generation students were more likely to employ “effective learning strategies,” including studying in groups and meeting with professors.

The survey also asked after involvement in Greek life, concluding that while membership in a fraternity or sorority was good for personal development and community engagement, its benefits might have been overshadowed by “increased risky behaviors and smaller cognitive gains.”

Notably, students involved in Greek life reported studying, socializing and working at rates comparable to non-Greek students, suggesting that their extracurricular commitments did not displace any other activities.

Meanwhile, transfer students, the survey found, were more likely to work off campus and care for dependents, decreasing their sense of connection to the college community. They were, on average, older and more racially diverse than broader undergraduate populations.

Unintended Consequences

John — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:17:19 +0000

Every new invention changes the world — in ways both intentional and unexpected. Historian Edward Tenner tells stories that illustrate the under-appreciated gap between our ability to innovate and our ability to foresee the consequences.