EVL/CS PhD Candidate Yu-Chung Chen presents his preliminary proposal Immersive Empathic Design for Interdisciplinary Collaborations, January 26, 2009.

The immersive empathic design for interdisciplinary collaborations is proposed. It is difficult to design a useful system, and is even more difficult to design a system for people who are in a different knowledge domain. The high domain knowledge barrier makes it hard for a person who is outside the domain to imagine the user experience. Thus, even sometimes systems were designed and implemented but the willingness of users to adopt the new system is low. The modern globally distributed collaboration imposes more spatial and temporal constraints in designing an interactive system. This is important because modern science discovery requires interdisciplinary collaborations. If software systems developed stop as technology showcases in the laboratory instead of being put into workplaces to solve real-world problems, a lot of resources are wasted during the process.

The proposed immersive empathic design approach attempts to reach across the discipline boundary. In the preliminary exploratory case study in geological core drilling, computer scientists were embedded in the workplace setting. On-site hands-on experience learning and off-site reflection analysis sparkled innovations in domain settings while maintained his/her own perspective. This approach helped to overcome the initial high domain knowledge barrier. It also established a trust bond with domain users and encouraged system adoption. This approach can be a useful to human computer interaction practitioners who work with potential users or communities that share similar properties.