Ibuki Iwasaki came to MIT with no clear idea of what she wanted to major in, but that changed during the spring of her freshman year, when she left her comfort zone and enrolled in 4.02A (Introduction to Design). For the final project, her group had to make a modular structure from foam blocks, resulting in a design with 2D and 3D components.
The team ended up creating 72 unique cubes, with each block carefully planned and positioned so that when assembled they form a structure with a modest but complex tunnel-like interior.
The experience taught Iwasaki that she was more creative than she realized, and that she loved advancing the design process, from thinking to manufacturing.
I also introduced her to the role technology can play in design, whether through coding or manipulating components to analyze how they fit together, or using software to assess functionality or model success. I became excited to explore how design and technology work together.
Now a senior student of Iwasaki in two majors in Art and Design, in the Department of Architecture, and in Computation and Perception, in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, to find creative ways to develop technology that prioritizes people and their way of thinking. She believes that considering the person using the technology is fundamental to design.
In her first year, Iwasaki joined Concourse, a first-year learning community that integrates humanities-related classes focusing on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Later, she also joined the Burchard Scholars Program, a series of dinners with professors from the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, to learn more about the humanities experience at MIT. “Although I was initially afraid that by choosing MIT I was choosing STEM over the humanities, this was not the case,” she says.
“Design definitely includes aspects of the humanities, mathematics, engineering and mathematics,” she adds.
More experience with the technology side of design came in the summer of Iwasaki’s sophomore year, in an experimental ethics class. Tasked with looking at the visual design of social media and its effects on the user, she thought about how the layout of the app is shaped by how someone interacts with the platform. For example, I studied how “infinite scrolling” plays a role in rewarding behavior, triggering a dopamine response.
“I realized that human cognition and behavior are factors in a lot of things, especially design,” she says.
The class sparked Iwasaki’s interest in human-centered design, leading her to look more closely at the way an individual interacts with technology. In January 2020, I pursued my first Undergraduate Research Related Design Opportunity (UROP) through the Urban Hazards Lab, which designs technology for natural disasters. Iwasaki focused on a project that includes a platform that allows citizens affected by natural disasters, as well as emergency responders, to communicate information with each other in real time.
I helped design the program’s interface, keeping in mind a layout that might be easier for users to interact with. I also worked on a machine learning component, which analyzed reports from specific areas and processed them in a way that was easy for users to understand, giving emergency responders more time to respond. She was able to sit in workshops with Japanese emergency responders, and even helped translate their reports via Zoom. The experience was great for Iwasaki, emphasizing how important the individual user is in deciding how to implement technology.
While Iwasaki has long been fascinated by the aesthetic side of design, the separation of ethics and a subsequent research project has led to a new interest in functionality and a desire to learn more about perception and behavior to better inform her designs. One of my first classes in this field was 9.85 (Early Childhood Cognition and Development), exploring the way young people think. In the summer of 2020, Iwasaki began working in Professor Laura Schulze’s Early Childhood Cognition Lab.
After conducting studies on Zoom, Iwasaki read stories to children and analyzed their answers to specific questions and scenarios. She was particularly interested in studying “loophole behaviour”. For example, if a parent tells their child they don’t want anything on the floor, the child, instead of picking up their belongings, might pile them on his bed, so there is technically nothing on the floor. Applying these ideas to technology, Iwasaki sees vulnerability behavior as a way to craft precise algorithms for processing information.
“Understanding the behavior of vulnerabilities in children can lead to an understanding of how computers detect vulnerabilities in code,” she says.
Working with children and studying how they learn has also greatly influenced the topic of Iwasaki’s senior thesis, looking at how technology can be used for educational purposes, with a focus on augmented reality and how it can best be implemented to enhance learning. She understands that technology has great potential to be used in the service of education, even though there is a lot of work to be done.
Iwasaki is also committed to helping other students navigate the MIT experience, serving as an engagement advisor to first-year students through the first-year office at MIT. She sees the role as an opportunity to connect with her fellow undergraduates and help them explore their interests. Most recently, I became an assistant consultant for design majors specifically, under the guidance of a professor I earned for 4.02A in her first year. “It was so rewarding for me to share my experiences and help guide the early years,” she says.
Looking to the future, Iwasaki hopes to continue studying cognition and its applications in technology and design. Specifically, she wants to take a closer look at her thesis topic with an emphasis on education, using her background in cognition to inform future designs for more effective educational platforms.
“Although it is sometimes strange to go from making a chair in one classroom to analyzing nematode neurons in another, I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to explore both worlds, as well as being able to connect between them through the study of learning and design For the sake of education,” she says.
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