“Hu-mimesis” is a new class of media design requirements discovered at the Stanford Center for Design Research. The findings stem from research in their new-product design development simulator and studies of the autonomous-car / driver relationship. The simulator, ME310 is a master class for training new product development talent. Leifer will share a live-action white-board enactment of the hu-mimetic framework for Human-Robot-Relationship design.

Larry Leifer is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering Design and founding Director of the Center for Design Research (CDR) at Stanford University. He has been a member of the faculty since 1976. His teaching-laboratory is the graduate course ME310, “Industry Project Based Engineering Design, Innovation, and Development.” Research themes include: 1) creating collaborative engineering design environments for distributed product innovation teams; 2) instrumenting that environment for design knowledge capture, indexing, reuse, and performance assessment; and 3), design-for-sustainable-wellbeing. His top R&D priorities at the moment include: the Hasso Plattner Design-Thinking-Research Program, a multinational research program focused on developing new insights into leading design and innovation work practices, building on the last 30 years of such efforts in CDR; extending the research and teaching practices pioneered in Stanford’s Design Division of Mechanical Engineering abroad to programs including d.swiss, d.finland, and d.japan; and the formation of a pan-disciplinary PhD program in Design.