Please join the department of Human Centered Design & Engineering for our annual 10-week seminar series on User Experience (UX), where we welcome industry experts to speak about current issues and research in the field.

Each 40-minute talk will be filmed and will be followed by a Q&A session. Videos of the talks are posted to this web page within one business day of the presentation. Students may register for credit with course HCDE 521. Members of the University of Washington community are welcome to attend.
Making Paper Prototypes for Rover Operations

This talk focuses on the integration of lightweight paper prototyping in the design and systems engineering of rover operations procedures and software technologies. The Mars 2020 mission is the next Mars rover in development at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and its the first flagship mission that has started to look at heritage rover operations with an eye towards disruption of old paradigms and procedures. Scheduled to launch in the year 2020, this new rover will be the first rover to not only characterize potential microbial elements in the ancient environment, but also collect samples on Mars for possible return to Earth. The scientists and engineers face new challenges in a familiar landscape, and have looked to design as a methodology to enhance the software tools that will drive the rover and help explore the unknown. In this talk, Erin Murphy will discuss her experience leading the effort of building user experiences for rover operations and building a culture that embraces user centered design procedures for more intuitive software tools.

About Erin M. Murphy
Erin Murphy is the Mars 2020 mission’s User Interface Design lead and Design Simulation producer who designs light weight paper prototyping tests of planning tools and also maintains the collaboration of design teams across the mission’s subsystems. Since graduating from the University of Washington School of Design, Interaction Design, she has made a career at JPL embedding design practices and thinking to help produce better tools for people.