Abstract
My technical and STS research projects are related through the concept of end-user experience. However, the two projects significantly differ in their treatment of and motivation for examining end-user experience. Most generally, end-user experience reflects how intuitively users can deploy and utilize a novel technology. Within the context of my technical work, in which the design and production of a user-friendly corrosion monitoring artifact is the explicit objective, user experience pertains to the manufacturability of the artifact, a metal coupon, and to the long-term reliability of data collection. With respect to my STS research project, user-experience is vital to understanding the political implications of the Dallas police department’s deployment and modification of a remote-controlled explosive ordnance disposal robot as a response to an active shooter situation. So, while my technical work and my STS research project approach the topic of end-user experience differently, in both contexts end-user experience is important as motivation for technological optimization and as a predictable variable deserving attention from engineering researchers and society.
My technical work examines a particular maritime aerospace corrosion system and provides research to optimize a continuous corrosion monitoring electrode technology. Our team navigated engineering constraints of mechanical strength, corrosion resistance, adhesion, wettability, cost, and end-user experience in our planning, prototyping, and testing phases. My capstone team partnered with Luna Labs USA, a product development company, to fabricate and test electrodes for real-time corrosion coating monitoring toward the end of mitigating cost, time, and negative health effects associated with antecedent aerospace system corrosion monitoring methods.
My STS research investigates user experience from a different perspective. My STS research explores the political implications of the Dallas police department’s use of the Remotec Andros Mark V-A1 explosive ordnance disposal robot, an artifact in which end-user experience is a vital design component, to end an active shooter situation. Langdon Winner’s theory of technological politics is deployed to explain how the Dallas police department’s deployment of the explosive ordnance disposal robot privileged police officer safety and marginalized the shooter. My claim is that the police department’s modification of the Remotec Andros Mark V-A1 privileged police officers' safety by enabling them to enact lethal violence from a safe distance while marginalizing the shooting suspect as a killable target. My paper explores this idea and discusses how the technical specifications of the robot interact with historical dehumanization within the society. A goal of my research is to encourage interdisciplinary consideration of the ways in which technical artifacts reproduce asymmetrical relations of power.
Working on the technical capstone project influenced how I approached the STS research project. The capstone project required operating in a technical environment to deliver a tangible design in cooperation with industry professionals. Under such constraints, the societal effects of an artifact are considered for the impact they have on stakeholders during product implementation. In this case, the financial costs and negative health impacts posed by corrosion and antecedent corrosion monitoring methods are well documented, partially due to the proximity of the problem to institutions of power. While interdisciplinary research considering the technological, sociological, and political implications of the corrosion monitoring problem and the engineered solution is possible, the results of such investigations are not necessarily of concern to all industry stakeholders. In contrast to this technical paradigm, in which the capstone team fabricated a deliverable product, the STS research project investigates a research problem in which the interests of industry and professional stakeholders may exist in contention with those of less powerful stakeholders in society. This case, which is the first case of a lethal drone strike against an American citizen within the United States of America, is an opportunity to gain insight into the downstream effects of engineered technologies as they interact with social institutions and particular sociologically documented ideas of humanity and dehumanization. In summary, working on my technical capstone allowed for deeper exploration into the role engineers play in reproducing relations of power.
