Translation Critiques

[savannanoh]

• Talk about biases (misogyny, racism) in academic environments that are barriers to even getting research funded/published in the first place
• Talk more about the connection between translation and ethics
• Why did Google Glass never take off, but speaking into a watch/phone did? What dictates the market for a technology and how it gets accepted?
• Dive deeper into the effects of risk taking on successful products and the inequity that comes with it that leads to missed opportunities. Can we imagine a more community-based process? How can we make risk more accessible? +3
• Are there models for how much a company should pour funding into R&D vs abandoning an idea?
• What is the role of speculation in innovation? Has research become speculation with no risk that serves as inspiration?
• Discuss factors for how accepting a market is towards new innovations, for instance, culture, and how companies navigate that
• More examples of companies, student would like to know about AnswerDash in the context of translation
• Student disagrees with the sentiment that going to a large company isn’t fulfilling or rewarding
• Elaborate on the timing aspect–are there other examples of things that were accepted after being re-introduced a couple years later?
• Discuss how access to these new research ideas can also be a factor for adoption, since academic conferences are expensive, and academic journals are dense, jargony, and difficult to read
• Include more photos/videos about each case example to help readers understand why it wasn’t adopted
• What role does pop culture play in adoption? How do companies leverage this?
• Student suggests keeping the same technology throughout the sections to show the different factors affecting the same technology
• Why does translational medicine not exist in HCI research? Is it because the government doesn’t see HCI as important?
• Each section ends abruptly, would like discussion on what resulted after and what’s happening now
• Include things like https://solve.mit.edu/ and IDEO holding competitions for new ideas
• Missing the business side of building products: marketing and strategy play a huge role in adoption/demand. Include examples of emphasis on product dev and distribution that made up for interface maturity and lack of demand
• Student suggests introducing the BCG matrix here
• Have examples of government funded moonshot projects besides Siri
• Which subfields of HCI are facing the most difficulty in translating to commercial relevance?
• This chapter is high level, include concrete steps designers can take to bring their idea to market
• Include more examples of technologies that were at the right place at the right time
• Include predictions about VR in the hands of Meta
• Connect translation with IP
• Are there exceptions for adoption for AI? For instance, even though we are at “weak AI” companies are marketing as “strong AI”
• Should researchers adopt marketing strategies for innovation? At what stage should researchers collaborate with business and marketing to decrease the risk of an unpredictable market?
• What are the pros and cons of startups with standalone innovations getting bought by tech companies who can market the innovation?
• Talk about companies that aren’t Apple, Meta, or Google
• Talk about what to do with conflicts between user needs and product strategy
• Terminology:
  • Define “translation” at the beginning of the chapter. Student didn’t know the definition until reading one of the citations. The word “translation” is misleading +1
• Grammar and typos:
  • “Inveasable”
  • Kind of weird to use “obviously” twice so close together
  • "We need more students excited to be translate, interpret, and appropriate ideas from research into industry."

[savannanoh]

• How can researchers demonstrate feasibility for translation?