Bandsaw Learning
HMI - Learning

Risk, Trust, and Experience with Shop Equipment

“If you’re scared when you approach a machine - it knows” - woodshop manager

“The level the level of damage that a machine can do to either myself or the work is commensurate with how much I trust it.” - garage machinist

In autumn 2022, I commenced my graduate degree by interviewing shop managers and operators to discover how they established (or didn’t) a sense of trust in and with their spaces and equipment. Through this lens, I quickly discovered a notable source of anxiety: shop managers on the UT campus perceived a decrease in incoming student familiarity with manually operated equipment and machinery (e.g. bandsaw, drill press, hand drill, laethe). Recently appointed faculty and staff noted a pronounced decrease in shop machine-literacy following the ‘post-pandemic’ return to school, while longer-standing educators emphasized a macro trend. As one shop manager put it: “over the last 10 years, students’ thinking has sped up, but 3d spatial awareness has really declined.” Both perceptions were echoed by design faculty (of correspondingly varied tenure) who did not operate shops, but taught craft-focused coursework.

Conversations with educators also yielded specific anecdotes of students appearing to:
- over-estimate their ability
- accurately assess their ability (‘I’ve never done this before’), but under-estimate risks and act carelessly
- over-estimate risks and refrain from using equipment, or approach equipment nervously
- struggle with criticial spatial awareness, coordination, and manipulation skills (e.g. carefully positioning a piece of wood, or maintaining awareneness of other operators in the space)

These are normal challenges for students of any level in any domain. Psychology has dubbed  the phenomenon of learners struggling to accurately self assess ‘the Dunning-Kruger effect.’ Novices simply don’t know what they don’t know. However, proximity of hazardous equipment precludes learning by autonomous trial and error: it’s too dangerous. Training and supervision are essential. As such, student learning and space utilization are limited by educator time, budgets, and institutional risk tolerance--all palpably finite. If baseline student familiarity with machines is indeed decreased, then pedgagogical innovation is warranted to maintain utilization and learning outcomes. Meanwhile, onshoring and AI competitivness in knowledge domains suggest the capability to navigate production environments and engage in careful physical craft may be of increasing value and warrant expanded training capacity. 

Initial sudent perspectives partially confirmed and partially diverged from educator’s. 

In a visual poll of a sketching class of roughly 60 first-years and sophomores (very early in the semester), 5 raised hands indicating they had used woodshop or similar facilities and 15-20 raised hands indicating both interest in  apprehension about doing so. Brief small group discussion with two additional sophomores and one senior enthusiastically emphasized the apprehension and difficulty remembering how to use tools after training. Unsurprisingly, no students reported a decline in their average peers’ ability to operate hazardous since the pandemic (or over the prior decade).  Several first-year students with parents in carpentry and construction did emphasize their capability and comfort in contrast to their peers, with one lamenting the slow pace of shop training and lack of opportunity for self-directed usage. Without quantiative data on ‘near-misses’ or observation of these specific students working in the shop, it remains unclear whether these are accurate or over-confident self-assessments. 

In subsequent individual conversations, it became apparent that, while nervousness or inexperience were barriers for many, they were secondary to more basic challenges: students are busy with coursework and often only go into shops when an assignment gives them an urgent reason to. Proposed solutions involving more summative information on facilities’ training options, hours, and tools---or more opportunities for course credit to complete shop orientations--were positively received.

On the whole, this presented a rich opportunity space to enhance student safety and creative agency. 

With this context, began prototyping to concretize conversations with students and educators. After a particularly anxiety provoking anecdote involving a bandsaw, one shop assistant requested (with a tone of mild exasperation) “anything” to help teach spatial awareness and careful manipulation. Concurrent with this request, he mimicking the motion of carefully positioning a piece of wood with two hands. I seized on this as an initial intervention point with the goal of safely teaching students to use hand manipulation while operating a machine. I also wanted to encourage awareness of risks (without scaring users unduly), maximize student agency, and minimize educator burden. 

In 2022, industrial training applications of XR were a presumed (if still largely imaginary) eventual use case.  I did not have the budget or time to prototype with a microsoft hololens at the time -- and was skeptical of the need for that level of cost and complexity in my solution. Still, a simulation experience offered zero risk, low educator burden, and afforded students the opportunity to play and explore on their own. To capture these potential benefits as cheaply as possible, I put a projector on a stick:

 



In response to this prototype, one woodshop manager glowingly proclaimed, “In 20 years, I have never seen anyone approach this problem so cleverly,” which, while flattering, gave me cause to wonder:

1) Is this genre of learning not an area of interest for designers?
2) How is it that we are talking about XR when much more basic training skills (using simpler technology and pedagogy) can still offer improvement? E.g. Argo Design did a very relevant build focused on mixed reality (interactive light) based on a 2014 topical writeup. 

On the whole, it seems that the gap between technology development and application development can be wide and long, and perhaps this (learning in risky production environments) is an under-appreciated realm of inquiry.

Student reactions from complete novices were positive, but less pronounced than those of students who had experienced training and wanted a way to refresh or develop their knowledge. 

In subsequent feedback sessions, learners and educators provided pedagogical requests & recommendations, which I used to hone the experience:

“show me once, then let me drive” 
“show me what not to do”
“don’t scare students too much”

As well as concrete suggestions: 

“add color” -- “add sound” -- “make it diagrammatic” -- “add text”










“Follow-through of the cut is my #1 safety concern”








The project paused at this stage of development as I persisted in my investigation of human-machine interactions in other spaces with other machines. Vexingly, I found that students often responded as or more aversely to engaging with harmless mobile robots than with genuinely dangerous woodshop equipment. This led me to develop the design research project Robot Reveals, which investigated how different introductions to the same robot could influence personification and affinity.