Sheng-Hung Lee

Designed by Sheng-Hung Lee, Dr. Julie Newman, Ippolyti Dellatolas, Ziyuan Zhu, 2021.
| MIT Safe and Sustainable Labs |

2022 ─ Accepted paper published by World Design Organization (WDO) Research and Education Forum ─ Design for the Unimagined [ conf | pdf ]
2022 ─ Research report published by MIT Office of Sustainability (MITOS) [ report ]
2021 ─ International Design Conference (IDC) Selected Paper (Topic: Circular Makerspace)
2021 ─ MIT Safe and Sustainable Lab Fellowship
2021 ─ Course Project: 2.S999 Solving for Carbon Neutrality at MIT 

The three-month design ethnographic research project is to understand how to build safe and sustainable labs for MIT to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality on campus in 2030. We’ve visited four different types of labs on campus across different departments: Mechanical Engineering, Material Science, Civil Engineering, and Architecture and interviewed lab managers and students covering five main topics about material procurement, waste disposal, electricity consuming equipment, ventilation consuming equipment, and lighting. To scale the outcome of the research, we viewed these challenges in three aspects and tensions: safe vs. sustainability, intuitional vs. individual, and data-driven approach vs. people stories. This project documented in this portfolio is the very early stage of the research process. We want to leverage the insight and learning of the research material to connect and collaborate with MIT Office of Sustainability (MITOS), MIT Environment, Health & Safety Office (MIT EHS), and MIT Department of Facilities to make a meaningful, sustainable, and positive social impact initiating from MIT.

The project was applied a design thinking approach, human-centered design methodology integrated with a data-driven approach. We initiated the project by interviewing the identified stakeholders: the university-level leadership team, professors, lab managers, and students. We also designed a pre-interview survey to understand the participants’ thoughts, ideas, and pain points before visiting or interview them. The next phase of the research is to establish, combine, and analyze the data capturing in labs to align with the interview results qualitatively and quantitatively. Thus helping us identify the direction of the project and opportunities to create safe and sustainable labs for MIT.

Special Thanks to
MIT Office of Sustainability (MITOS): Dr. Julie Newman (Director, MITOS), Ippolyti Dellatolas (Fellow, MITOS), Ziyuan Zhu (Fellow, MITOS)
Zhou Xuan Studio: Zhou Xuan (Language Expert)
MIT AgeLab