Current & Recent Projects

These are some of my current and (fairly) recent projects...and some older ones that I still think were interesting:

Islands of Privacy
[ Senior Research Associate, September 2003 - present ]
I'm working with IIT Professor of Sociology Dr. Christena Nippert-Eng, who has been funded though a grant from Intel Corporation to explore Americans' views of, quest for, creation of, escape from, and management of privacy. Using ethnographic methods of interviewing and observation, this project looks across age, gender, class, and occupational groups to examine the ways that the concept of privacy is manifested in a rich variety of current practices and in socio-psychological and institutional states of mind. The project is intended to explore a full range of what "privacy" means to Americans and the ways we create more private or public experiences in everyday life -- both at home and at work. In the process, we are paying special attention to the ways Americans think of, and manage, information (especially computer-mediated information) and are comparing these with more conventional experiences of privacy/publicity.

ON/OFF: Managing Personal Accessibility in a Wired World
[ Principal Investigator, January 2002 - present ]
A one-year project with a mission to explore and document social aspects of the use of communication technologies in a variety of cultural settings, with a special focus on the impact that widespread adoption of mobile communication technologies (and the resulting phenomenon of perpetual accessibility) has had on people's sense of place, their sense of self, their relationships to one another, and their ability to manage the various roles they are required to fulfill in daily life. The ON/OFF research team produced an hour-long, ethnographic film which was first screened in December 2002 for a gathering of innovative thinkers. The film was meant to inform and inspire that group as, together, they imagined future scenarios of mobile communication technology use.

Putting People First
[ Visiting Professor, January 2003 - February 2003 ]
Jan-Christoph Zoels invited me to plan and co-teach with him a four-week workshop on user research and participatory design methods. The course, called "Strategic Design: Putting People First," was offered to first-year graduate students at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. Students were coached in a strategic, user-centered approach to the design of next-generation, mobile communication and interaction devices; they were encouraged to focus on integrating user-research into their design processes and on planning their research to inform design ideas.

Human Centered Design Methods Index
[ Project Coordinator, January 2001 - December 2001 ]
With support from Hewlett-Packard, the Institute of Design is developing a comprehensive index or taxonomy of human-centered design and design research methods. The Human Centered Design Methods Index will catalog examples of best practices in the application of innovative methods for understanding the individual, social, and cultural aspects of human interaction with designed systems.

Carole and Gordon Segal Design Library Project
[ Fund Manager, June 1999 - December 2002 ]
The Carole and Gordon Segal Design Library Project supports faculty and student research aimed at proposing new models for tools and environments that support knowledge sharing within the design community. Recognizing that libraries form an essential component of education, research, and life-long learning, the Project is dedicated to envisioning our libraries of the future. This fund -- a gift of the Segal Family Foundation -- provides early-stage support to research projects that seek to better understand the nature of human interactions with information, and to prototyping projects that integrate information in both digital and traditional forms.

Segal Resource Center
[ Project Manager, June 1999 - December 2002 ]
The Segal Resource Center, commonly called "the SRC," is a physical space in the Institute of Design's downtown facility and the central hub in its knowledge sharing network. The SRC was established to provide the ID community with access to, and with the means of sharing, information that supports ID classwork and design research. The SRC reading room houses a collection of design-related books and journals and an extensive archive of ID student projects. This facility is considered a "functioning prototype"; its design continues to be modified based on user input and on observations of how patrons utilize its space, equipment and information.

seeid
[ Development Team Member (Interaction Design Management), September 2001 - December 2002 ]
seeid is the Institute of Design's internal information sharing system; it is currently accessible to ID students, alumni, and faculty and staff members. This project has included the development our own database and content management system which enables ID community members to share information about people, projects, and classes at ID and -- through our external Web site -- to provide some of that information to the general public as well.

SRC Online
[ Development Team Member (Interaction Design Management), June 2002 - December 2002 ]
The Segal Resource Center's on-line presence integrates the Institute of Design's digital and physical design research resources with the school's internal content management systems, linking those resources to particular classes and projects, and to individual members of the ID community.

Knowledge Tools for Interactive Rooms
[ Research Manager, January 2001 - December 2001 ]
The KTIR research project, led by Skip Walter, aimed to understand how knowledge management tools in conjunction with advanced techniques for visualizing complex information spaces might be used to support and inform event-based, group decision making in interactive environments. Primary research for the project included observations of, and interviews with, knowledge workers using and sharing information within three very different organizations. A thirty-two minute video research report (Knowledge Management in the Real World) presented insights about how existing tools and office environments support (and don't support) knowledge management, as well as a set of recommended design principles to guide development of human-centered knowledge tools and interactive information environments.

Describing User-Centered Designing:
How Design Teams Apply User Research Data in Creative Problem Solving
[ Tortured Soul, January 1995 - December 2000 ]
My dissertation. This research was conducted to help move the design community toward a description of design problem-solving activity that accounts for the productive contributions of user research data. The inquiry is based in an empirical study consisting of the observation and analysis of the activities of small teams working on a contrived design problem in a laboratory setting. Conclusions are offered regarding when, how, and how productively design teams apply different types of user research data in their creative problem-solving activities.

Institute of Design Web Site
[ Designer & Custodian, March 1999 - January 2001 ]
In March 1999, I was asked to raze the Institute of Design's first Web site (to which the administration had taken a sudden dislike) and replace it with anything else. The simple design we came up with has survived (fairly gracefully, in my opinion) four years of tinkering, several major extensions of the information structure, and a complete overhaul of the university's visual identity. It will finally be replaced with a new Web site design in the summer of 2003.

ID's PhD Web Site
[ Designer & Custodian, August 1998 - December 2000 ]
This site went online before the Institute of Design had an official Web site of its own, as a resource for design researchers. When I completed my doctoral studies in December 2000, I passed responsibility for maintaining the site on to the current crop of PhD candidates.

Cross-Cultural Survey of Motivations for Pursuing a PhD in Design
[ Researcher & Primary Author, July 1998 - October 1998 ]
An international survey of motivations for pursuing a PhD in design. We presented our findings at the conference on Doctoral Education in Design held at The Ohio State University (Columbus, Ohio, USA) from October 9-11, 1998.

Definition of Research Areas for ID's PhD Program
[ Project Instigator, March 1998 - May 1999 ]
Throughout 1998, I met each week with a group of folks who were then pursuing their doctoral degrees at the Institute of Design, IIT. This was when the PhD program at ID was still quite young, though there were enough PhD candidates by then that we decided it would be useful if we were to identify some overlapping areas of interest in our research, to define sub-groups focusing on those research topics, and to start working together in our research groups to define the terrain of doctoral research in design.

Design Listserv Portal
[ Project Custodian, January 1997 - present ]
This list of listservs and newsletters (complete with comments on each) was originally compiled by ID alum Larry Clarkberg as a "brief survey for those inclined to fill their e-mail IN boxes with the musings of the international design community."

The Design/Development Processes Page
[ Project Instigator, January 1997 - May 1997 ]
This Web page was originally set up to be used in conjunction with a big piece of butcher paper that was left hanging for several months on the wall at the (old) Institute of Design. In preparation for the 1997 ID student show, a small group of students worked on this page (and that piece of paper) to develop a framework for presenting and explaining to visitors the methods and processes that are taught and used at ID. Now this Web page serves as a partial archive of that project.

Design Team Dynamics Project
[ Project Instigator, January 1997 - May 1997 ]
During the spring semester of 1997, I offered an informal workshop / discussion group to graduate students at the Institute of Design who were interested in reflecting on, and discussing, their experiences as members of design project teams and in improving their teamwork skills. In addition to contributing to my early dissertation research on multidisciplinary design and development teams, these discussions were meant to contribute to the improvement of participants' experiences on graduate student teams while they were in school and on design project teams (or as design project managers) over the course of their careers.

Writing Exchange
[ Attending Physician, June 1996 - November 1997 ]
The original Alphabet Highway prototype was designed and built by the Institute of Design under a larger project originating from the University of Delaware. In the spring of 1996, the ID team shifted its focus to a mentoring pilot study, while the University of Delaware team continued to develop a Web site on which school children could publish their creative work. ID's project evolved into the Writing Exchange, a set of downloadable tools that enable teachers to create their own e-mail writing-mentoring program. AACE Short Paper Proposal.

Alphabet Highway
[ Attending Physician, June 1995 - May 1996 ]
A program that leveraged what, in 1995, were the latest Internet technologies to create opportunities for literacy development. One component of a larger, national literacy initiative, the Alphabet Highway endeavored to encourage the development of literacy skills in young (5th and 6th grade) students by partnering them with high-school students who would act as their informal writing mentors in an ongoing, online publishing venture.