My Topics

Several possible research topics have occurred to me, and they could lead me to different universities. I will be exploring the appropriate ones with the appropriate universities when I visit them in the fall.

Research-Practice Interaction

For the last couple of years I’ve been involved in efforts in the ACM/SIGCHI community to help make CHI research papers more accessible to practitioners. This research topic would investigate issues around that and might involve a project to test an approach.

Ethics and Persuasion

At CHI2009 I heard a paper presented called “Designing for Unconscious Behavior” — and it gave me the creeps. I’ve been thinking about “persuasive design” and “behavior change” and doing some reading about these related topics and the ethical issues involved. Some people (mainly in the design community) say “Design is about changing behavior; get over it.” Others say we shouldn’t be designing to change behavior. I say it’s not as simple as either of these perspectives holds. I’m interested in exploring the ethical questions related to design for behavior change.

UX and the Human Spirit

One day, as I was driving along and humming along with the MP3 files I create from the MIDIs thst the director of my Renaissance singing group sends out to help us learn the music, and when I came to a particularly moving passage I got goosebumps and and overwhelming feeling of one-with-the-Universe joy. And in the middle of the Washington DC rush hour, yet. It occurred to me that this feeling was part of my user experience of the technologies I use to help me learn this music. I want to explore this further.