I am a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researcher interested in designing and studying technology that positively shapes the human condition in terms of supporting personal growth,  meaning making, and social innovation, well as facilitating change capable of crafting viable human and environmental futures. I am an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Arts + Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia.

I am the founder and director of the  Homeware Lab (funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation). The Homeware Lab is a new design research laboratory and studio that offers world-class facilities to the design and study of radically new kinds of forms, materials and technologies for the emerging Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm. The term Homeware aims to critically challenge ideas of what ‘home’ is and what ought to constitute a ‘domestic technology’ through designing new technologies that connect materials and forms of domestic artifacts (e.g., earthenware, tableware) with embedded and networked software and hardware. It provides dedicated access to state of the art equipment for electronics prototyping, digital fabrication, finishing and assembly, batch production, documentation and study of new research products.

My research group takes an interdisciplinary, collaborative, creative, and design-oriented approach to Human-Computer Interaction research. In the spirit of design research, we aim to be reflective and generative. We design new computational things, and study them in the context of people’s everyday lives. We also often develop new methods for better supporting the practice of design research.

I previously held the distinguished Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship . I was a 2015/16 Design United Visiting Research Fellow where I collaborated with researchers in industrial design departments at universities in the Netherlands, such as Eindhoven University of Technology.

I hold a PhD in HCI from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University where I was advised by John Zimmerman and Jodi Forlizzi. I completed two research internships at Microsoft Research Cambridge in the Human Experience & Design group, where I have been an ongoing collaborator. Before my PhD research, I was a Fulbright Scholar in the design department at the Griffith University Queensland College of Art and Design in Brisbane, Australia where I worked with Dr. Tony Fry. I also studied interaction design at Indiana University with my advisors Eli Blevis and Erik Stolterman.

My work is published in over 120 peer-reviewed publications at venues including ACM CHI, DIS, Ubicomp, CSCW, Design Issues, and the HCI Journal where it has received seven best paper awards (CHI’11, Ubicomp’11, DIS’12, CHI’14, DIS ’18, DIS ’18, CHI ’19) and nine best paper honorable mention awards(CHI’10, CHI’13, CHI ’16, DIS’16, DIS ’16, CHI ’18, DIS ’19, CHI ’20, DIS ’20). Please see my lab’s Publications or my Google Scholar for more details. My work on the Technology Heirlooms project in collaboration with Microsoft Research received an international design excellence award (IDEA) for design research from the Industrial Designers Society of America. I am winner of the Imagine Cup Design competition in Interaction Design held at the Louvre in Paris, France. I received the Simon Fraser University Emerging Researcher Award for demonstrated excellence in early career research. My research has received funding through NSERC, SSHRC, CFI, NSF, 4TU, Microsoft Research, Google, Intel, and Vodafone.