Audrey Desjardins, Ph.D.
Interaction Design Researcher and Educator

 Hi! I am an associate professor in interaction design at University of Washington, in the School of Art + Art History + Design, and adjunct associate professor in Human Centered Design and Engineering and in Digital Arts and Experimental Media . I hold a PhD and Master of Arts from the School of Interactive Arts + Technology at Simon Fraser University. Prior to that, I studied industrial design at Université de Montreal.

Using a critical lens, my research investigates experiences of living with technology in the home. I use methods like research-through-design, autobiographical design, and participatory design as approaches to critique and reimagine current visions of Internet of Things technologies.

I am the director of Studio Tilt, a design research studio that questions and considers familiar encounters between humans and things. We are delighted to launch Studio Tilt's website.



INTERACTION DESIGN RESEARCH
The Odd Interpreters Studio Tilt Data Epics
(In)Visible Data ListeningCups Voices and Voids
Alternatives for domestic IoT Tilting bowl Living in a Prototype
Table-non-table Hook HCI research on the home
Everyday design practices Exquisite Corpses Eclipse
Children and sustainability 8 months of poking Avalanche rescue practices
Design fiction projects Everyday interactive artifacts Tutorial authorship
New Terrains of Apparition
     



NEWS

 February 2022. Two papers led by the fantastic Neilly Herrera Tan are accepted at CHI 2022. A pleasure to work with collaborators like her, alongside Brian Kinnee, Dana Langseth, Richmond Y. Wong, Sean A. Munson, and James Pierce.

November 17, 2021. Together with Noura Howell and Sarah Fox, we used retrospective trio-ethnography to reflect on our past failures in design research. This is part of a TOCHI special issue on First Person Research in HCI. The article is open access.

September 21, 2021. As part of my tenure and promotion process, I put together a show called 'Data Imaginaries' at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery. Take a look at the Flickr album.

June 24, 2021. I had the pleasure to talk about 'Reimagining Home Data Encounters' at the University of Edinburgh's Design Informatics Webinar Series.

June, 2021. I am officially launching Studio Tilt's website. Studio Tilt is a design research studio that questions and considers familiar encounters between humans and things.

April, 2021. I had the pleasure of co-organizing A Symposium on Design Graduate Education with my colleagues James Pierce and Annabelle Gould. It was a full day of eye opening panels about the future of graduate education in design.

April, 2021. James Pierce and I hosted a panel titled 'Starting a Design PhD Program?' at the 3rd North American PhD by Design symposium. Wonderful discussions with Laurene Vaughan, Cameron Tonkinwise and Bruce Tharp with my colleagues James Pierce and Annabelle Gould. It was a full day of eye opening discussions about the future of graduate education in design.

April, 2021. Together with Afroditi Psarra and Bonnie Whiting, we will be presenting a reflection on our Voices and Voids project at C&C 2021.

April, 2021. 2 papers accepted at DIS 2021: one about Animated Gifs with Heidi Biggs, Cayla Key and Afroditi Psarra, and the other with Jeremy Viny and Lucy Cooper on Jeremy's Desktop Odometer.

January, 2021. With Nat Mengist, Mariama Sibide, Heidi Biggs, Tyler Fox, and Phillip Thurtle, we wrote about our teaching philosophy during our Summer 2019 Creating Alternate Worlds class. The article was accepted in the journal of Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education.

December, 2020. One CHI paper accepted! An amazing project in collaboration with Heidi Biggs, titled Data Epics: Embarking on Literary Journeys with Home Internet of Things Data.

October 29, 2020. Today, we are launching our Voices and Voids net art site in an event at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery at UW ! The project was also broadcasted on the Seattle Channel!

October 29, 2020. I will be talking about my research on IoT and data with designers, strategists, and more folks at Amazon today!

October, 2020. Starting this fall, I am serving as the MDes Graduate Program Chair at University of Washington. More info about our program here.

September, 2020. I have the pleasure of being a co-guest editor for the TOCHI special issue on First-person research in HCI! Abstract are due September 8th, 2020.

May 11, 2020. I received NSF funding for a 2 year project: Exploring IoT Data Transparency in the Home through Creative Data Representations!

April 9, 2020. Jeremy Viny will be showcasing the Desktop Odometer at a demo at DIS 2020: Investigating Opaque Infrastructures: The Desktop Odometer!

April 5, 2020. 2 pictorials accepted at DIS 2020: Parallels, Tangents, and Loops: Reflections on the 'Through' Part of RtD, co-authored with Cayla Key. And Crafting an Embodied Speculation: An Account of Prototyping Methods. led by Heidi Biggs!

February 19, 2020. Afroditi Psarra, Bonnie Whiting and I will be presenting our work on Voices and Voids as an artist talk at ISEA 2020: Everyday Voices and Voids: Reclaiming and Transcoding Voice Interaction Data as Performance

December 13, 2019. 2 papers accepted at CHI 2020: IoT Data in the Home: Observing Entanglements and Drawing New Encounters, co-authored with Heidi Biggs, Cayla Key, and Jeremy Viny. And High Water Pants: Designing Embodied Environmental Speculation led by Heidi Biggs!

November 12, 2019. We were shortlisted for ZKM and Solitude Web Residency on "Engineering Care" with Daphne Dragona as the juror/curator for the project "Everyday Voices and Voids: Reclaiming and Transcoding our Data as Performance" with Afroditi Psarra and Bonnie Whiting

October 29, 2019. We received a best paper nomination for Autoethnography of a Hard of Hearing Traveler, co-authored with Dhruv Jain, Jon Froehlich, and Leah Findlater, at ASSETS'19!

September 23, 2019. I have been selected to be a 2019-20 University of Washington Mellon Faculty Fellow in Arts! Can't wait to start collaborating with Afroditi Psarra (DXARTS) and Bonnie Whiting (Music)

July 12, 2019. Round table titled Speculative Design in Climactic Times, co-authored with Tyler Fox, Michael Beach and Heidi Biggs, was accepted at SLSA'19!

June 29, 2019. Paper titled Autoethnography of a Hard of Hearing Traveler, co-authored with Dhruv Jain, Jon Froehlich, and Leah Findlater, was accepted at ASSETS'19! Absolutely thrilled that Dhruv Jain is sharing his first person experience!

March 21st, 2019. A paper on the Bespoke Booklets (with Cayla Key, Heidi Biggs, and Kelsey Aschenbeck from Design at UW) and a Pictorial on the ListeningCups (with Timea Tihanyi from Art at UW) were accepted at DIS 2019!

March 15th, 2019. Our paper Alternative Avenues for IoT: Designing with Non-Stereotypical Homes received a honorable mention award at CHI 2019!

March 11th, 2019. Workshop proposal accepted at DIS 2019. Join us to chat about first person research methods! A Sample of One: First-Person Research Methods in HCI

December 20th, 2018. Paper and artifact accepted at RtD 2019. REP(AIR): An Olfactory Interface For Bike Maintenance by Cayla Key and myself!

December 10th, 2018. Paper accepted at CHI 2019. Alternative Avenues for IoT: Designing with Non-Stereotypical Homes with Jeremy Viny, Cayla Key and Nouela Johnston from UW!

November 28th, 2018. Thrilled to receive a Mozilla Grant to work on (In)Visible Data: How home dwellers engage with domestic Web of Things data!

September 10th, 2018. Doing an artist residency at Slip Rabbit Studio with interdisciplinary artist and educator Timea Tihanyi. Working on data physicalization and 3D printed ceramics!

June 13th, 2018. Participating in a panel about educating designers at ACM DIS 2018 in Hong Kong.

April 24th, 2018. I am giving a talk at lg2 (a Montreal-based creative agency) about our current research on Internet of things, non-stereotypical dwellings, and everyday experiences.

April 4th, 2018. I am giving a talk at UW about the research and teaching I have done since I arrived at UW last year. Please join us in the HUB room 332 from 6pm to 8pm.

March 2018. Full paper accepted at DIS 2018! Revealing Tensions in Autobiographical Design in HCI , which I have co-authored with Aubree Ball, from University of Washington.

December 2017. Full paper accepted at CHI 2018! Deployments of the table-non-table: A Reflection on the Relation Between Theory and Things in the Practice of Design Research by Hauser, Wakkary, Odom, Verbeek, Desjardins, Lin, Dalton, Schilling, de Boer.

November 1st, 2017. Presenting at the UW DUB Seminar on Design-in-Living: The Ongoing Making of the Spaces We Live In.

October 2017. Just starting a new research project called 'Non-Stereotypical Homes: Engaging Alternative Visions of the Internet of Things'. So grateful to be working with a small group of undergrads and grads in Design at UW !

May 2017. Putting the final touches on a book chapter called 'A sustainable Place: Everyday Designers as Place Makers' to appear in "Digital Technology and Sustainability: Engaging the Paradox" edited by Mike Hazas and Lisa Nathan.

April 2017. Our forum article Exploring DIY tutorials as a way to disseminate research through design is published in the July+August issue of ACM Interactions Magazine!

December 16, 2016. First day as an assistant professor at UW in the School of Art + Art History + Design!

November 2016. Our workshop Making Home was accepted at CHI 2017. Please join us for a full workshop day in an AirBnB in Denver!!!

August 4, 2016. I successfully defended my PhD dissertation Design-in-Living. Woohoo!!!

June 9, 2016. Our abstract Avalanche Beacon Parks: Focus on Skill Development and Team Coordination was accepted at the International Snow Science Workshop ISSW 2016!!!

June 7, 2016. We won a Honorable Mention Award for our Pictorial Behind the Lens: A Visual Exploration of Epistemological Commitments in HCI Research on the Home at DIS 2016!!!

March 7, 2016. Our paper Productive Frictions: Moving from Digital to Material Prototyping and Low-Volume Production for Design Research was accepted at DIS 2016 (acceptance rate 26%).

February 24, 2016. I will be presenting the Living in a Prototype project at the Forum on Material Matters at Emily Carr University.

February 18, 2016. Got featured in SIAT Spotlight for our honorable mention award at CHI 2016 for Living in a Prototype: A Reconfigured Space

February 2016. Woohoo! Our paper Living in a Prototype: A Reconfigured Space has received a Honorable Mention Award at CHI 2016 (this means it is in the top 4% of all submitted papers)!

January 2016. I will participate in the workshop on 'Object Outcomes: Attending to Objects as Outcomes of Design Research' at CHI'16. I will be presenting Lessons from Living In A Prototype.

December 2015. More great news! 2 full papers accepted at CHI 2016: Living in a Prototype: A Reconfigured Space, and From Research Prototype to Research Product. See you in San Jose!

December 2015. Great news! I received the Simon Fraser University President's PhD Scholarship.

December 2015. Good news! I will be a teaching assistant for the course IAT 431 Speculative Design with Pr. Ron Wakkary for the Spring 2016 semester.

October 14, 2015. I presented our paper Investigating Genres and Perspectives in HCI Research on the Home at the SIAT Graduate Research Colloquium.

August 2015. Our paper Avalanche Beacon Parks: Skill Development and Team Coordination in a Technological Training Ground was accepted at CSCW 2016. See you in San Francisco!

July 2015. Our paper Unselfconscious Interaction: A Conceptual Construct was published in the Interacting With Computers Journal!

June 2015. Featured instructables for How to sew cushions for a camper van!