Posts Filed Under design

My family knows one thing about vacationing with me: if we’re anywhere near a mini-golf course we’ll have to stop and play it. Waterfalls, windmills, pirates, animals — I love it all. This semester I was teaching Physical Computing course again, and I wondered… could I combine my love o...

Journalism serves many roles in society - informative, investigative, normative, and more. As the tools and pratices of interactive digital storytelling continue to grow, how can they help the connective role journalism plays in society? Read on for some background and a recent experim...

Excited to share a new paper out in the British Journal of Educational Technology. I worked with collaborators to assess what data feminism looks like in K-12 data science education. We retrospectively review 42 youth data programs and projects, assessing each against the key principles...

My brother-in-law Alex has been in a wheelchair since an accident a few years ago. Being tinkerers, we’ve had fun brainstorming assistive technologies that might fill various needs that have come up for him. Early on this involved digging into products that exist already, but more recen...

The pandemic has affected so many aspects of our lives, amplifying disparities and challenges that already existed. For far too many households simply having access to enough food to eat is a daily challenge. During the early months of the COVID pandemic, an average of 1,659 new househo...

The hype around data continues unabated, with the processes of quantitative analysis seeping into more and more of our lives. From government policies, to business decision making, quantitative data have become central to a growing part of people’s lives. We are presented daily with ch...

Boston is slowly emerging from its pandemic winter of isolation. As evidence mounts on the relative low risk of being outdoors and acquiring COVID, and with spring weather unfurling its warming embrace, people are rediscovering the outdoors. We’re heading outside in droves. I’ve persona...

Have a Google Home? Try asking it “can I trust you?”. The response isn’t particularly comforting - a corporate statement about how it’s designed to keep your information secure and a link shared to your phone so you can review the data it has. I followed that link, and found my two most...

Computational generative design is a fascinating space available to those with access to coding skills and prototyping machines such as laser cutters and 3d printers. But what happens at the intersections of simple computational design and traditional craft disciplines? We were interest...

A recurring truth of the future of technology is that it sneaks up on us unawares. Technology is adopted before we’ve all had time to consider its consequences, the potential harms that might come. This is certainly true of the rapid spread and normalization of digital voice assistants ...

The switch to remote learning during the Covid pandemic has been challenging for educators of all stripes, and those trying to teach data storytelling have been no exception. Many of our data literacy activities in their current form are dependent on robust small-group discussion and re...

As a double major in computer science and cognitive science back as an undergraduate, I was fascinated by how even complex concepts might be effectively conveyed to a broad audience, given some understanding of how people think. One of my favorite class readings was an essay called “The...