Using a critical lens, Audrey Desjardins' research investigates experiences of living with technology in the home. She has spent the last several years using research-through-design, speculative design, and participatory design as approaches to investigate how to critique current visions of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, which are too often grounded in homogeneous and detached views of the home. Her current projects touch on ways to inquire and reclaim IoT data through crafting and materializing ways of living with that data. She is also interested in using first-person research methods (autobiographical design, for example) to examine experiences with technology from within.
She is the director of Studio Tilt, a space where she works with students to question and reimagine familiar encounters between humans and things.
Dr. Desjardins has published her work in scholarly venues such as ACM CHI (Human Factors in Computing Systems), ACM DIS (Designing Interactive Systems), ACM C&C (Creativity and Cognition), and ACM CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work). She was the assistant to the editors-in-chief for ACM Interactions from 2012 to 2016. She has served on more than ten conference program committees as an Associate Chair, including the ACM CHI, ACM DIS, ACM C&C, and ACM TEI (Tangible and Embedded Interaction). See a full list of her publications.
Before joining University of Washington at the beginning of 2017, she studied in the Everyday Design Studio at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, where she obtained a PhD and Master of Arts. She also holds a bachelor's degree in industrial design from University of Montreal.
