Portfolio | Jillian L. Warren

FutureCraft Lab

Director: Dr. Jillian L. Warren

Dr. Jillian L Warren is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art (Design) at Chapman University, working at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Child-Computer Interaction (CCI), and futures-focused design education.

Her collaborative, community-engaged research explores how design can support more sustainable, civic-minded, and well-being–focused futures. She develops tools and hands-on approaches that help students, educators, and youth engage with ethics, material futures, and emerging technologies in tangible and meaningful ways.

Her teaching focuses on research methods, prototyping, and alternative approaches to design and material practices. Across her courses, she emphasizes hands-on making, critical reflection, and experimentation to help students engage with complex, future-facing challenges.

Mycelium Update

The next stage has begun.

After weeks of watching the mycelium colonize the grain, it was finally time to transfer it into the materials that will become the final composite.

For this first experiment, I’m comparing two agricultural byproducts: straw and coconut coir. I started with sanitized substrates, moistened each one, and mixed in the colonized grain before packing the mixtures into molds. Throughout the process, I regularly sanitized my workspace, tools, and hands with isopropyl alcohol to reduce the risk of contamination and give the mycelium the best chance to establish itself.

One of the things I find most interesting about working with living materials is how many design decisions exist before you ever reach a finished object. Every choice—the substrate, moisture content, density, mold design, temperature, and time—influences the outcome. Rather than trying to control every variable, I’m learning to work with a living system and understand how those decisions shape the material that emerges.

As FutureCraft continues to evolve, these experiments aren’t simply about making alternative materials. They’re about understanding how different material systems behave, what questions they invite, and how hands-on engagement with living materials can encourage us to think differently about waste, production, and the ways we imagine possible futures.

Now comes another waiting game while biology does its work.

This experiment is less about finding a single “best” material and more about understanding how different agricultural waste streams influence the forms, properties, and possibilities of mycelium-based composites. I’m excited to see what each substrate reveals—and what new questions emerge as the mycelium continues to grow.

Research update 🍄

Progress with my first mycelium grain spawn experiment.

This has been a much slower process than many of my other biomaterial experiments—and that’s part of what has made it so interesting.

Over the past month, the mycelium has steadily colonized the grain, continuing to transform while I was away for a two-week work trip. Coming back to see how much had changed was a reminder that working with living materials means adapting to biological timescales rather than our own.

One of the things I’m appreciating most is how different this feels from following a recipe. Every stage raises new questions: How does the material respond? What conditions matter? What happens next? Those questions—and the patience they require—are becoming just as valuable as whatever material eventually comes out of the process.

Next step: transferring this into a bulk substrate and seeing how it develops from there.

Each experiment helps me better understand not only the material itself, but also what it might look like to bring these kinds of living material systems into FutureCraft in ways that support curiosity, critical reflection, and imagining alternative futures. And frankly I’ll be sad to not have a live office mate once I move it and dry it… 😬😔❤️

Getting Scrappy—with materials, ideas, and a packed room.

Last week I had the opportunity to facilitate Getting Scrappy with Materials at the @play_make_learn_ conference—and the workshop certainly lived up to its name.

We had more participants than seats, adapted to last-minute room changes, and still spent the session making, experimenting, and imagining together.

This workshop marked two exciting milestones for FutureCraft. It was the first time I brought physical FutureCraft Materials Library samples from @chapmanu to accompany a workshop, and it was the largest hands-on biomaterial workshop I’ve facilitated simultaneously to date. Seeing so much interest from educators, researchers, makers, museum professionals, and STEM practitioners was incredibly encouraging.

Everyone started with the same agar bioplastic recipe, then customized it with coffee grounds, eggshells, dried flowers, herbs, seeds, paper, and other everyday “scraps.” Even with the same starting recipe, no two samples were alike.

After the workshop, the samples spent the night in dehydrators, and participants stopped by the next day to collect their finished pieces before leaving campus. I also invited everyone to keep experimenting with their materials at home and share what they discover.

The most exciting outcome wasn’t just the collection of samples—it was the conversations they sparked about waste, material choices, sustainability, and how hands-on making can help us imagine different futures.

Thank you to everyone who joined the workshop. I’m excited to see where your experiments—and these conversations—go next.

I’m here at @play_make_learn_ in lovely Madison, WI to give a workshop on biomaterial and sustainable making practices centered around youth’s exposure to materials as a conduit for more imaginative futures-based design thinking.

During the session immediately before mine, I learned that I could no longer run my workshop as planned. Due to unexpected building cooling issues and related fire safety requirements, I was no longer permitted to use the four induction cooktops that had previously been approved for participants to work at individual making stations. Instead, I was limited to a single burner (and the dehydrator—but not at the same time). 😂

With participants about to arrive, it was time to rethink the entire flow of a workshop built around hands-on material making.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. A workshop inspired by this year’s conference theme, Getting Scrappy, ended up requiring me to get scrappy before it even began.

Design education, making, and community engagement rarely happen under perfect conditions. Whether it’s limited resources, unexpected constraints, or last-minute surprises, part of the work is learning to adapt without losing sight of what you’re hoping participants take away from the experience.

Time to see what happens.

I’ll share another update after the workshop about how the changes worked out and what emerged from the session.

From recipe to reflection. New on the FutureCraft blog: Agar Bioplastic Exploration 🌱

I’ve shared the first material exploration from the FutureCraft Materials Library—an agar bioplastic activity exploring material literacy, sustainable making, and futures thinking through hands-on design.

Read more: www.jillianlwarren.com/post/agar-bioplastic-recipe-reflections

#FutureCraft #Biomaterials #MaterialDesign #DesignEducation #SustainableDesign #DesignResearch #CriticalMaking #MaterialExploration #CircularDesign #FuturesThinking

Mycelium Update

On June 22, I inoculated my first grain spawn bags with oyster mushroom liquid cultures as part of a broader exploration into biomaterials for education and design research.

About two weeks later, it’s exciting to see the mycelium beginning to colonize the grain.

One thing this process has already reminded me is that working with living materials asks us to think differently about making. Rather than designing for a material, you’re creating the conditions for something living to grow. It requires patience, observation, and a willingness to work alongside biological processes instead of controlling every step.

This exploration builds on earlier work with high school students at @samueliacademy , where we used Grow.bio mycelium kits as part of a larger project exploring sustainability and designing for the future. Students consistently described working with biomaterials as one of the most engaging parts of the experience and wanted more opportunities to experiment with them.

That observation has shaped the next phase of my research.

As part of a recent @wilkinsoncollege grant at @chapmanu focused on developing biomaterial toolkits for youth, I’m exploring not only how these experiences can become more accessible across schools and community settings, but also how hands-on engagement with living materials can foster new ways of questioning the status quo, understanding our relationships with the more-than-human world, and imagining preferable alternative futures.

Before designing learning experiences around these ideas, I wanted to better understand the cultivation process myself—to lift the hood, learn through making, and explore what kinds of experiences might meaningfully support curiosity, systems thinking, and future imagination.

Still lots to learn, but seeing those first signs of healthy growth feels like a promising start.

I'm excited to share that my latest paper has been published in the International Journal of Child–Computer Interaction:

Responding to Children's Futures: Using the IDC Design Competition to Bridge Gaps in Child–Computer Interaction Design Education

Recent conversations within the Child–Computer Interaction (CCI) community have highlighted the importance of creating accessible pathways for bringing new researchers and designers into the field. For undergraduate design students with little or no prior exposure to HCI or CCI, this means more than introducing child-centered design—it also means helping them understand the unique ethical, developmental, and participatory considerations that define designing for and with children.

In this paper, I explore one possible approach.

Using the @idc_acm Design & Research Competition as an authentic entry point, students engaged with children's design submissions as a form of child-generated design data. They then moved through a scaffolded design process combining research, developmental and ethical frameworks, prototyping, and instructor-facilitated child feedback.

Rather than expecting students to jump directly into participatory design—or leaving them with little opportunity to engage with authentic children's ideas at all—the goal was to provide an accessible, replicable pathway for developing the skills, sensitivities, and ethical awareness needed to design with and for children.

I'm grateful to the children who shared their perspectives, my undergraduate design students at @chapmanu @wilkinsoncollege, and the broader CCI community for continuing to explore how we prepare the next generation of researchers and designers.

📄 Paper access: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1nNTA_oK9Ue7hM

🛠️ I also created a free Miro template based on the course framework for anyone interested in adapting a similar approach. Details are included in the paper. https://miro.com/templates/ijcciresp-to-childrens-futures/

#ChildComputerInteraction #CCI #HCI #DesignEducation #DesignResearch #ParticipatoryDesign #LearningByDesign #IJCCI #DesigningForChildren

Day 1: Experimenting with Mycelium Cultures

I’ve worked with mycelium before using ready-to-use kits with high school students at @samueliacademy as part of a larger project exploring sustainability, material futures, and designing for preferred futures. Interestingly, many students identified the biomaterial activities as one of the most engaging parts of the experience and expressed a desire for more opportunities to work directly with these materials.

That experience left me with a question: how can we make biomaterial exploration more accessible across different educational and community contexts?

While prepared kits are fantastic for lowering barriers to entry, they aren’t always available and can be difficult for some schools, museums, libraries, and community organizations to afford. As part of a recent @wilkinsoncollege grant focused on developing youth biomaterial toolkits, I’m interested in exploring what happens when we “lift the hood” on the process and better understand what materials, tools, and workflows might be viable in formal and informal learning environments.

Today I inoculated my first grain spawn bags using oyster mushroom liquid cultures and set up a still-air workspace to begin experimenting with mycelium cultivation. This summer I’ll be documenting some of my discoveries and processes.

Beyond growing mycelium as a material, I’m interested in how hands-on engagement with living systems might support curiosity, imagination, systems thinking, and new ways of thinking about the relationships between people, materials, and the environments that sustain them.

Let’s see what grows.

#FutureCraft #Mycelium #Biomaterials #MaterialFutures #sustainabledesign

Excited to share the soft launch of the FutureCraft Materials Library in the Design Program at Chapman University.

The FutureCraft Materials Library is an emerging collection of experimental material samples exploring biomaterial making, post-consumer waste reuse, circular systems, biodegradability, repair, and future-oriented design practices.

This spring, students in our new Prototyping course contributed the first undergraduate-created materials to the collection.

For their final project, students investigated alternative material futures through hands-on experimentation, designing and fabricating original material samples using recycled plastics, recycled paper pulp, algae-based materials, gelatin bioplastics, natural pigments, dehydrated fruit waste, seeds, and other alternative material processes.

Rather than focusing solely on finished products, the project encouraged students to think critically about where materials come from, how they are made, how they are used, and what happens to them after use.

Each sample is paired with a custom archive card linking to recipes, process documentation, reflections, and material stories through a growing digital archive.

A special thank you to all of my @chapmangraphicdesign students whose curiosity, creativity, and willingness to experiment helped make this first collection possible.

This is just the beginning. I hope the library continues to grow through future student and faculty contributions, interdisciplinary collaborations, workshops, and community engagement.

#FutureCraft #FutureCraftLab #MaterialLibrary #Biomaterials #MaterialFutures #DesignEducation #DesignResearch #Sustainability #CircularDesign #CreativeEducation

I'm excited to share that the schedule for Play Make Learn 2026 is now live! @play_make_learn_

If you'll be at the conference this July at University of Wisconsin–Madison, I'd love to see you at my hands-on workshop: Getting Scrappy with Materials: Hands-On Bio-Material Exploration to Support Sustainable Imagination

In this session, participants will experiment with accessible biomaterial practices using everyday and natural materials, exploring how making can support conversations about sustainability, circular systems, material futures, and creative inquiry. Together we'll investigate how hands-on engagement with materials can help learners question where materials come from, where they go, and what alternative futures might be possible.

This workshop builds on my ongoing research and teaching exploring sustainability, futures thinking, design education, and youth engagement through making.

📅 July 9, 2026
🕛 12:15–1:30 PM CT
📍 Play Make Learn 2026, Madison, WI

If you're attending, I'd love to connect—and if you're curious about biomaterials, sustainable making, or futures-focused design education, I hope you'll join us!

Learn more: https://lnkd.in/ghhdhggG

#PlayMakeLearn #PML2026 #Biomaterials #SustainabilityEducation #DesignEducation #MakerEducation #FutureCraft #SustainableDesign #FuturesThinking #LearningThroughMaking #CreativeInquiry #YouthMaking #DesignResearch #HigherEd #STEAMEducation

A #Latergram from IDC 2025 in Reykjavík, Iceland.

As IDC 2026 approaches later this month, I've found myself reflecting on last year's conference—and realizing that this will be the first year in many that I won't be attending in person.

Looking back, IDC 2025 was especially meaningful. I had the opportunity to participate in a workshop exploring youth care ecosystems, which raised questions that continue to resonate across my work today. Whether thinking about mental health, sustainability, community, or futures thinking, I often find myself returning to questions about the broader systems, relationships, and networks that support young people.

IDC 2025 was also my first year serving as an Associate Chair and chairing an in-person paper session. It gave me a new appreciation for the care, thoughtfulness, and collaborative effort that goes into building this community.

Perhaps most memorable, however, was experiencing IDC as both a researcher and a parent. For the first time, my own children joined me at the conference.

One of the things I have always appreciated about IDC is that it doesn't simply focus on designing for and with children—it actively creates space for young people to be part of the community itself. Watching my children participate in workshops, explore conference activities, and interact with researchers brought that value into sharper focus than ever before.

And, of course, one of the joys of academic life: traveling all the way to Iceland to reunite with colleagues and friends from @teci_lab rather than somewhere much closer to our shared North American home.

While I won't be making the trip to Bristol this year for @idc_acm 2026, I'm grateful to continue supporting the conference as an Associate Chair and look forward to reading the papers, following the discussions, and seeing where the field continues to grow.

Wishing everyone attending a wonderful conference!

#IDC2025 #IDC2026 #ChildComputerInteraction #CCI #HCI #DesignResearch #CoDesign #YouthDesign #ResearchCommunity

As the Future Footwear project evolved, I began wondering what might happen if the cards were removed from their original context.

Many of the conversations they supported—about sustainability, technology, materials, communities, values, and alternative futures—weren't really limited to footwear. The questions felt relevant across a much wider range of design challenges.

In preparation for Play Make Learn (@play_make_learn_ ) 2025, I revisited the deck with that goal in mind.

The core structure remained the same, but the cards received a substantial refresh. Prompts, examples, and wording were revised to make them less dependent on footwear and more adaptable to products, systems, services, technologies, environments, and communities.

At the same time, I experimented with a new facilitation approach.

Rather than introducing the cards through a specific design challenge, participants engaged with them through a BREAK → MEND → GROW framework.

BREAK invited participants to critically examine assumptions, systems, and dominant narratives.

MEND encouraged them to imagine alternatives grounded in care, repair, justice, and possibility.

GROW focused on how ideas, practices, and communities might evolve over time to support preferred futures.

This shift transformed the cards from a project-specific design tool into a broader framework for reflection, discussion, and futures thinking.

In August 2025, I had the opportunity to share this new iteration of FutureCraft through my first workshop at Play Make Learn at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. What I appreciated most was seeing how educators, researchers, designers, and makers interpreted the framework through their own experiences and contexts.

Many of those conversations continue to influence FutureCraft today.

#FutureCraft #PlayMakeLearn #PML2025 #FuturesThinking #CriticalMaking #DesignResearch #DesignEducation #HCI #CCI #Sustainability #SpeculativeDesign

A #Latergram from IDC 2024 as I reflect on the threads of what 'future crafting' can mean.

I was incredibly honored to receive the International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction (IJCCI) Best Paper Award for our paper:

"A Co-Design Study Exploring Needs, Strategies, and Opportunities for Digital Health Platforms to Address Pandemic-Related Impacts on Children and Families."

This project emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic and explored how digital health platforms might better support children and families navigating uncertainty, disruption, and change.

Working alongside children, parents, teachers, and experts, we used a variety of co-design approaches—including inventor toolkits and future-oriented design activities—to help young people share their experiences, identify challenges, and imagine new possibilities for support.

While this project focused on mental health and well-being rather than sustainability, many of the ideas continue to influence my work today. At its core was a belief that children are not simply recipients of future technologies—they are capable of imagining, critiquing, and shaping futures themselves.

That belief continues to guide FutureCraft.

Whether I'm exploring well-being, sustainability, emerging technologies, or biomaterials, I'm interested in how design can create opportunities for young people to imagine what is possible, reflect on what is desirable, and consider how we might work toward those futures together.

A huge thank you to my collaborators Dr. Alissa Antle, Alireza Davoodi, and Alexandra Kitson, along with our partners, participants, and supporters. This recognition belongs to the entire team.

#IDC2024 #IJCCI #ChildComputerInteraction #CoDesign #DesignResearch #YouthDesign #FuturesThinking #ParticipatoryDesign #HCI #FutureCraft

A little #Latergram from IDC 2024 as we move into @idc_acm month.

While the Future Footwear project was underway, I had the opportunity to participate in the workshop In the Era of Climate Change: Exploring Research at the Intersection of Children, Emerging Technology, and Environmental Sustainability at IDC 2024.

Bringing together researchers interested in children, design, technology, and sustainability, the workshop created space for discussion, reflection, and hands-on activities exploring historical, current, and future perspectives on environmental challenges.

At the time, many of the questions we were exploring through Future Footwear and the early FutureCraft work were still taking shape. How might design support young people in imagining alternative futures? What role can technology play in fostering reflection, care, and engagement with environmental issues? How can we move beyond awareness and create opportunities for agency, imagination, and action?

Workshops like this helped situate those questions within a broader community of researchers and practitioners thinking critically about sustainability in Child-Computer Interaction.

A huge thank you to Bronwyn, Andrea, and Mina for organizing and facilitating such a thoughtful and inspiring experience. I'm grateful for the conversations, ideas, and connections that continue to influence this work today.

#IDC2024 #FutureCraft #DesignResearch #ChildComputerInteraction #CCI #HCI #Sustainability #DesignEducation #FuturesThinking #YouthDesign

From the beginning, the Future Footwear project was designed to be more than a speculative design exercise.

If we were asking students to imagine alternative futures, we also wanted to expose them to alternative possibilities.

The goal wasn't to encourage science fiction or far-fetched speculation. Instead, we wanted students to engage with emerging materials, technologies, and design practices that are already challenging conventional assumptions about production, consumption, sustainability, and the role of technology in everyday life.

To support this, we developed a series of biomaterial and emerging technology workshops that combined real-world examples, material exploration, and hands-on experiences.

Students were introduced to innovations in mycelium materials, bacterial cellulose, circular production systems, regenerative design, and bio-based manufacturing.

We made mycelium samples by hand using @grow.bio hydrated material.

We examined examples from organizations and platforms including @materiom_, @prattmateriallab, @ottanmaterials, and https://www.nikegrind.com/ just to name few.

We also explored projects that challenged conventional ideas about technology itself. Students were introduced to the award-winning SCOBY Breastplate by @fionaabell (now @entangledecologieslab), Derrek Chow, Hyelin Choi, and Mirela Alistar (TEI 2023), which explored wearable interaction through a living microbial material. They were also exposed to real-world samples created from research on decomposable interactive systems, including work by Katherine Song and colleagues that reimagined electronic systems designed to biodegrade rather than persist indefinitely.

Rather than treating these examples as solutions to be copied, we used them as prompts for discussion, reflection, and imagination alongside our cards. What assumptions about products, materials, and technology do we take for granted? What alternatives are emerging? What kinds of futures become possible when we begin from different starting points? What's possible in a classroom setting?

#FutureCraft #Biomaterials #MaterialFutures #DesignResearch #DesignEducation #FuturesThinking #SpeculativeDesign #Critic

As our work with @samueliacademy evolved, we realized students needed tools that could help them move beyond aesthetics, trends, and technology-for-technology's-sake.

Building on Patricia Vining's original Footwear Futures deck, my team—including Patricia Vining, Dr. Alissa Antle, and Sadhbh Kenny (@teci_lab)—began reimagining the cards as a tool for critical futures thinking.

Rather than asking students to predict what shoes might look like in the future, we wanted to create opportunities for them to reflect on the values, assumptions, and systems shaping the futures they were imagining.

The revised deck was organized around four areas. Design Lenses helped students frame problems through different perspectives and values. Bio-Material Practices encouraged reflection on materials, production, waste, and alternative futures. Function cards shifted attention away from specific technologies and toward purpose, relationships, and impact. Tools supported students in bringing speculative ideas to life through making, visualization, and storytelling.

Together, the cards became less about generating ideas and more about creating space for reflection, questioning assumptions, and imagining alternatives.

As our work continued, we found ourselves increasingly drawn to the role materials were playing in students' thinking. Conversations that began with footwear often expanded into broader discussions about production, waste, consumption, repair, technology, and alternative futures.

While we're still exploring the impact of these tools, the process itself surfaced new questions for our team. How might exposure to different materials, making practices, and production systems influence the questions students ask—and the futures they imagine? What possibilities become visible when students are given different starting points? What assumptions are challenged?

#FutureCraft #DesignResearch #DesignEducation #FuturesThinking #SpeculativeDesign #YouthDesign #Sustainability #Biomaterials #DesignThinking #HCI #CCI #FutureOfDesign

Every project starts with a question.

For FutureCraft, one of those questions emerged from a speculative design concept developed with Dr. Alissa Antle and Brendan Matkin for the 2016 IDC Design Competition.

The project, Story of Things, imagined wearable technologies that could help young people better understand their relationship to the world around them—encouraging reflection on environmental footprints, consumption, and the often-invisible systems that connect people, materials, and environments.

Years later, that question resurfaced in a new way.

Through a Chapman Faculty Grant for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity (FGRSC), I began exploring how design, sustainability, and technology might support young people in imagining alternative futures.

This work eventually led to a partnership with @samueliacademy (design educator Patricia Vining) and @teci_lab For years, Patricia had collaborated with Vans on a project asking students to imagine the "shoe of the future." Yet both of us shared a similar curiosity: how might students move beyond aesthetics, utility, and simply adding technology for technology's sake?

Together, we reframed the challenge.

👣 What footprint do you want to leave behind?

🛤️ What path do you want to carve?

These questions opened the door to conversations about sustainability, community, well-being, material choices, and the role technology might play in shaping preferred futures.

Students were encouraged to think beyond products and features, considering larger systems, values, impacts, and possibilities. Rather than asking only what technology could do for an individual wearer, they explored what roles it might play for communities, environments, and future generations.

What began as a speculative wearable technology concept evolved into a broader exploration of futures thinking, sustainability, and design education. Along the way, it also sparked new questions about materials, making, and imagination—questions that would eventually shape FutureCraft's card decks, biomaterial workshops, and future research directions.

#FutureCraft #DesignResearch #DesignEducation #FuturesThinking #YouthDesign #Sustainability

Excited to be awarded a Chapman Faculty Grant for Research Scholarship and Creativity (FGRSC) to kickstart research exploring intersections of sustainability design and technology with youth. Partnered with Dr. Alissa Antle and Sadhbh Kenny in the @teci_lab

Grateful to @chapmanu for their support of this work.

New Position as of Fall 2023 - Assistant Professor - Design Program - Department of Art - Wilkinson College - Chapman University. Excited for a new chapter - to learn, teach, and collaborate!

Looking forward to setting up a new research agenda and lab on designing futures with youth. :)

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@futurecraft_lab

Projects

Materials Library + BioMaterial Kits

Principal Investigator

To develop and study tools—including card-based design prompts, biomaterial explorations, material archives, and hands-on workshops—that support how learners navigate complex design challenges and imagine alternative, more sustainable futures.

This work explores how design research, sustainability, futures thinking, critical making, and material exploration can be integrated across undergraduate education, K–12 learning environments, and public-facing public pedagogy workshops.

At its core, FutureCraft investigates how scaffolded tools and embodied making practices shape the ways participants think about materials, systems, technologies, environmental impact, and the role of design in shaping future worlds.

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Samueli - intro mycelium kits - existing market available.jpeg

M.A.D.E
Samueli

Principal Investigator

This project explores how toolkits—such as Critical Footwear Futures Cards, biomaterial workshops, and guided activities—can support youth in navigating design and imagining alternative futures. Developed through a collaboration with Samueli Academy and Vans, these tools are embedded within a wearable design project and examined for how they influence students’ perspectives, approaches, and sense of agency as designers.

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M.A.D.E
Samueli

Principal Investigator

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CCI Teaching Pedagogy

Principal Investigator,

Course Designer, and Instructor

This research examines how Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) can be meaningfully introduced within undergraduate design education. Using the IDC Design Competition as an accessible entry point, and a scaffolded, research-driven project structure, students engage with authentic child-generated ideas, iterative design, and instructor-facilitated feedback from children. The project responds to ongoing calls within the CCI community to share teaching practices and supports more accessible, ethical pathways for engaging the next generation of designers in this space.

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No Child Alone

Project Manager, Research + Asset Designer, Study Facilitator, Data Collector, Data Analyzer

Understanding unmet social and emotional needs of children and families in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Exploring design opportunities for how a healthcare app could support these unmet needs through co-design with children, families, teachers and industry stakeholders.

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Long Live Childhood

Project Manager + Study Designer

*Post-poned due to COVID-19 pandemic*

Understanding unmet social and emotional needs of pediatric cancer patients throughout their cancer journey. Exploring design opportunities S/E needs and contextual requirements for home and hospital deployment environments.

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Story of Things

Equal contributor to wearable idea and original concept design with Alissa Antle and Brendan Matkin. Created wording for idea of "happenstance interaction"

*1 of 3 Design Contest Winners*

Inspired by a purely conceptual Design Competition call at the IDC (Interaction Design for Children) conference, the Story of Things (SoT) system enables children to learn the story behind every object they touch in a typical day.

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EquiPressure Pants

Creator of wearable concept and original proof of concept design. Further refinement of physical prototype by Brendan Matkin. "Expert review" interviews with real riders to understand their "embodied riding experience" and EquiPressure pant prototype.

EquiPressure Pants are a proof of concept prototype for horseback riders aimed at helping riders better understand the connection between their 'perception' of self and their actual physical body positioning/application of pressure, as well as communicate more clearly during training through objective metrics for pressure application.

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Youtopia

Usability + Bug Tester, Study Facilitator, Data Collector, Data Analyzer

Youtopia is a hybrid tangible and multi-touch land use planning activity for elementary school aged children implemented on a Pixelsense Surface tabletop. Youtopia was developed to investigate issues surrounding how to design and evaluate children’s collaborative learning applications using digital tabletops and physical interaction devices.

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FutureCraft Lab

Director: Dr. Jillian L. Warren

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Projects