James Pierce
· Chair, Interaction Design Associate Professor, Interaction DesignUniversity of Washington · Art + Art History + Design
Active 1949–2026
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About
I'm an Associate Professor and Chair of Interaction Design in the Division of Design at the University of Washington (UW), and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Human Centered Design and Engineering Department. My research focuses on trust and control of smart product design, human-AI interaction, privacy and data ethics, and co-design for service and policy.
Research topics
- Sociology
- Computer Science
- Artificial Intelligence
- Political Science
- Social Science
- Human–computer interaction
- World Wide Web
- Law
- Epistemology
- Public relations
Selected publications
2021 · 66 citations
1st authorCorrespondingSpeculative design, critical design, and other alternative designs have emerged as popular approaches and burgeoning traditions within HCI and design research. While examples of this work abound, comparatively little theory exists for grasping alternative designs, and for explicating their relation to other types of design and to design in general. In response this paper develops the key concepts of progressional design, frictional design, and design as prefiguration. The progressional conceptua…
CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · 2022-04-28 · 56 citations
articleOpen accessSenior authorThe increased adoption of smart home cameras (SHCs) foregrounds issues of surveillance, power, and privacy in homes and neighborhoods. However, questions remain about how people are currently using these devices to monitor and surveil, what the benefits and limitations are for users, and what privacy and security tensions arise between primary users and other stakeholders. We present an empirical study with 14 SHC users to understand how these devices are used and integrated within everyday life…
2023-07-10 · 38 citations
preprintOpen accessSenior authorWe use a design workbook of speculative scenarios as a values elicitation activity with 14 participants. The workbook depicts use case scenarios with smart home camera technologies that involve surveillance and uneven power relations. The scenarios were initially designed by the researchers to explore scenarios of privacy and surveillance within three social relationships involving “primary” and “non-primary” users: Parents-Children, Landlords-Tenants, and Residents-Domestic Workers. When the sc…
2023 · 38 citations
Despite the central role that stories play in social movement-building, they are difficult to sustainably document for many reasons. To explore this challenge, this paper describes the design of a community-based conversational storytelling agent (CSA) to document digital stories of housing insecurity. Building on insights from an ongoing grassroots project, the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, we share how a study initially focused on CSA-support opened an investigation of the role that artificia…
The Entoptic Field Camera as Metaphor-Driven Research-through-Design with AI Technologies
2023-04-19 · 30 citations
preprintOpen accessArtificial intelligence (AI) technologies are widely deployed in smartphone photography; and prompt-based image synthesis models have rapidly become commonplace. In this paper, we describe a Research-through-Design (RtD) project which explores this shift in the means and modes of image production via the creation and use of the Entoptic Field Camera. Entoptic phenomena usually refer to perceptions of floaters or bright blue dots stemming from the physiological interplay of the eye and brain. We…
Recent grants
CHS: Small: Multidisciplinary Design Approaches for Privacy and Security
NSF · $485k · 2020–2025
Frequent coauthors
- 21 shared
Eric Paulos
University of California, Berkeley
- 12 shared
William Odom
Simon Fraser University
- 9 shared
Jesse Josua Benjamin
Lancaster University
- 8 shared
Nick Merrill
University of California, Berkeley
- 8 shared
Kristina Andersen
Eindhoven University of Technology
- 8 shared
Richmond Y. Wong
Georgia Institute of Technology
- 7 shared
Ron Wakkary
Eindhoven University of Technology
- 6 shared
William Gaver
Education
- 2015
PhD Human-Computer Interaction, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Awards & honors
- NSF CAREER Award
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