HCC Seminar Series: Augmenting Designer Capabilities

Abstract

Designers today have access to a growing number of advanced computational tools across the design process. While many tools have greatly improved design work efficiency, most have digitized previously done processes or have automated specific tasks. New tools and techniques are emerging that shift the tools from digital versions of hand-done processes to systems that take on their own agency and facilitate co-creation with the designer. As we develop more tools that act like design collaborators, we need to understand better how such digital collaborators can work effectively with designers and how designers can learn to collaborate. In this talk, I will describe some of my team’s prior and current work, exploring how new design tools can act more as design collaborators. I’ll then conclude with a vision of future design tools and systems that can further augment designers’ capabilities toward solving increasingly challenging problems.

Biography

Nikolas Martelaro is an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. His lab focuses on augmenting designer's capabilities through new technology and design methods. His goal to develop new ways to support designers stems from his experience creating interactive and intelligent products. Nik blends a background in product design methods, interaction design, human-robot interaction, and mechatronic engineering to build tools and methods that allow designers to understand people better and create more human-centered products. Before moving to the HCII, he was a researcher in the Digital Experiences group at the Accenture Technology Labs. Nik graduated with a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford's Center for Design Research, where he was co-advised by Larry Leifer and Wendy Ju.