James Pierce

About James Pierce

I am an Associate Professor of Interaction Design at the University of Washington Seattle, where I direct the Material Interactions Lab. I am also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Human Centered Design and Engineering Department at University of Washington, a member of the MHCI+D Faculty Group, and a research affiliate of the UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity.I am particularly concerned with new and emerging technologies that mediate between digital and physical materiality such as networked, sensor-enabled, and data-driven Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Funded by the National Science Foundation, my current research addresses trust, control, and inclusivity with interactive consumer products.My research investigates how interfaces mediate human action, perception, and social practices. Methodologically, I use techniques of design prototyping, qualitative methods, and critical perspectives to understand and address social issues connected to computing technology. I have applied this interdisciplinary approach to funded programs of research in several domains, including digital privacy/security and surveillance, environmental sustainability and energy independence, and hyperconnectivity and information overload. I am an NSF CAREER awardee and have published over 50 peer-reviewed and edited articles in journals and conference proceedings spanning the fields of human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, and design research. My work has been awarded 4 Best Paper Awards (top 1% of submissions) and 4 Best Paper Honorable Mention Awards (top 5% of submissions) at the ACM conferences on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), and Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp). I hold a Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University\'s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. I also hold a Master\'s in Human-Computer Interaction / Design from Indiana University Bloomington and a B.S. in Applied Mathematics (CS minor) from the Illinois Institute of Technology, where I began my studies of Design at the Illinois Institute of Design. Previously I was an Assistant Professor of Design at California College of the Arts. Prior to that, I was a lecturer at the UC Berkeley Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation and a Research Scientist at the UC Berkeley CITRIS and Banatao Institute.

Experience

1. Amazon Scholar

   Amazon Web Services (AWS)

   Nov 2024 — Present

   Research and development for trustworthy design patterns for multi-agent AI applications.

Education

• Carnegie Mellon University

  Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Human-Computer Interaction (Computer Science)

  2009 — 2013

• Illinois Institute of Technology

  B.S., Mathematics, Computer Science, Design

  2004 — 2007

• Indiana University Bloomington

  MS, Human-Computer Interaction Design

  2007 — 2009

Skills

• User Research
• Interaction Design
• Qualitative Research
• Contextual Inquiry
• User Experience
• Information Architecture
• Prototyping
• User-Centered Design
• Usability Testing
• Ethnography
• Research Design
• Human Computer Interaction
• Experience Design
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Research