Center for Design Labs

The Experience Design Lab explores new approaches for how we design systems, environments, and services with a focus on how humans experience concrete situations. Some of our recent research focused on leveraging mobile eye-tracking glasses in conjunction with direct observation and interviews to integrate quantitative and qualitative data in an inquiry on how humans experience urban environments. An ongoing NSF-funded four-year project sees the lab investigate new forms of human-robot collaboration in future workplace environments. In a current collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston we are developing two data visualizations for the museum’s new Center for Netherlandish Art, that complement the visitor experience of artworks in the gallery with an insightful perspective on data from the The Hague-based Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis (team: Kristian Kloeckl, Pedro Cruz, Shan Wei, Niyati Kothari)

Experience Design Lab is directed by CfD Faculty member Kristian Kloeckl.

The Co-Laboratory for Data Impact focuses on narrative data strategies and is committed to advancing civic-oriented and impactful visual storytelling for issues of public urgency in the areas of diversity, transparency, and sustainability. The lab serves as a university hub for faculty, staff, and students looking to communicate visually with data in the public sphere and for external partners of various kinds seeking expertise in this domain. Through creative practice and research, the lab contributes to the fields of design and data journalism, exploring areas such as visual poetics, metaphors, and evidentiary aesthetics. We aim to expand the vocabulary of public data storytelling by using the wellspring of a broad range of approaches: journalistic, design-centric, and artistic. We aim at facilitating sense-making around digital information, while providing the tools for public audiences to understand the world in new impactful ways. We value quantitative rigor and data integrity while risking innovative, poetic and metaphoric data portrayals.