Ron Wakkary

Ron Wakkary is full professor in the Future Everyday cluster. In addition, he is full professor at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University in Canada where he is director of the Interaction Design Research Centre and founder of the Everyday Design Studio.

Wakkary is interested in design-oriented human-computer interaction, tangible computing and the philosophies of technologies through design. Wakkary’s research investigates the changing nature of interaction design in response to everyday design practices in the home and new understandings of human-technology relations. He aims to reflectively create new interaction design exemplars, concepts, and emergent practices of design that help to shape both design and its relations to technologies.

Wakkary considers people as integrally connected with technologies, and specifically as creators and makers rather than passive users or consumers of digital artifacts. He investigates how to design computational things that are radically simple, allowing ‘everyday designers’ to determine how these things fit into their lives and improve upon them. The big idea behind his work is that the artifacts and systems we design are resources rather than finished products.

Wakkary has a background in interaction design, computer science and visual arts.

Often, design research draws on design’s capacity to solve problems. However, using design to create problems, rather than solutions, may be the stranger but wiser choice.”