Sara Ljungblad

saral (at) sics (dot) se

In March 2011 I started a three year funding to conduct my research at a design firm in Gohenburg - Lots Design. The overall project involves sorting out knowledge about specific experiential qualities and how to implement this knowledge in a design process. I will learn from consumer and leisure related qualites and apply them in a workcontext, which is novel perspective on my previous research.

I have been responsible for SICS workpackage in the EU project LIREC during 2010, partly 2011, and worked in the project 2008 to investigate robotic designs for everyday life and conducting user studies. The work has included ethics persectives on robotic designs and issues concerning how to make succesful user centred robot design. We have held 2 workshops at Nordichi (2008 and 2010) focusing on design challenges such as robotic myths.

I am also associated with Mobile Life, and do research that concerns novel mobile applications, especially for digital camera technology. Overall I am interested in experience-centred perspectives and in ethics of technology development.

In spring 2008 I did an internship at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK and conducted a study of the camera device called Sensecam in the Socio-Digital Systems Group. This was a research collaboration within the Mobile Life Centre.

i have worked at the Viktoria Institute for several years (in Gothenburg), pursuing my Ph.D thesis. The thesis "Beyond Users" was successfully defended at Stockholm University in April 2008. Bill Gaver from Goldsmith's University of London was the opponent.

My Ph.D, focused especially on how to take design inspiration from experiences that are "analogous" to what a potential technology design could achieve. This way, existing meaningful experience can guide future designs. For example, I have been working with an idea of sensor-based photography, where sensor data would visualy affect pictures as they were taken. To understand how to design for a meaningful and engaging digital photographic experience, we learned from a specific type of amateur photographers called Lomographers. Their specific interest in analogous photography could guide our design, but our result was still a novel photography experience. I have also been working with robotic and agent applicatons in a similar manner, focusing on peoples' existing experiences of having pets to learn about potential interesting robot designs. Overall, my research approach is related to design techniques such as "extreme users" and "analogous experiences",  used by the design consultancy firm IDEO. My work especially involves how to take inspiration from people that are not intended as users, but that can guide the designprocess becuse they are familiar with certain kinds of experiences.

Previous projects