Judith Gregory | Assistant Professor
At the IIT Institute of Design, Judith leads Wellness Experience Research in collaboration with the DOSSIA Consortium. She is Principal Investigator (faculty lead) for Rethinking Health, ID’s healthcare initiative and Faculty Co-Coordinator of the Doctor of Philosophy. Judith has more than 15 years health informatics experience, contributing to a wide range of multi-disciplinary projects in design of health information systems and technology design, including acting as Co-PI in the Electronic Health Record iterative prototyping project of Kaiser Permanente (1993-98). She was awarded an Honorary Professorship in Human-Centered Informatics, Aalborg University, Denmark in March 2009. At ID, Judith has responsibility in the ‘Understanding Users’ core area and is Co-coordinator of the Doctor of Philosophy in Design program. Previously, Judith was Associate Professor, Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo (2001-2006; Professor II, Oslo School of Architecture & Design (2001-05); and Research Associate, Clinical Information Systems, Kaiser Permanente Southern California Regional HQ (1993-98). While at University of Oslo, Judith was also a core faculty in the dual International MSc-Informatics and Master in Public Health programs that are ongoing capacity-building collaborations between the medical and computer science faculties of the University of Oslo and universities and Ministries of Health in Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Ethiopia and India in relation to the open source Health Information Systems Project in developing countries. Judith holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of California at San Diego where she was a researcher in the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition. She is a specialist in video ethnography, user-centered design research, co-design and participatory design approaches, and qualitative research methodologies, with more than twenty-five years experience in a variety of research settings and networks. Judith is active in international design research and doctoral design education, participatory design, health informatics, science & technology studies and cultural historical activity theory conferences.
download full curriculum vitae [pdf 136k]
Past Projects
Human-Centered Informatics: An Incomplete Utopian Project (video will be online soon)
Inaugural Lecture for Honorary Professorship, Human-Centered Informatics: An Incomplete Utopian Project, Aalborg University, March18, 2009.
Design for Emotions: 2 guest lectures, J. Gregory moderator, April 7, 2009.
The Basics of Design for Emotions,' Pieter Desmet, TU Delft & 'Surprise and Humor in Product Design, ' Geke Ludden, Telematics Instituut.
Igira, F.T. & Gregory, J. 2009. Cultural Historical Activity Theory.
Chapter in: Dwivedi, Y.K., Lal, B., Williams, M.D., Schneberger, S.L. and Wade, M. (editors). Handbook of Research on Contemporary Theoretical Models in Information Systems, pp. 434-454. Information Science Reference/IGI Global: Hershey NY, 2009.
Gregory, J. 2009. A complex model for international and inter-cultural collaboration in health information
Gregory, J. Chapter in: Poggenpohl, S. and K. Sato (editors), Design Integrations: Research and Collaboration. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 247-273.
Rethinking Health & Wellness Experience Research (2007-2009)
RETHINKING HEALTH AT THE INSTITUTE OF DESIGN
The Wellness Experience Research Workshop is an ongoing project that is part of ID's Rethinking Health initiative that began with a generous personal gift from Robert Pew, Chairman of the Board, Steelcase Corporation, for the start-up phase 2007-2008.
WELLNESS EXPERIENCE RESEARCH
This is an ongoing human-centered design research project carried out with corporate, medical laboratory & personal health record technology and community health partners. Altogether, the workshop aims to prototype a user-research methods toolkit and initial model for understanding the effects and potentials of innovations to improve wellness experience and health knowledge for quality of life. Partners include the DOSSIA Consortium, Pitney-Bowes, Oregon Medical Laboratories and the Cbicago Hispanic Health Coalition.
During 2008-2009, the Wellness Experience Research workshop has explored people’s attitudes, activities and knowledge regarding their health and wellness within several contexts, including the workplace, home and family, and healthcare interactions. A parallel goal has been to prototype a portable methods toolkit for ongoing inquiry into people’s lived health and wellness experiences.
Research Interests
Rethinking Health initiative
- Wellness Experience Research
- Transformational Multi-Sectoral Approaches
Social theory approaches in design
- Understanding socio-cultural practices as the basis for understanding experience
- Design for negotiation of disparate logics
- Reciprocal understanding across contexts
Design practice
- Understanding how design practices and processes are changing
- Transdisciplinarity and open collaboration
- Designing for many ‘universes of one’ and for emotions and motivations in design
- Design for translational science—getting new scientific knowledge into people’s lives
Design-oriented methods development
- Generating design knowledge through participatory design and co-design
- Research strategies to take up potentials of digital interactive media
- Tools to be shared amongst design researchers, practitioners and technology developers
