Jodi L. Forlizzi is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

and Geschke Director, as well as an interaction designer and researcher, at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

. On August 29, 2022, Forlizzi was named a Herbert A. Simon Professor at Carnegie Mellon. Her research ranges from understanding the limits of human attention to understanding how products and services evoke social behavior. Current research interests include interaction design, assistive, social, and aesthetic technology projects and systems, and notification systems. In 2014, Forlizzi was inducted into the CHI Academy for her notable works and contributions to the field of human-computer interaction.

Education

Forlizzi obtained her

Bachelor of Fine Arts A Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) is a standard undergraduate degree for students for pursuing a professional education in the visual, fine or performing arts. It is also called Bachelor of Visual Arts (BVA) in some cases. Background The Bachelor ...

in Illustration from the Philadelphia College of Art. She obtained her

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

Interaction Design Interaction design, often abbreviated as IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." Beyond the digital aspect, interaction design is also useful when creating physical (non-digital) produ ...

from Carnegie Mellon University in 1997 and her

Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

. in Design in Human-Computer Interaction in 2007 also from Carnegie Mellon University.

Career

Forlizzi began working as an information designer for the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science in 1985, while still an undergraduate. to 1995. She then did

design research Design research was originally constituted as primarily research into the process of design, developing from work in design methods, but the concept has been expanded to include research embedded within the process of design, including work concer ...

for the Novum Design Center at Carnegie Mellon University (1995–97). She was appointed an assistant professor of the HCI Institute in early 2000, becoming a full professor in 2014. Between 2007 and 2010, she was the A. Nico Habermann Junior Faculty Chair in Computer Science. She has worked as an innovator and

project manager A project manager is a professional in the field of project management. Project managers have the responsibility of the planning, procurement and execution of a project, in any undertaking that has a defined scope, defined start and a defined f ...

of E-Lab LLC in Chicago. She has also done consulting work for major companies, including

General Motors The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...

Disney Research Disney Research is a network of research labs supporting The Walt Disney Company. Its purpose is to pursue scientific and technological innovation to advance the company's broad media and entertainment efforts. It has facilities in Los Angeles, Z ...

, Willow Garage,

BodyMedia BodyMedia was a medical and consumer technology company headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Incorporated in 1999, BodyMedia developed wearable body monitoring systems. In April 2013, BodyMedia was acquired by Jawbone for an estimated $100 ...

, University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering,

University of Pennsylvania Law School The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (also known as Penn Law or Penn Carey Law) is the law school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is among the most selective and olde ...

, University of Pennsylvania Linguistic Data Consortium, Luton Corporation, and Nurseweek. Forlizzi is a co-founder of Pratter.us since 2014, a health care

startup A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...

aimed at enabling employees to search and save money on medical care by zip code before the time of service.

Research

Big Data and Design

Forlizzi works on how the

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

from smartphones and users’ online behaviors can be used for lifelogging and help people to understand their identity and legacy. She and her colleague conducted a research on understanding how systems may play a role in storing people’s legacy and digital record. She also studied how people worldwide perceive virtual possessions, such as

SMS Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...

and

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

archives or

Google search Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the most-visited website in the world. The ...

history.

Service Design

Service design is also one of Forlizzi’s research interests. She has done studies on service recovery, adaptive service design, and how to personalize service delivery to help people meet their goals in using a service. Some of her contributions for service design are promoting service design as a practice for interaction design and reducing robot service breakdowns.

Human-Robot Interaction

Forlizzi’s work in human-robot interaction includes designing robots to assist elders, human-robot interactions for tangible robots and medical robots. In her study about robot presence and human honesty, she and her colleagues found that there is no difference in perceived authority of human and robot, but people felt less guilty after cheating in the presence of a robot. She also studied the social impact of home-cleaning robots.

Designing Educational Games

For educational games, Forlizzi was involved in Playtesting, a three-stage workshop for getting people to play a game to see if it produces the experience for which it was designed. The first workshop used playtesting to explore a design space. The second workshop refines an existing design, and the last workshop focuses on persuading stakeholders. Between 2014 and 2017, she and

Bruce M. McLaren Bruce Martin McLaren (born 1959 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an American researcher, scientist and author. He is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, head of the McLearn Lab, and a former P ...

designed, developed and experimented with an educational game called Decimal Point.

Awards

Her awards include the Carnegie Mellon School of Design Merit Award (1996 and 1997), Design and Emotion Slow Glow Award for Excellence in Design Research (2010), Excellence Award from the

Walter Reed Army Medical Center The Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC)known as Walter Reed General Hospital (WRGH) until 1951was the U.S. Army's flagship medical center from 1909 to 2011. Located on in the District of Columbia, it served more than 150,000 active and ret ...

on Robotics in Rehabilitation (2011) and the Alan Newell Award for Research Excellence from Carnegie Mellon University (2013). In 2014, she was inducted into the

ACM ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing * ...

SIGCHI Academy.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Forlizzi, Jodi Carnegie Mellon University faculty Carnegie Mellon University alumni University of the Arts (Philadelphia) alumni