John Zimmerman

I am an interaction designer and researcher with a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor at the Human-Computer Interaction and at the School of Design.

I have three main research areas: (i) the design of products that play an explicit role in the identity construction process, helping people become the person they desire to be through product interaction; (ii) the application of research-through-design as a design research practice within the HCI research community; and (iii) the design of mixed-initiative interfaces that both leverage the individual strengths of human and machine intelligence and address the communication breakdowns from the two distinctly different thinking processes.

I teach interaction design and HCI methods with a focus on finding rich product opportunities.

Before joining Carnegie Mellon University, I was a senior researcher at Philips Research. While at Philips, I designed interactive television products and intelligent devices for the home consumer market.