design lab eric hekler public health technology

Eric Hekler Joins Design Lab Team

Eric Hekler Joins Design Lab Team

Eric Hekler Joins Design Lab Team

UC San Diego Design Lab is excited to welcome Eric Hekler, an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Public Health at UC San Diego.  Hekler hails from Arizona State University where he was an Associate Professor in the School of Nutrition and Health Promotion and the director of the Designing Health Lab.  He has recently joined the Design Lab to work at the intersection of his interests in behavioral science, human-centered design, public health, and control systems engineering.  Specifically, he wants to explore how to successfully identify and develop behavior change interventions to address unmet needs in our rapidly changing societal contexts.

Hekler is also the Director of the Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems at the Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego where he is looking to advance his research through studying the evolving digital technologies that are currently tackling complex health problems spanning individuals, families, communities, social networks, and populations.  

In collaboration with Design Lab faculty and staff, Steven Dow, Eli Aronoff-Spencer, and Michèle Morris, Hekler is focused on securing grants that empower individuals to build scalable solutions that will drive smart and connected communities.  Through leveraging his experience uniting a diversity of voices and perspectives as well as a collaboration with initiatives such as Design for San Diego (D4SD), he is looking forward to creating a sociotechnical platform for individuals to innovate around region-wide challenges such as transportation and housing.  Design for San Diego, led by Steven Dow, Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science, presents advocates and passionate citizens with the unique opportunity to engage in the iterative process of design thinking to create transformative impact.

Additionally, Hekler and Morris are pioneering an effort to design a consulting service for local, national, and international partners who seek to incorporate human-centered design complemented with agile methods into their practices.  The initiative revolves around spearheading workshops, design challenges, and large scale research projects to educate the broader community about human-centered design principles and effective methods of incorporating design thinking to craft meaningful and powerful solutions across a variety of fields and disciplines.

Each of these opportunities provides an avenue for Hekler to directly interface with and support a community of passionate individuals dedicated to achieving real and sustainable behavior change solutions through the integration of human-centered design.  Hekler believes that The Design Lab is an incredible place to contribute to a forward-thinking organization that has a deep understanding of the importance of dynamically adapting solutions to meet the needs of different people and different real-world contexts.

UC San Diego Design Lab is excited to welcome Eric Hekler, an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Public Health at UC San Diego.  Hekler hails from Arizona State University where he was an Associate Professor in the School of Nutrition and Health Promotion and the director of the Designing Health Lab.  He has recently joined the Design Lab to work at the intersection of his interests in behavioral science, human-centered design, public health, and control systems engineering.  Specifically, he wants to explore how to successfully identify and develop behavior change interventions to address unmet needs in our rapidly changing societal contexts.

Hekler is also the Director of the Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems at the Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego where he is looking to advance his research through studying the evolving digital technologies that are currently tackling complex health problems spanning individuals, families, communities, social networks, and populations.  

In collaboration with Design Lab faculty and staff, Steven Dow, Eli Aronoff-Spencer, and Michèle Morris, Hekler is focused on securing grants that empower individuals to build scalable solutions that will drive smart and connected communities.  Through leveraging his experience uniting a diversity of voices and perspectives as well as a collaboration with initiatives such as Design for San Diego (D4SD), he is looking forward to creating a sociotechnical platform for individuals to innovate around region-wide challenges such as transportation and housing.  Design for San Diego, led by Steven Dow, Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science, presents advocates and passionate citizens with the unique opportunity to engage in the iterative process of design thinking to create transformative impact.

Additionally, Hekler and Morris are pioneering an effort to design a consulting service for local, national, and international partners who seek to incorporate human-centered design complemented with agile methods into their practices.  The initiative revolves around spearheading workshops, design challenges, and large scale research projects to educate the broader community about human-centered design principles and effective methods of incorporating design thinking to craft meaningful and powerful solutions across a variety of fields and disciplines.

Each of these opportunities provides an avenue for Hekler to directly interface with and support a community of passionate individuals dedicated to achieving real and sustainable behavior change solutions through the integration of human-centered design.  Hekler believes that The Design Lab is an incredible place to contribute to a forward-thinking organization that has a deep understanding of the importance of dynamically adapting solutions to meet the needs of different people and different real-world contexts.

UC San Diego Design Lab is excited to welcome Eric Hekler, an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Public Health at UC San Diego.  Hekler hails from Arizona State University where he was an Associate Professor in the School of Nutrition and Health Promotion and the director of the Designing Health Lab.  He has recently joined the Design Lab to work at the intersection of his interests in behavioral science, human-centered design, public health, and control systems engineering.  Specifically, he wants to explore how to successfully identify and develop behavior change interventions to address unmet needs in our rapidly changing societal contexts.

Hekler is also the Director of the Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems at the Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego where he is looking to advance his research through studying the evolving digital technologies that are currently tackling complex health problems spanning individuals, families, communities, social networks, and populations.  

In collaboration with Design Lab faculty and staff, Steven Dow, Eli Aronoff-Spencer, and Michèle Morris, Hekler is focused on securing grants that empower individuals to build scalable solutions that will drive smart and connected communities.  Through leveraging his experience uniting a diversity of voices and perspectives as well as a collaboration with initiatives such as Design for San Diego (D4SD), he is looking forward to creating a sociotechnical platform for individuals to innovate around region-wide challenges such as transportation and housing.  Design for San Diego, led by Steven Dow, Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science, presents advocates and passionate citizens with the unique opportunity to engage in the iterative process of design thinking to create transformative impact.

Additionally, Hekler and Morris are pioneering an effort to design a consulting service for local, national, and international partners who seek to incorporate human-centered design complemented with agile methods into their practices.  The initiative revolves around spearheading workshops, design challenges, and large scale research projects to educate the broader community about human-centered design principles and effective methods of incorporating design thinking to craft meaningful and powerful solutions across a variety of fields and disciplines.

Each of these opportunities provides an avenue for Hekler to directly interface with and support a community of passionate individuals dedicated to achieving real and sustainable behavior change solutions through the integration of human-centered design.  Hekler believes that The Design Lab is an incredible place to contribute to a forward-thinking organization that has a deep understanding of the importance of dynamically adapting solutions to meet the needs of different people and different real-world contexts.

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Design Lab member and Visual Arts Professor Pinar Yoldas joins the 2021 Venice Biennale to promote discussion of dying oceans and idea cross-pollination through a global exhibition.

This summer, 112 artists and architectural teams from around the world were invited to the annual Venice Biennale in Italy to create artworks that answer the forward-thinking question: “How will we live together?” Two of the invitees to this prestigious exhibition are from San Diego.

Pinar Yoldas, a multidisciplinary art professor at UC San Diego, took an imaginative look at what the world’s endangered oceans might look like in 30 years, while Daniel López-Pérez, a founding faculty member for the architecture program at the University of San Diego, studied the global dialogue of ideas inside a spherical structure inspired by R. Buckminster Fuller’s geoscope design.
Design@Large UCSD Design Lab

Design@Large Spring 2022


For the first time in the nearly 10-year history of the Design@Large speaker series the UC San Diego Design Lab is partnering with California 100, an initiative focused on identifying and uplifting transformative ideas, people, and projects through research and engagement that accelerate progress towards a shared vision of California’s future over the next century.

**This will be a hybrid event (in-person and remote). Capacity is limited. Please register ahead of time.

TOPICS
- 4/13, Alternative Transportation Futures
- 4/20, Climate Risk Reduction and Technology
- 4/27, Housing Justice and Urban Design
- 5/11, Transborder Regions and Immigrant Integration
- 5/18, Future Prospects in Health Equity and Tech Innovation
- 5/25, The Future of Work and Higher Education

There will be no Design@Large classes on 04/06, 05/04 or 06/01.
There are no speakers on 03/30, but class will still take place for students.
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Meet Member of Postdoctoral Fellowship Program’s Debut Cohort: Jane E

Jane E is part of UCSD’s Computer Science and Engineering’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and is currently a member of  The Design Lab under the guidance of mentor Scott Klemmer. E’s journey to The Design Lab started when she earned her B.S. in Computer Science in 2012 at Princeton, then studied as a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at Stanford University. Along the way, she has worked in the information technology sector for companies like Adobe and Microsoft, and her awards include the Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant. Jane’s research aims to expand the horizons of human creativity by searching for a balanced relationship between humans and computational assistance. 

Be on your best behavior: San Diego is being judged this week

By Phillip Molnar, San Diego Union Tribune

San Diego and Tijuana are throwing a party for just one man this week, and you’ve probably never heard his name.

Montreal native Bertrand Derome, managing director of the World Design Organization, is getting the red carpet treatment across two nations as the cities vie for the title of World Design Capital.

The award means a global spotlight on the region and lots of free advertising. Selected every two years, the Montreal-based World Design Organization picks a different city as its “capital.” Some previous winners have been Seoul, Helsinki, Cape Town and Mexico City. San Diego and Tijuana decided to apply together as a binational region.

The festivities started Sunday night with a jazz concert, light show and chic party for Derome at the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park. There were only about 200 people at the event for a venue that can hold 3,500. The $85 million shell on the San Diego Bay opened in August.

“It’s a great city and an amazing venue. I have to say I’m pretty impressed by the design communities that came together,” Derome said at the event.

The Worst F&#%ing Words Ever

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Benjamin Bergen is a professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego and director of the Language and Cognition Lab, where he studies how our minds compute meaning and how talking interferes with safe driving—among many other things that don’t need to be bleeped. His latest book is What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves. He calls it “a book-length love letter to profanity.” You’ve been warned.
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