Will Odom

Teaching & research interests

• Slow interaction and temporal design
• Digital possessions
• Internet of things
• Domestic computing
• Digital fabrication
• Research through design
• Speculative design
• User experience design

Dr. William Odom is Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, where he is founder and director of the Homeware Lab. His research group takes an interdisciplinary, collaborative, creative, and design-oriented approach to Human-Computer Interaction research.  

His work has been published in over 120 peer-reviewed publications at venues including the ACM CHI, DIS, Ubicomp, Creativity & Cognition, CSCW conferences, and the journal Design Issues. He is the co-recipient of 7 best paper awards (CHI 2011, Ubicomp 2011, DIS 2012, CHI 2014, DIS 2018, DIS 2018, CHI 2019) and 9 best paper honorable mention awards (CHI 2010, CHI 2013, CHI 2016, DIS 2016, DIS 2016, CHI 2018, DIS ’19, CHI ’20, DIS ‘20). Please see my lab’s Publications or my Google Scholar profile for more details.

His work on the Technology Heirlooms project in collaboration with Microsoft Research received a silver international design excellence award (IDEA) for design research from the Industrial Designers Society of America. He won the Imagine Cup Design competition in Interaction Design held at the Louvre in Paris, France. He holds a Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Australia, a Design United Research Fellow in the Netherlands, and a Banting Fellow in Canada.

The Homeware lab is a state-of-the-art design research lab with dedicated support for digital fabrication, electronics prototyping, finishing, assembly, and documentation for batch producing research products and prototypes. We like to design, build, and make things. Our group specializes in the areas of research through design, interaction design, and tangible computing. Our research investigates the changing nature of interaction design in response to the increasing role technology plays in mediating everyday practices like reminiscence, self-exploration, social connection, the making of home life, and so on. We are interested in using design to inquire into how longer-term human-technology and human-data relations can be fostered. In the spirit of design research, we aim to be reflective and generative. We design new computational things and systems, and study them in the context of people’s everyday lives. We often also develop new methods for better supporting the practice of design research.

Our studio prides itself on a strong collaborative culture with a friendly, engaging, and highly creative atmosphere. New graduate students will work on projects that include digital fabrication with hybrid materials, designing ’the things’ of the internet of things, slow interaction design, approach to working with data as a design material. Please contact Dr. William Odom at wodom@sfu.ca to express you interest in a position as a master’s or PhD student.

• William Odom, Jordan White, Samuel Barnett, Nico Brand, Henry Lin, Minyoung Yoo, Tal Amram. 2024. Capra: Making Use of Multiple Perspectives for Capturing, Noticing and Revisiting Hiking Experiences Over Time. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24). ACM, Article 804, 1–27.
• Jordan White, William Odom, Nico Brand, Ce Zhong. 2023. Memory Tracer & Memory Compass: Investigating Personal Location Histories as a Design Material for Everyday Reminiscence. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23), ACM, pp. 1-19.
• Nico Brand, William Odom, Samuel Barnett. 2023. Envisioning and Understanding Orientations to Introspective AI: Exploring a Design Space with Meta. Aware. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23), ACM, pp. 1-18.
• William Odom, Erik Stolterman, Amy Yo Sue Chen. 2022. Extending a theory of slow technology for design through artifact analysis. Human–Computer Interaction 37.2 (2022): 150-179.
• Doenja Oogjes, William Odom, Pete Fung. 2018. Designing for an other Home: Expanding and Speculating on Different Forms of Domestic Life. In Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '18), 13-326. 
• William Odom, Ron Wakkary, Youn-kyung Lim, Audrey Desjardins, Bart Hengeveld, Richard Banks. 2016. From Research Prototype to Research Product. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2549-2561. 

• PH.D. in Human-Computer Interaction,
  School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University (2014)
• Fulbright Scholar
  Design Department, Queensland College of Art
  Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia (2009)
• M.S. Human-Computer Interaction Design
  School of Informatics, Indiana University (2008)
• B.S. Informatics w/ distinction
  Minor: Information Technology, Music
  School of Informatics, Indiana University (2006)
• B.A. Folklore / Ethnomusicology
  College of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University (2006)