CSULB Immersive Design Research Lab · Researcher · 2026–Present
Ongoing research into how designed environments shape attention, perception, and human experience.
Research in Context
Designing beyond the screen
Most of my work in UX has focused on digital interfaces: screens, systems, and the behaviors that happen within them.
Joining the Immersive Design Research Lab has given me an opportunity to think about experience at a different scale.
IDRL explores the relationship between technology, space, and human experience, using both high- and low-tech environments as places for design research. The lab brings together design, psychology, technology, architecture, behavioral science, and other disciplines to investigate how people interact with the environments around them.
This work connects closely to the questions that have shaped my research interests: What do people notice? What shapes how they experience a space? And how can design influence what happens next?
The Questions
What happens when the environment becomes the interface?
My work in IDRL is helping me think beyond traditional screen-based interaction and how people interact with their surroundings.
This raises questions around:
Attention
What draws people in, and what causes them to look, listen, move, or engage?
Perception
How does the design of a space influence what people notice and how they interpret an experience?
Interaction
How can movement, sound, physical space, and technology become part of an interaction?
Human experience
What makes an environment feel engaging, curious, calming, collaborative, or meaningful?
The Project
!! Research in progress !!
I'm currently contributing to my first project with IDRL, so the work is still developing.
The project is part of IDRL's broader approach to active design research, where making and research happen alongside one another rather than as separate stages. The lab describes these environments as spaces that can both stimulate and read human behavior, creating opportunities to study learning and response in real-world simulations.
Current Stage:
Research → Exploration → Making → Testing → Iteration
Purpose-driven at heart, I build products part of something greater ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧