Dr John Fass
Title
Senior Lecturer in User Experience Design MA
College
London College of Communication
Email address
Tags
Researcher Research
Biography
John Fass is a designer, researcher and Course Leader, MA User Experience Design at LCC. He is also a Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the RCA. John has a background in designing for Interaction and Interfaces. His work in design has included working for lntamatlonal clients such as Arup, TED, Universal Music, Exxon and Huawei. John has lived and worked in London, Milan and Brussels. Exhibiting at museums and galleries including The Photographers Gallery, FACT, Moderna Museet and Bozar.As a researcher, his interests include the role for designing digital experiences, cultures of technology production and the politics of digital interfaces. He has presented research at national and International conferences, such as CHI, NordlCHI, DIS and IEEE Vis, on topics including: dlgital news, internet culture, all citation methods, data visualisation and design research.
John ls a Fellow of the RSA and member of the Design Research Society. John has been a visiting lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, Leicester University, ECAL+EPFL and Bauhaus Oassau. At the Royal College of Art, he runs the De Computation elective for the Information Experience Design programme. John completed his BA (Hons) in Photography, Film, Video and Animation at West Surrey College of Art and Design and holds an MRes with Distinction in Information Environments from the London College of Communication. He completed his PhD, which was AHRC funded at the Royal College of Art in 2018.
His most recent research work uses design methods, materials and processes to elicit personal interpretations of dlgital experiences. This has involved asking people to draw comic book versions of their browser history and create physical models of their digital social networks. Mediation is implied whenever we use computers. In the same way that our understanding of the human brain is mediated by MRI Imaging technology, digital interfaces mediate our perceptions of ourselves, our friends and the world around us.
This places digital experiences at the heart of human life. People often find digital experiences frustrating and confusing, because they can be difficult to observe and are often dellvered through complex, fragmented interfaces and interactions. Deploying design to configure the set of relations that guide our connection with digital technologies means conducting research at the junction of human perceptions and digita lsystems. My research is therefore human centred and outwardfacing. I have carried out field work on the street and in private offices with critical attention to how people and social groups constitute society.
The providers of digital services have unprecedented insight into people's actions, beliefs, relatlonships and habits. An additional focus for my research is thus the power dynamic at work when people interact with digital products.