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Wanjun Chu

Adjunct Associate Professor

My research focuses on design for sustainable behavior at individual and socio-technical system levels, as well as exploring the implication of A3 (Automation, Autonomous sys, AI) in products and services to foster sustainability and circularity.

Design researcher

Design, to me, embodies two folds of meanings. It is creating artefacts that offer elegant experiences to users, while also serving as a means to transform the world into a better place — an art of fostering changes towards a sustainable future.

I am a design researcher with a keen interest in exploring novel design theories and methods to understand and shape the sustainability implications of products and systems in people’s everyday life. I have a cross-disciplinary background in Interaction Design (Bachelor of Arts), Sustainable Development (Master of Science), and Design for Sustainability (PhD).

This cross-disciplinary background enables me to understand and investigate the complex dynamics between users, products, and interaction contexts, as well as to explore the potential implications, both desired and unintended, that emerging technologies may introduce in people’s transitions towards sustainability.

In general, my research interests and expertise cover various topics related to design for sustainability and circularity, which comprise the following themes:

Design for Sustainable Behavior Transitions at both individual and socio-technical system levels through multiple theoretical lenses (Activity Theory, Behavior Psychology, Social Practice Theory) from my PhD work.

  • Sustainable food consumption and packaging design from IAPRI research scholarship & visiting scholar at the Department of Industrial Design, RMIT, Australia.
  • Sustainable Interaction Design (S-HCI and Attachment Framework) from my graduate thesis work with the People and Computing Lab at UZH, Switzerland.
  • Design education pedagogical research from LiU Pedagogical Development Funds (PUG)
  • Design for human-centered autonomous product and service systems from my work at R&D, Scania AB, Volkswagen Group.
  • Co-creating AIDA modular robot for promoting HRI, sustainability, and circularity education in collaboration with LEAD start-up incubators, Sweden.

Teaching

In addtion to research, I am engaged in a wide range of teaching activities, ranging from course management and planning, examination, supervision, lectures, labs, seminars, creation of new courses, to pedagogical development at both undergraduate and graduate levels. My teaching subjects mainly covers three domains: design for sustainability, user-centered design, interaction design & UX.

From 2021 to 2023, as the course lead and examiner, I am responsible for the following courses: User Driven Product Development, Thinking with Representations, Advanced Interaction Design, Interactive Products. Prior to that, I co-created the graduate level course - Design for Sustainable Everyday Life with Prof. Renee Wever (IEI).

I was employed as a full-time Universitetslektor at the Division of Human-centered System (HCS), Department of Computer and Information Science, LiU, between 2021 and 2023. In 2023, I started a new position at R&D, Scania AB, Sweden, where I focus on designing product-service systems of future autonomous transport solutions. I am also actively involved in various HA3I projects (Automation, autonomous systems, AI).

Publications

My thesis

2024

Wanjun Chu, Johan Blomkvist, Ludwig Halvorsen (2024) Experience prototyping with an educational robot platform: development and pedagogical reflection from an interaction design course
Elena Jiménez Romanillos, Wanjun Chu, Renee Wever (2024) Take out (the) packaging: Analysis of a Returnable Packaging Service
Shilpi Reema Rath, Wanjun Chu, Nazli Terzioglu Özkan, Renee Wever (2024) Designing Interventions for Sustainability: A Conceptual Framework for Information Scoping in the Design Research Phase EcoDesign for Sustainable Products, Services and Social Systems I, p. 429-446 (Chapter in book) Continue to DOI

2023

June Kyong Trondsen, Casper Boks, Wanjun Chu, Babak Nemat, Renee Wever (2023) The Role of Shame and Guilt in Designing Anti-Littering Interventions

2022

Wanjun Chu, Renee Wever (2022) BEHAVIOURS, PRACTICES, ACTIVITIES, DOINGS: MAKING THEM SUSTAINABLE THROUGH DESIGN Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education (E&PDE 2022) (Conference paper)

Research

Prototyping Platform for Human-AI Interaction Design 

An increasing number of AI-featured products, such as smart homes, delivery robots, and self-driving vehicles are permeating people’s everyday lives in all aspects. Interaction designers are confronting the challenge of incorporating emerging AI techniques to redefine and improve the UX of interactive products.

 With the goal to bridge the emerging AI techniques and user-centered design methods, in this project, we built a semi-autonomous robotic platform, AIDA, for designers to fast prototype AI-featured user experiences. Three features made AIDA distinctive:

  • Contextuality and In-situ perspectives: Allows designers to directly experience (through vision, audition, tactition) how the autonomous system perceives the world in embodied and situated contexts.
  • Flexibility: Apply Woz and marionette techniques with user enactment methods to rapidly prototype the behavior of autonomous system.
  • Accessibility and tinkerability: Improvise with available materials, both in terms of hardware and software, to build prototypes (similar to Lego concepts).

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