Teaching at The New School

I think of teaching as a wonderful arena in which to explore the big questions about human life and interaction that the world challenges us with, and to learn from and with students who bring their own experiences and perspectives to bear. My research projects have been shaped and co-created with my students as collaborators, and I am grateful for the vibrant classroom conversations and questions that have continued to develop my thinking.

I also coordinate the Applied Psychology and Design subject area in the New School Psychology MA program; click on the subject area tab here to learn more.

Current courses

Introduction to Applied Psychology & Design (Fall 2024)

This graduate course provides an overview of how empirical psychological findings and methods can be applied to the design of interfaces, objects, and environments. Students will review how theories of human perception, cognition, and interaction have informed human factors and ergonomics, and how attention to the psychology of individual capacities along with environmental and social factors can inform design. They will also encounter widely used lab and field research methods, including task analysis, usability testing, experimental design, and observational and self-report measures of users’ experience, cognition and affect. Throughout, critical questions about the ethical treatment of humans—both research participants in the design process and the eventual users of what is being designed—and about broader social impacts will be addressed.

Interacting with AI (Spring 2025)

Visualizing Uncertainty (next taught 2025-26)

This seminar brings together data visualization and psychology graduate students to investigate new ways of representing and hypothesizing about data while rigorously questioning what conclusions can legitimately be drawn. How should we think about where the data came from and the methods by which they were generated? What sources of potential measurement error should psychologists and data scientists be concerned about? When can we trust that data collected from nonprobability samples generalize to a full population? When are patterns that emerge in exploratory data visualization trustworthy? How can skepticism and questions about data be communicated with the potential audiences for a visual representation of data? How can we better visualize measurement error and multivariate confidence intervals? Class sessions combine discussion of academic articles with hands-on examination of existing data sets and practical examples. Psychology and data visualization students gain experience in communicating with collaborators with quite different backgrounds and expertise.

Previous courses

Language & Thought

Research Methods in Cognition & Communication

ULEC (undergad cross-disciplinary lecture course): Music & Mind

ULEC: Collaborating In & Beyond Music

Graduate Seminars:

Metaphor and Figurative Language

Social Cognition and Surveys

Discourse and Culture

Concepts

Applied Cognitive Psychology

Psychology and Design (cross-listed with Parsons Design & Technology)