Dr Alejandra Mery Keitel

Research Interests

Alejandra believes that research is the foundation of building new knowledge and solutions in design practice. Alejandra practices independent research at exploration levels, reviewing leading academic literature and other outputs discussing the state of the art in Human-Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, Innovation, and Product Design. Alejandra can also undertake independent and collaborative empirical research by effectively formulating and studying problem spaces, designing research plans, collecting and analysing data, and reporting findings in a scholarly way.

She started doing research in academia in 2005 when joining, as a part-time researcher, the Prospective and Technological Innovation Program (ProteinLab), a university‐based research program at UTEM (in Chile). Alejandra joined this research program as she was interested in their interdisciplinary and empirical approach to research, exploring problem and solution spaces in areas as diverse as Product Design, Social Innovation, Telecommunications, Internet of Things, and Interaction Design, with a human-centred focus on digital technologies.

In 2008, Alejandra felt the need to improve her research skills and moved to Australia to pursue a PhD in Interaction Design. She wanted to explore and develop new research methods to study the impact of interactive technologies on users of public spaces – specifically, Alejandra researched museum audience experiences with interactive exhibits through three field‐based case studies using mostly qualitative user experience research methods. These methods included observations, interviews, surveys, participatory design, and concept testing; she adapted and redesigned a number of data collection techniques to better suit the study’s experiential focus. Ultimately, based on her research findings, Alejandra proposed a framework for the study and design of better interactive experiences in these public contexts.

Throughout her work in the last 20 years, both teaching and researching in the field of Interaction Design, Alejandra has been exploring the influence that interactive technologies have on people's experiences within technologically-enhanced public environments, with particular emphasis on social implications. Alejandra has presented and published her research work in several academic instances, including the University-Industry Interaction Conference UIIN (paper presented in 2019), the Australian Computer‐Human Interaction Conference OZCHI (papers presented in 2008 and 2011), the International Journal of the Inclusive Museum (journal article published in 2010), and the UTS DAB LAB Research Gallery (interactive exhibition presented in 2009).

Lately, and particularly after the 2020 pandemic, which flipped everybody’s lives upside down, Alejandra has also been interested in researching students’ experiences with emerging technologies in the context of their individual and collective learning spaces, both physical and digital. In this area, she has been collaborating with Dr Martin Bliemel (TDI, UTS) in researching the experiences of students of several 94663 Navigating Entrepreneurial Ecosystems cohorts and disseminating their findings through a book chapter (currently in press).

The emergence of new technologies and their potential impact and beneficial implications on the wide variety of outputs within the interaction design practice has been a particular interest of Alejandra since the beginning of her academic career. In particular, she would like to explore learning spaces further as a context of individual and social development and the role that emerging technologies have on students’ experiences.