Faculty Fellow, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design
Faculty Fellow
Shital Desai is an assistant professor in interaction design at the School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design and heads the CFI-funded Social and Technological Systems (SaTS) lab at York University.
She is an interaction designer and human-centred designer; her practice, teaching and research focussing on inclusive and accessible design. Her research addresses issues that focus on UN Sustainable Development Goals using design research methods, human-centred design, systems design and speculative design approaches. To that extent, she cocreates accessible technologies, services and governance policies for marginalized demographics and global health. Her current research projects focus on giving agency to vulnerable populations such as older adults and children through design of interactive systems. She is interested in exploring the role of emerging technologies as a tool to facilitate this agency. To advance these efforts, she collaborates with researchers in health science, global health and engineering to provide a holistic design solution to global issues. Shital is a member of the WHO dementia knowledge exchange peer review network, where she shares her expert knowledge on dementia and technology in strengthening policies, service planning and health and social care systems for dementia. She is passionate about training students in systems design and design thinking methods to address societal issues around accessibility and inclusivity.
She is affiliated with the Sensorium, Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA) and YU-CARE research centres at York University, Dementia and Technology Engagement (DATE) lab at TRI UHN and Inclusive Media and Design Centre (IMDC) at the Toronto Metropolitan University.
Shital is the recipient of several awards and grants, including the 2021-22 AMPD Research award, the 2021 Petro Canada Young Innovator Award and tri-council grants from SSHRC, CIHR and NSERC. She received an NSERC Discovery Grant in 2021 to design and develop adaptive assistive technologies for people with dementia. She collaborates with several interdisciplinary researchers nationally and internationally.
Research keywords:
Global health; co-creation and co-design; humanity-centred design; systems design; design futures; interaction design; aging; assistive technologies
Themes | Planetary Health |
Status | Active |
Related Work | |
Updates |
Student Opportunity FW23-24 - Impact of Human Behaviour on AMR RAY | 22 August 2023
Student Opportunity FW23-24 - Intergenerational Friendly Communities for the Seniors and Youth in Rexdale and Jamestown RAY Assistant | 19 July 2023 Student Opportunity FW23-24 - Assistive Mixed Reality Design RAY Assistant | 19 July 2023 Recap – Fact-based optimism and other lessons from Bruce Mau's first Massive Action seminar | 5 January 2023 |
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