Pablo Paredes on Discomfort by Design
BCNM alum Pablo E. Paredes has a new TED talk out on Discomfort by Design.
Pablo joined the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland in August 2022 as an assistant professor.
His research focuses on subtle interventions to reduce stress, such as guiding people to breathe slowly with subtle haptic cues from office or car furniture, and passive sensing of affective and physiological biomarkers derived from existing devices (such as computers, phones, etc.).
Paredes plans to launch a startup on digital well-being products, which is a spin-off of his current lab.
In this talk, Pablo discusses how discomfort is the basis of learning to cope and developing resilience. Designers and people, in general, should not try to always eliminate discomfort but rather embrace discomfort in daily activities to help people grow, or even embed discomfort in new technologies or products, to help people develop resilience and self-efficacy.
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