My name is Rob St. Amant, and I'm an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University. I received a Ph.D. in computer science in 1996 from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where I did work in artificial intelligence (AI). Over the past several years I've been doing research and teaching in the fields of AI, human-computer interaction (HCI), and intelligent user interfaces. My official Web page gives more information about what I do for a living.

As should be obvious from my background and experience, I am not a professional designer in any conventional sense. The essays on these Web pages are mainly informal reflections on design, based on my extra-curricular reading in architecture and design, my research on cognition and tool use, and my knowledge of basic concepts in HCI.

Much of the material that forms the basis for these essays is taken from students' accounts of poorly designed objects and environments. I teach an undergraduate introduction to computers for non-majors, essentially an advanced computer literacy course, in which I ask the students to give me examples of poor design they've encountered in their everyday lives. The examples range from mundane to exotic, from frustrating to very funny. I've accumulated almost a thousand of these examples by now, which has prompted me to write about them.

The background image for these pages was kindly provided by Claudia Rebola Winegarden, Ph.D.