Carl
DiSalvo

General Information

Email:
cdisalvo@gatech.edu
Phone:
(404) 894-2000
Location - Building:
TSRB
Location - Room:
234C
Roles:
Professor (any rank)
Primary Unit:
School of Interactive Computing
Website URL
https://www.ic.gatech.edu/people/carl-disalvo

Details

Degrees with subject and Postdoc Experience:
Degree Type
Postdoctoral Scholar
Subject
Studio for Creative Inqiury / Center for Arts in Society,
Year
2006-2007
Institution
Carnegie Melllon University
Location
Pittsburgh, PA
Degree Type
Ph.D.
Subject
Design
Year
2006
Institution
Carnegie Melllon University
Location
Pittsburgh, PA
Degree Type
Master of Liberal Studies
Subject
Self-Defined
Year
1999
Institution
University of Minnesota
Location
Minneaoplis, MN
Degree Type
BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts)
Subject
Media Arts
Year
1994
Institution
University of Minnesota
Location
Minneapolis, MN
Statement of Research Interests:

Carl DiSalvo’s research sits at the intersection of design and data, with a particular focus on participation and democracy. He studies how design can support collective action, public engagement, and alternative ways of organizing social and civic life. His work often engages communities directly, attending to questions of power and possibility in the design of technologies and institutions. Through theory, practice, and experimentation, he explores how design can help people imagine and enact more democratic futures.

Statement of Teaching Interests:

Carl DiSalvo’s teaching centers on design as a critical, creative, and civic practice. He is especially interested in helping students learn how to frame and reframe problems, generate ideas, and communicate concepts through scenarios, diagrams, and prototypes. His courses emphasize hands-on making alongside reflection, encouraging students to see design as a way of thinking and acting in the world. Across disciplines, he aims to equip students with tools for collaborative inquiry, ethical judgment, and imaginative engagement with complex social issues.

Selection of recent research, scholarly, and creative activities:
DiSalvo, Carl, Amanda Meng, and Anh-Ton Tran. "Accompaniment in Design Research." Design Issues 41, no. 3 (2025): 26-41.
 
DiSalvo, Carl. Design as Democratic Inquiry: Putting experimental civics into practice. MIT Press, 2022.

Tran, Anh-Ton, and Carl Disalvo. "Counting Up: Designing Agonistic Data Collection in the Court Room." In Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, pp. 3257-3271. 2024.
 
Boone, Ashley, Carl Disalvo, and Christopher A. Le Dantec. "Data Practice for a Politics of Care: Food Assistance as a Site of Careful Data Work." In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-13. 2023.
 
Tran, Anh-Ton, Ashley Boone, Christopher A. Le Dantec, and Carl DiSalvo. "Careful Data Tinkering." Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 6, no. CSCW2 (2022): 1-29.