Broader impacts: research you can use

A number of threads of thought have come together recently having to do with how we make our research useable and useful to the world. One thread is inspired by a movement in medicine called Clinical Translational Science in which funding is given to researchers to translate basic research into guidelines, treatments, and regimens that clinicians can use. A second thread arose in reflecting about our own recent work in which we translated a theory about what makes for good distance collaboration into an online assessment tool and administered it to hundreds of people involved in remote collaboration. Upon completion of the assessment, each participant immediately gets a personalized report on the strengths of their collaboration, the challenges, and what to do about it. We get the data, and they get the help. These two threads point to making a difference, having broader impact.

In this talk I will review some ways we can have an impact, both directly to people, through design practice (our clinicians), and via a myriad of other tools while doing good research. I encourage us all to spend more energy on having more direct effects on the world in which we live.