
ABDULLAH X. ALI
Contact Me

My Research
I am a 4th year Ph.D. Student in the iSchool at the University of Washington, advised by Jacob O. Wobbrock, and a member of the ACE Lab and DUB group.
In the past, I have worked on research at UMBC, Carnegie Mellon University, Microsoft Research, and Apple. Most notably, I am one of the creators of the Dyslexia-detecting game Dytective. I am a recipient of the NSF Bridge to Doctorate fellowship.
For a full list of my publications see my CV, Google Scholar page.
I believe that technologies are tools that augment our abilities to aid us in accomplishing tasks. Our interactions with technologies should be a contextual assembly of our abilities (physical and mental) and preferences. My work focuses on designing interactive technologies informed by their users’ abilities and preferences. In my Ph.D. work, I have formulated the Distributed User-Centered Design process and built the CROWDDESIGN Engine—an online research platform that enables technology creators to follow this design method efficiently on a global scale.