The Institute
Departments
Departments organize the Institute’s research by where ordinary behavior, systems, rituals, and contradictions occur. They complement What We Study, which organizes the work by the kind of phenomenon being examined.
Department directory
Six institutional research territories
- Work & Organizations The Department of Work & Organizations studies what happens around the work: the meetings, messages, systems, expectations, habits, approval paths, status signals, and organizational arrangements that shape how people actually get things done. A job may be described in terms of tasks and responsibilities, but the lived experience of work usually includes a second layer made of calendars, norms, handoffs, interruptions, implied meanings, administrative routines, and decisions about who needs to know what before anyone is allowed to continue.
- Consumer & Commerce The Department of Consumer & Commerce studies what happens when people encounter systems designed to sell, compare, renew, reward, persuade, limit, queue, refund, upgrade, and occasionally ask whether they would like to add a tip before the screen has finished rotating toward them.
- Transportation & Mobility The Department of Transportation & Mobility studies the systems people use to move through shared space: roads, transit networks, airports, elevators, escalators, parking structures, and the signs, signals, rules, and habits that prevent movement from becoming a continuous negotiation conducted at speed.
- Built Environment & Public Infrastructure The Department of Built Environment & Public Infrastructure studies the ordinary physical systems that shape how people enter, exit, wait, circulate, reach, avoid, lean on, press, step over, and occasionally collide with the spaces around them.
- Digital Technology & Interfaces The Department of Digital Technology & Interfaces studies the everyday relationship between people and systems that communicate through screens, buttons, indicators, files, sounds, notifications, estimates, menus, touch surfaces, and messages that occasionally explain exactly what went wrong after explaining nothing while it was happening.
- Home & Domestic Life The Department of Home & Domestic Life studies the household as both a physical environment and a small operating system: appliances, materials, cleaning routines, food storage, maintenance, comfort, shared spaces, and the repeated behaviors people perform because the last person who understood the system is no longer available for questions.
Research organization
Two ways to understand the work
What We Study describes the kind of phenomenon being examined. Departments describe the environment or system in which that phenomenon occurs. The two dimensions work together without creating duplicate research pages.