Holly Robbins is a PhD Candidate working in the intersection of social sciences, humanities, and design. Her work is on traces, and how they can be utilized in connected objects to make them grow, mature, and evolve with their users.

For example, consider leather shoes: leather shoes show traces of use by stretching and wearing in particular ways— and in doing so they grow, evolve and mature with their user. As a result, the shoe fits the wearer perfectly. Holly’s work posits that technological objects should embody similar qualities. As these objects—from mobile devices, to wearable sensors, to thermostats that can predict when you’re coming home—become more pervasive and closely tied with some of the more intimate details of our lives, we must find a way to design these objects to be more symbiotic, similar to the leather shoe.

Holly joined TU Delft and the ID Studio Lab in February 2014. Prior to that she completed her master’s at New York University’s department of Media, Culture, and Communication with a specialization in human computer interaction. While at NYU, Holly worked at the Game Innovation Lab researching how surveillance cameras can be repurposed to promote opportunities for spontaneous and collaborative social interactions in public. Her bachelor’s was in anthropology and was completed at Sarah Lawrence College (NY, USA). Holly has also worked as a political analyst for an Arab embassy in Washington D.C. and trained as a classical musician.