Disciplines

Design, cognitive science, sound, haptics, psychophysics, wearable technology.

Research aims

Postdoctoral Research 

Assessment strategies for design concept proposals in an Action Design Research framework

In the context of her postdoctoral research at the CRD (supervised by Roland Cahen), Claire’s work focuses on the identification, development and application of assessment methods to evaluate design proposals. The design proposals to be evaluated are those developed by Matthieu Savary during his doctoral research, dealing primarily with the tripartite partnership between the patient, their caretaker and involved researchers in the different phases of prevention, treatment, and post-traumatic care related to sepsis. This work, to be analysed within an Action Design Research (ADR) framework, takes place in the context of the IHU SEPSIS project, a vast multidisciplinary effort to cut the mortality rate of sepsis by half within 10 years. Characterised as a loss of control of the body’s inflammatory response to infection, sepsis is responsible for one out of every four deaths in the world.

Confronting an issue as high-risk as sepsis through ADR requires careful management of the design proposal’s trajectory in relation to its intended environment of use and the individuals who may benefit, including patients, caretakers, and researchers. In this postdoctoral research, Claire works to establish the goals, strategies, and specific properties to be qualitatively assessed in order to gain a deeper appreciation for the design proposals’ potential impacts on broader objectives of the IHU SEPSIS project and to explore the role of design research in the urgent medico-social context of sepsis. More specifically, she is investigating the mechanisms of idea refinement, design judgment, and the development and application of evaluation (assessment) strategies. This work informs fundamental design decisions made during iterative concept exploration and modelling, which shape not only the artefact instantiations—tangible or intangible—but also the social and technical interactions and services that the design will enable.

Doctoral Research 

Wearable sound: Integrative design for hearing and feeling vibrations

During a multidisciplinary (design-acoustics-haptics) doctoral thesis at IRCAM (under the supervision of Nicolas Misdariis) in collaboration with the CRD (co-supervisor Roland Cahen) and industrial partner Actronika (scientific director Vincent Hayward), Claire developed novel devices to evaluate the common ability of the skin and ears to detect and appreciate vibrations through bone conduction and vibrotactile sensation. This work was carried out following a similar project during the Specialized Master’s program at ENSCI - les Ateliers (Création et technology contemporaine).

In a preliminary psychophysical experimentation phase, she studied how different points of stimulation on the torso (spine, clavicles, sternum, ribs) affect the audio-tactile perception of vibration. The results supported design research methods used to construct and study a novel wearable audio-tactile device: the multimodal harness. The device, worn like a vest, challenges assumptions about which parts of the body can ‘hear’ and was used in collaboration with a composer, Alberto Gatti, to develop creative user interfaces and explore a new music of spatialized vibrations for the surface and interior of the body.

Finally, during this research Claire developed with her team the idea of “integrative design”, a perspective towards cross-disciplinary design research. Based on identifying and articulating the different narratives that tell the story of each discipline’s contribution, the integrative perspective encourages the design project manager to articulate then relate the diverse parts of a multidisciplinary project to the cohesive whole that they form. 

Biography

Claire Richards is an American-French designer-researcher. She completed her Bachelor’s of Science degree at Cornell University in 2016 in Design and Environmental Analysis at the School of Human Ecology. While studying at Cornell, she also acquired a Specialized Studies Certificate in Interior architecture and Design from Académie Charpentier in Paris, during an exchange program in Paris (2014-2015). In 2017, she completed the Specialized Master’s program in Design and Contemporary Technology at ENSCI - les Ateliers. After the Master’s program, Claire worked as a freelance researcher with the Perception and Sound Design team at IRCAM on the Psy-Son project, during an introductory research phase to identify key methodologies and approaches towards the use of sound and music to alleviate psychiatric patients’ anxiety. She then began a CIFRE doctoral thesis contract in 2020 collaboration with industry sponsor Actronika, the Perception and Sound Design research team at IRCAM (director - Nicolas Misdariis), and the CND (co-director Roland Cahen). Completing this work in 2023, she then joined deep-tech startup Pulse Audition as a Designer-researcher implementing user-centered design methods during the development and product introduction of AI-powered hearing glasses. Since September 2025, she is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the CND ENS Paris-Saclay - ENSCI Les Ateliers.

Prizes

• Best scientific paper - SMC 2022 / 19th Sound and Music Computing Conference

Publications

• Aker, S. C., Richards, C., Marozeau, J., Faux, D., & Misdariis, N. (2025). Evaluation of audio-tactile congruences for a wearable musical interface. Journal of New Music Research, 1-17.

• Richards, C. (2023). Wearable sound: integrative design for hearing and feeling vibrations (Doctoral dissertation, Sorbonne Université).

• Richards, C., Misdariis, N., & Cahen, R. (2022, August). The Reciprocity of Speculative and Product Design Research in an Industrial Framework. In International Workshop on Haptic and Audio Interaction Design (pp. 81-91). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

• Richards, C., Cahen, R., & Misdariis, N. (2022, June). Designing the balance between sound and touch: methods for multimodal composition. In 19th Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC 2022) (pp. 426-433).

• Richards, C., Misdariis, N., Cahen, R., Faux, D., & Hayward, V. (2021, July). Vibratory detection thresholds for the spine, clavicle and sternum. In 2021 IEEE World Haptics Conference (WHC) (pp. 346-346). IEEE.

Communications

• Guest Speaker : Danish Sound Cluster: Multisensory Processing Webinar

• Guest Speaker : Danish Sound Cluster: Haptics and Bone Conduction Webinar

• Radio Program : Métaclassique with David Christoffel : episode Toucher

• Journée d’études CHU Paris Sainte-Anne : Du corps à l’environnement : Développement du design au service de la santé