Bio
Jerry Alan Fails is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Boise State University in Boise, Idaho. His general area of research is Human-Computer Interaction, with a focus on designing technology with and for children. His current projects focus on seeking to support children as they search for information online, understanding privacy and fear within family contexts, supporting children’s privacy and security needs online, and expanding methods of designing technologies with and for children to online, hybrid, and in-person modalities at the local and global scale.
As part of his research he directs an intergenerational design team called Kidsteam. The team consists of young children and adults who work together as partners to improve and design new technologies. Previously he founded a Kidsteam in New Jersey at Montclair State University. He received his Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland in 2009, where he was an active member of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) for six years while working with Dr. Allison Druin and with the Kidsteam there. In 2003, he received his MS in Computer Science from Brigham Young University where he worked with Dr. Dan Olsen Jr. on perceptual user interfaces.