Ferran Altarriba Bertran

University of California, Santa Cruz, Tampere University

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Ferran Altarriba Bertran is a human-computer interaction (HCI) researcher whose work sits at the intersection of design, emotion, and emerging technologies. His scholarship is particularly distinguished by its focus on socially assistive robotics, emotional regulation in children, and the evolving theoretical landscape of more-than-human design. Through a Research-through-Design methodology, Altarriba Bertran investigates how tangible, intimate-space devices can scaffold children's emotional experiences — work that has garnered significant attention, with his flagship case study on emotion-regulating assistive "robots" accumulating 35 citations and appearing across multiple publication venues. Beyond child-centered design, he has contributed meaningfully to critical discourse within HCI, calling for more rigorous practice-based approaches to more-than-human design — a timely intervention as the field grapples with how to move beyond strictly human-centered frameworks. His 2024 work challenges researchers to work through design abstractions rather than theorizing from a distance, positioning practice as a legitimate and necessary mode of inquiry. Altarriba Bertran's research is notable for its reflexivity, its commitment to grounding abstract theory in real-world design contexts, and its advocacy for expanding whose needs and experiences HCI research is designed to serve.