Deborah Turnbull Tillman

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Deborah Turnbull Tillman is a pioneering researcher at the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI), interactive art curation, and audience experience design. Her work fundamentally reimagines how interactive digital art is presented and evaluated, moving experimental prototypes from controlled laboratory settings into public institutions and urban landscapes. Through her influential PhD research, she developed the concept of "authenticating experience," a framework that validates audience engagement as a legitimate and critical form of evaluation for interactive art. Her 2015 paper on this topic, along with her 2017 exploratory case study on curatorial intervention within HCI contexts, has laid the groundwork for a new curatorial practice that treats the audience's lived encounter as an authentic measure of an artwork's success. Though her citation counts are currently modest, Turnbull Tillman's contributions are foundational to a growing field that bridges art curation and interaction design. She is recognized for championing the audience's role as co-creators of meaning, challenging traditional hierarchies in both museum practice and HCI research.