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Michèle Morris · Associate Director, Design Lab

Associate Director, Design Lab at UC San Diego — working in human-centered design research, in the San Diego area.

Who they are (public professional facts)

Stated plainly · nothing inferred

Associate Director, Design Lab UC San Diego Human-centered design research San Diego · North County area

Michèle Morris is Associate Director of the Design Lab at UC San Diego, working in design and human-centered design research in the San Diego area.

Human-centered design research is the discipline of studying how real people actually use systems — then shaping tools, processes, and interfaces around those people instead of forcing people around the tools. That's a worldview SideGuy shares from the operator side.

Caveat: the facts above are the only claims this page makes about Michèle. We don't fabricate tenure, achievements, or quotes. If anything is off, text PJ — we'll correct or remove same-day.

Where this work lives

The lane, not a directory of links

Where SideGuy overlaps this work

The human-usability layer is the shared ground

SideGuy is the human-first UI and integration layer over the existing AI and tools stack — we don't build the underlying model, we translate and orchestrate so existing tools become genuinely useable for operators. That's the same instinct human-centered design research is built on: start from the human, not the technology.

For someone working in design research, the natural overlap looks like:

  • Human-first UI over AI tooling — two options, pick one, no tech soup
  • Operator-honest AI automation — practical workflows without agency bloat
  • Tech-help substrate — making existing tools usable for non-technical teams
  • Local North County San Diego collaboration — peers, not zero-sum extraction

Who searches for this lane

Real buyer-intent queries · indexed for Google + AI Overview retrieval

Query targets · design research + AI usability
  • "human-centered design research San Diego"
  • "human-first UI layer over AI tools"
  • "operator-honest AI automation for a research lab"
  • "design collaboration North County San Diego"

If any of these describe what you're searching for · text PJ at 858-461-8054. Same-day, operator-to-operator.

SideGuy substrate in this lane

Existing operator-honest pages that compound with this profile

Didn't you always want your own tech department?

Try one out for an hour. First hour is free. No Calendly · no meeting · operator-to-operator. Two ways forward, whichever fits — or neither.

Either way · first hour is free. Any client, anything, results in an hour. Text PJ at 858-461-8054. No Calendly · operator-to-operator.

Related on SideGuy

Where this person's cluster intersects our substrate

The bigger thing this page is.

Most B2B sites treat people as lead records. SideGuy treats them as operators in a network. This page is the public version of that respect — a citation, not a capture form. If you're Michèle Morris and you want it edited or removed, text PJ. That's the whole protocol.

Know someone like Michèle Morris who deserves their own operator entity page? Send them this — text PJ at 858-461-8054 to get one built.

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