Rate My Professor Mohammad Dastmalchi

Mohammad R. Dastmalchi is an Assistant Professor of Interior Architecture in the School of Architecture & Design at the University of Kansas. He holds a bachelor's degree in interior design from Ajman University of Science and Technology, a Master of Fine Arts in Design Pedagogy from the University of North Texas, and a PhD in Design with Digital Media from the University of Missouri. Prior to joining KU, Dastmalchi taught various levels of interior and architecture studios, as well as digital design communication courses at the University of Missouri, accumulating over nine years of teaching experience across multiple CIDA-accredited interior design programs. He has also instructed advanced and basic studios, design communication, digital media, and interior detailing courses. His professional design experience includes commercial and educational projects in collaboration with firms in Dubai, Tehran, and Dallas, along with designing and building digital games and interactive virtual environments. As a researcher at the KU Center for Design Research, Dastmalchi contributes to interdisciplinary studies in design.

Dastmalchi's research centers on collaborative design thinking and the impacts of immersive technologies, including virtual reality, augmented reality, and extended reality, on designers' communication, processes, cognition, and perception. His work explores virtual embodiment's effects on spatial comprehension, embodied cognition, integration of immersive technologies in WEB3 and the Metaverse, design cognition and creativity, environment and behavior, cross-cultural design processes, team cognition, generative AI in design, and embodied learning. Key publications include "Creativity on the move: Exploring little-c (p) and big-C (p) creative events within a multidisciplinary design team process" co-authored with N. D'souza in Design Studies (2016); "Architectural Creativity Stranded at Mid Journey? Evaluating Creative Potential of Prompts and Images in Generative AI" in Design Computing and Cognition '24 (2024); "Embodied learning in virtual reality: Comparing direct and indirect interaction effects on educational outcomes" presented at the 2024 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference; and "Virtual Reality as a Communication Medium: Investigating the Impact of Virtual Embodiment on Various Stakeholders of an Architecture Project" (University of Missouri-Columbia, 2022). In his teaching of the final interior architecture studio at KU, Dastmalchi employs human-centered design principles and empathic communication, using VR systems to help students assess designs from end-users' perspectives.