Rate My Professor Ghazaleh Sepahpour

Dr. Ghazaleh Sepahpour is a Lecturer in Product and Industrial Design in the School of Art and Design within the College of Creative Arts, Design and Humanities at Adelaide University. She possesses expertise as a designer, researcher, and educator in industrial and interdisciplinary design. Ghazaleh holds a PhD from Queensland University of Technology, Australia, with her 2022 thesis titled 'Everyday objects as living things: The application of Transactional Analysis to understand and design product-person relationships.' She earned a Master of Industrial Design from Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran and a Bachelor of Industrial Design from the University of Tehran. Prior to her current appointment, she worked as a lecturer in Industrial Design and Architecture at Azad University for five years and as a practicing designer, focusing on Design for Manufacturing, Design for Maintenance, and Interface Design.

Ghazaleh's research centers on Human-Centred Design, specifically 'Design for Connection To & Through Everyday Objects.' She examines user-product relationships and how objects can facilitate social interactions, investigating emotional bonds with everyday objects to enhance individual wellbeing and positioning objects as mediators of social connections to foster engagement and improve social and emotional experiences. Her scholarly contributions include peer-reviewed journal articles such as 'A necessary evil: people's attitudes to auxiliary activities associated with owning and using smart devices' (Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 2025, co-authored with A. Blackler), 'My Helpful Laptop and its Bossy Calendar: Ego State-Based Personalities of Objects in Product-Person Interactions' (International Journal of Design, 2025, co-authored with A. Blackler and M. Chamorro-Koc), and 'Applying Transactional Analysis to the Understanding of Human–Product Interaction in Cellphone Design' (The Design Journal, 2017). Additional works encompass conference papers like 'The role of the inner child in process of decision making for product selection' (2015) and 'Designing for children’s play ground, a social skills improvement approach' (2015). Ghazaleh teaches courses including GRAP 1025 Low Volume Manufacturing for Product Design, GRAP 1026 Introduction to Computer Modelling for Product Design, GRAP 2029 Advanced Computer Modelling for Product Design, and GRAP 2032 Product Design Studio 3 (Human Factors).