About

Julia Kramer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. She holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, earned in 2020, along with a Master of Public Health and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan. Her research interests include design theory and methodology, collaborative engagement in engineering design, design for health applications, front-end medical device design processes, global public health, and engineering design education. She is involved in research that examines the incorporation of justice into engineering design, with her work published in the Journal of Mechanical Design in May 2025. Julia Kramer is also associated with The EDGE Lab and is engaged in mentoring and advancing engineering design practices that integrate social justice and health considerations.

Research topics

• Computer science
• Engineering ethics
• Knowledge management
• Engineering
• Sociology

Selected publications

• Assessing Partnership: Utilizing Community-Based Participatory Research to Evaluate Participatory Design

  2025-10-22

  articleSenior author

  Co-design is a participatory approach where stakeholders are engaged as designers, adding insight through their lived and technical experiences. Understanding co-designers' experience designing can help improve co-design processes and their outcomes. However, there is currently a lack of established tools for evaluating participatory design processes, especially from the perspective of co-designers. Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), which engages partners as researchers throughout a project, offers validated tools for evaluating partnerships. While CBPR and co-design both aim to actively engage partners throughout a project, limited work has explored how CBPR evaluation tools might apply to co-design. In this methodological paper, we present a CBPR-informed survey developed to evaluate co-designers' experiences. We piloted the survey with community members in Ethiopia and Kenya engaged in designing family planning interventions. Here, we present the survey we developed and share our learnings on how utilizing a CBPR-informed approach to understand co-designers' experiences can provide deeper insight into how co-design processes impact those who participate.

  PublisherDOI

• “I wasn’t even thinking of ever shopping online…but now I feel like I can”: Exploring the promise and limitations of e-commerce for self-care contraceptives in Kenya

  2025-11-10

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Musical Playlists to Improve the Ideation Environment: An Exploratory Study

  2025-08-17

  articleSenior author

  Abstract Effective ideation is necessary for successful design, as broadly exploring the solution space leads to more innovative solutions. Prior research has focused on developing techniques and methods for ideation, but little research has been done on how the ideation environment (e.g., sound, lighting, surroundings) may influence outcomes. Listening to music with a fast tempo and without sung lyrics is associated with greater creativity and productivity, thus suggesting that listening to music while ideating has the potential to improve ideas generated. In this exploratory study, we study the effects of listening to classical, pop, and video game musical playlists and of not listening to any music while generating ideas. We evaluated ideas generated with each musical condition on the basis of quantity, diversity, and creativity. We found that participants generated the most ideas with the pop playlist, and preferred the pop playlist for ideation. We found that the video game playlist led to the most creative and diverse ideas as self-reported by the participants. The findings of this study suggest that listening to pop and video game genres with moderate-fast paced, familiar songs may positively affect an individuals’ ideation. Further research is needed not only to test the relationship between music tempo and individual familiarity with music on ideation outcomes, but also to explore how other environmental factors influence ideation.

  PublisherDOI

• Leveraging human-centered design to enhance access to contraception and provision of self-injectable DMPA-SC in rural Malawi: Development of the Ndingathe intervention

  2025-04-07 · 3 citations

  preprintSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Bringing Justice to Design: How Researchers and Practitioners View and Incorporate Justice Into Design

  2025-08-17

  articleSenior author

  Abstract A growing research area in mechanical engineering examines the ways in which social justice is, and should be, an aspect of engineering design research and application. Engineering has a major impact in all of our lives and thus it is important to consider how the engineering design discipline can better account for, and practice, justice. The research question central to this study is: how are researchers and practitioners in the Design Theory and Methodology (DTM) community discussing and integrating justice in their design research and applications? In this study, we conducted a special session on design justice at the 2024 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences to gather perspectives on how academics and practitioners in the DTM community are integrating justice into engineering design. The qualitative analysis of participant responses revealed insights in defining design justice, integrating justice into design research and practice, highlighting opportunities and challenges in integrating justice into design, and conducting future work needed in design justice. Key points revealed how researchers and practitioners currently balance and leverage power dynamics, develop educational materials related to design justice, and center community experience. Researchers and practitioners alike expressed desire to build further bridges between research and practice to move the field of design justice forward.

  PublisherDOI

• The Introduction of Simulation Sessions to the Psychiatry Teaching Programme for Graduate Entry Medical Students at Swansea University

  BJPsych Open · 2025-06-01

  articleOpen access

  Aims: Simulation is an established part of medical education, but has taken longer to become embedded within psychiatry. Our aim was to introduce Simulation to the teaching programme during medical students’ speciality attachment, using a range of stations to provide exposure to specific mental disorders for all students. Identified learning objectives were to practice psychiatric history taking and mental state examinations, to summarise and present this information and to generate differential diagnoses and propose management plans. Methods: The teaching programme was adjusted to include half a day of Simulation stations during students’ first week, after they receive teaching on history taking, mental state examination and risk assessment during induction. The clinical tutor developed an introductory presentation, outlining learning objectives and expectations. Each cohort of 14 or 15 students were divided into four small groups and each group instructed to rotate around four different stations, providing exposure to different and realistic scenarios. Clinicians receive stations in advance, allowing time for preparation and familiarisation with the scenario. We liaised with Simulation leads at two local hospitals for advice about running the stations and debriefing methods. Debriefing is provided during each station, and as a group at the end, and a template has been developed, ensuring the process is in line with Health Education and Improvement Wales and the Association for Simulated Practice in Healthcare expectations. A Simulation room has been developed at the Education Centre. Simulation teaching is provided for each student cohort. Results: The Simulation stations were introduced in September 2024, and have been carried out for four student cohorts to date. Feedback has been highly encouraging, with all medical students (total 46) rating the sessions as 4 or 5/5 in terms of how useful they have been. Conclusion: Allowing medical students to practice history taking, mental state examinations, risk assessments and capacity assessments has clear advantages. Students can make mistakes, without exposing patients to avoidable harm, debriefing leads to deeper understanding of how diagnoses are made and treatment plans formed. Individuals may identify gaps in their existing knowledge or areas of communication skills which they wish to develop. There is scope to develop this teaching further. We are working with simulation leads at local hospitals, developing VAR headset modules to simulate patients with psychosis, mania, delirium. New stations are being written, to cover situations arising in different clinical settings, demonstrating how relevant comprehensive psychiatric assessment will be in all areas of medicine.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Patient-Centered Approach in Sensor Science: Embracing Patient Engagement for Translational Clinical Technologies

  ACS Sensors · 2025-03-19 · 4 citations

  reviewSenior author

  With the goal of impacting patient quality of life and outcomes, sensor science offers significant potential to revolutionize healthcare by providing advances in the detection of molecular biomarkers for personalized clinical technologies. The sensor community has achieved significant technical advancements that can impact diagnostics, health monitoring, and disease treatment; however, many sensor innovations remain confined to the laboratory, failing to bridge the translational gap between research and real-world clinical applications. This perspective presents a new direction for the sensor community, where sensor development centers on the needs and experiences of the primary beneficiaries: the patients. We provide guidelines and resources for researchers to engage with patients early and continuously throughout the research process to inform sensor specifications and better align sensor technologies with real-world clinical needs, improving their adoption and impact. We also present examples for implementing a patient-centered approach in sensor development and planning for patient engagement in sensor research. In the design of impactful sensors for patients, researchers must expand focus beyond technical specifications to embrace a patient-centered approach, which will likely lead to new opportunities for collaboration and evolution in the sensor science community.

  PublisherDOI

• Design and Justice: A Scoping Review in Engineering Design

  Journal of Mechanical Design · 2024-10-14 · 6 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Our society faces complex social justice challenges, often exacerbated by existing engineered products and technologies. To avoid unintentionally contributing to social injustice, engineering designers play a critical role in creating and studying products and technologies that can aim to address the challenges of social injustice. There is a growing priority in the engineering design research community to incorporate justice into design and to do so meaningfully and intentionally. Therefore, there is a need to more deeply understand how scholars have integrated concepts of justice into design and to bring to light areas of future research. In this article, we conduct a scoping review of design and justice in twelve scholarly venues relevant to the engineering design community. A scoping review allowed for a broad range of topics to be covered to identify major research themes and gaps and to explore the boundaries of the nascent study of design and justice. After searching the relevant venues, we conducted a thematic analysis to capture the major themes in the dataset of papers relating to justice and design. Along with relevant terminology used, we found that scholars connected justice to design in ways that we categorized into three main areas of design: designers, design outcomes, and design processes. Our analysis highlighted areas of future research in studying justice as relevant to designers, outcomes, and processes, as well as identifying an overall call to redefine the field of design in the pursuit of justice.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Analyzing fast and slow: Combining traditional and rapid qualitative analysis to meet multiple objectives of a complex transnational study

  Frontiers in Sociology · 2023-02-01 · 18 citations

  articleOpen access

  Much of the methodological literature on rapid qualitative analysis describes processes used by a relatively small number of researchers focusing on one study site and using rapid analysis to replace a traditional analytical approach. In this paper, we describe the experiences of a transnational research consortium integrating both rapid and traditional qualitative analysis approaches to develop social theory while also informing program design. Research was conducted by the Innovations for Choice and Autonomy (ICAN) consortium, which seeks to understand how self-injection of the contraceptive subcutaneous depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA-SC) can be implemented in a way that best meets women's needs, as defined by women themselves. Consortium members are based in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, and the United States. Data for the ICAN study was collected in all four countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In order to both illuminate social phenomena across study sites and inform the program design component of the study, researchers developed tools meant to gather both in-depth information about women's contraceptive decision-making and data targeted specifically to program design during the formative qualitative phase of the study. Using these two bodies of data, researchers then simultaneously conducted both a traditional qualitative and rapid analysis to meet multiple study objectives. To complete the traditional analysis, researchers coded interview transcripts and kept analytical memos, while also drawing on data collected by tools developed for the rapid analysis. Rapid analysis consisted of simultaneously collecting data and reviewing notes developed specifically for this analysis. We conclude that integrating traditional and rapid qualitative analysis enabled us to meet the needs of a complex transnational study with the added benefit of grounding our program design work in more robust primary data than normally is available for studies using a human-centered design approach to intervention development. However, the realities of conducting a multi-faceted study across multiple countries and contexts made truly "rapid" analysis challenging.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Design and Justice: A Scoping Review in Engineering Design

  2023-08-20 · 1 citations

  reviewSenior author

  Abstract Our society faces complex social justice challenges, often exacerbated by existing engineered products and technologies. Engineering designers play a critical role in creating and studying products and technologies that can both aim to solve and unintentionally contribute to social injustice. There is a growing priority in the engineering design research community to incorporate justice into design work and to do so meaningfully and intentionally. Therefore, there is a need to more deeply understand how scholars have integrated concepts of justice into their design work and to bring to light areas of future research. In this paper, we conduct a scoping review of design and justice in eleven scholarly venues relevant to the engineering design community. A scoping review allowed for a broad range of topics to be covered to identify major research themes and gaps, and to explore boundaries of the nascent study of design and justice. After searching the relevant venues, we conducted a thematic analysis to capture the major themes in the dataset of papers relating to justice and design. We found that scholars connected justice to their design work in ways that can be categorized into three main areas of design: Designers, Design Outcomes, and Design Process. Our analysis highlighted areas of future research in studying justice as relevant to Designers, Outcomes, and Processes, as well as identifying an overall call to redefine design as a whole in the pursuit of justice.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Colleen M. Seifert

  Purdue University System

  10 shared

• Shanna Daly

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  10 shared

• Seda Yılmaz

  10 shared

• Celeste Roschuni

  University of California, Berkeley

  9 shared

• Alice M. Agogino

  6 shared

• Sita M. Syal

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  5 shared

• Lauren Wojciechowski

  4 shared

• Emily Himes

  University of California, San Francisco

  2 shared

Education

• PhD, Mechanical Engineering

  University of California, Berkeley

  2020

• MPH, School of Public Health

  University of California, Berkeley

  2020