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Daniella Keza Kalinda

CX/UX Researcher

PhD ABD in Media and Design Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University

Education

PhD in Media and Design Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University

  • Thesis: Material Intelligence for Smart Habitats through Situated, Meaningful Design

Master in Digital Media at Toronto Metropolitan University

  • Thesis: Tangible Augmentation of Cultural Heritage for Digitally Transforming Libraries.

Bachelor of Science in Psychology and minor in African Studies at University of Toronto

  • Thesis: Analyzing Individual Differences using the Big-Five to Predict Prejudice.

Experience

University Teaching Experience (Contract Lecturer)

RTA School of Media and New Media, Toronto Metropolitan University

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  • Contract Lecturer: Experiential Media/Interdisciplinary Practice | RTA 221 | Winter 2024 | Cohort size: 80+ students

    • Curriculum Design: Delivered and developed a comprehensive 12-week lecture and studio curriculum mapping the application of contemporary New Media theories, bridging abstract conceptual frameworks with hands-on practice.​

    • Syllabus Modernization: Iterated upon and significantly upgraded legacy foundational materials to incorporate critical industry-standard updates, ensuring modern relevance and technical literacy for emerging student practitioners.

    • Pedagogical Facilitation: Moderated highly conversational, collaborative studio environments that actively encourage students to critically dissect and reconstruct modern media landscapes.

    • Academic Administration: Partnered closely with teaching assistants to delegate grading metrics equitably, coordinating early semester quality benchmarks and pedagogical strategies with senior faculty mentors to ensure rigorous academic standards.

  • Contract Lecturer: Media Production | Concepts in Narratives | RTA 316 | Fall 2023 | Cohort size: 150+ students

    • Large-scale instruction: Designed and executed an inclusive and large-scale lecture environment utilizing evidence-based instructional theories across multi-channel and multimedia presentation formats.

    • Content-integration: Modernized the existing syllabus by successfully integrating new modules focused on state-of-the-art media technologies, interactive storytelling and emerging industry trends.

    • Leadership & Mentorship: Supervised, mentored and hired a team of Teaching Assistants, establishing weekly coordinated workflows, alignment meetings, and standardized rubrics to maintain grading equity across a large student body.

    • Active learning integration: Cultivated advanced critical thinking skills by designing structured, interactive in-class debate formats, collaborative storytelling assignments and peer-reviewed creative exercises. 

    • Time-management: Effectively managed complex administrative teaching frameworks, student communications and grading turnarounds while strategically balancing concurrent doctoral research milestones.

University Teaching Experience (Teaching Assistant & Tutorial Leader)

RTA School of Media and New Media, Toronto Metropolitan University

Winter 2019 - Spring 2026

  • Teaching Assistant | Embodied Digital Media | RTA 995 | Dr. Ali Mazalek

    • Studio mentorship: Guided both undergraduate and graduate cohorts through advanced, special topics design projects that combined physical computing, interactive spaces, and digital media. ​

    • Technical instruction & video demonstrations: Developed and independently taught specialized technical projects from early ideation to fully realized, exhibition-ready physical prototypes.

    • Iterative feedback: Formulated rigorous, multi-stage formative feedback loops for student production teams, successfully steering complex technical projects from early ideation to fully realized, exhibition-ready physical prototypes.

    • Evaluation: Evaluated and graded comprehensive academic design documentation, theoretical research papers, and interactive prototype presentations using structured rubrics and qualitative feedback. 

  • Teaching Assistant | Creative Industries Entrepreneurship, CRI 400 | Creative Research Methods, CRI 710 | Dr. Lorena Escandon

    • Pedagogical excellence: Consistently earned top-tier evaluations for having an active, highly accessible, empathetic and solution-oriented pedagogical style.​

    • Scenario-based learning: Crafted complex, hypothetical business and research scenarios designed to rigorously test student problem-solving capabilities within both research and entrepreneurial landscapes. 

    • Industry integration: Proactively coordinated professional guest speaker pipelines, recruiting active industry colleagues and creative entrepreneurs to share real world business insights and contemporary market analyses with classes.

    • Faculty recognition: Formally invited back by supervising faculty to support consecutive terms of the course based on a demonstrated track record of performance excellence and pedagogical reliability.

Academic & Graduate Assistantships

  • Academic Assistant | Introduction to Professional Communication CMN 279 | Dr. Aandeg Crow DiNova | Winter 2026 | Cohort: 60+ students per section | Distance/Online Delivery

    • High-volume written assessment: Rigorously assessed, evaluated, and graded multi-stage professional writing deliverables for a cohort of 60+ students per section; directly responsible for reviewing and provided structured, objective feedback on 500-word professional summaries.

    • Rhetorical and tone evaluation: Evaluated student artifacts based on case-base strategies, analyzing how effectively students recalibrated audience awareness, situational constraints, language sensitivity, media choice and professional workplace infrastructure. 

    • Visual studies curricular preparation: Undertook specialized academic reading preparation and content synthesis in visual studies to support the critical integration of visual literacy, multimedia professional communication strategies and contemporary design contexts within the remote curriculum. 

    • Distance Pedagogy Execution: Conducted 100% of evaluative, administrative and supportive workflows in an online capacity, demonstrating strong mastery of remote academic support tools and asynchronous student engagement models.

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Installations and Creative Production Experience

  • Director & Editor (>2 years Creative Experience) | Kitchen Talks | 25-minute Documentary Short | Toronto, Canada | 2019

    • Creative Direction & Post-Production: Structured comprehensive visual concepts, detailed shot lists, and complete mise-en-scène parameters. Single-handedly edited over 20-hours of footage into a cohesive narrative cut using Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects. ​

    • Project & Team Management: Coordinated a cross-functional team of 10+ creative professionals, managing production schedules, liaising with sound recordists and colorists.

    • Funding & Exhibition: Executed a successful community crowdfunding strategy, securing $6,000 in capital (exceeding target budget milestone by 20% on launch day). Successfully orchestrated a private screening installation at Toronto Media Arts Centre for an audience 200+ attendees. 

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  • Archival Participant & Producer (>1 year experience) | Black Futures Now Toronto | 2020

    • Community archiving: Contributed actively to an archival project mapping the Black experience in Toronto, engaging directly with a cohort of 50+ participants.​

    • Digital Storytelling: Designed and implemented accessible digital storytelling modules tailored for community use, enabling localized narratives to be preserved digitally.

    • Collaboration & Dissemination: Partnered with 5+ community on archival initiatives. Presented project findings and methodologies to audiences of 100+ attendees, ensuring detailed documentation for long-term institutional archives. 

  • Installation Artist | Anda Residency | Toronto, Canada | 2019

    • Exhibition design: Conceptualized and designed highly engaging multimedia installations presented to 100+ audience members.​

    • Interactive engagement: Increased active visitor engagement by an estimated 40% through the strategic integration of interactive, tangible elements within the exhibition space. 

    • Sustainable Practice: Collaborated closely with three peer artists on cross-disciplinary projects, integrating sustainable, biodegradable materials into the spatial design, reducing project 20%. Process thoroughly documented for residency archives. 

  • Production Assistant (< 1 year experience) | Supafrik | Toronto, Canada | Oct 2018 - Feb 2019

    • High-Profile installations: ​Contributed significantly to the development and fabrication of three Afrofuturistic art projects prominently showcased at the Gladstone Hotel and the Royal Ontario Museum.

    • Event logistics: Supported creative direction and logistical coordination for two major installations, assisting in organizing exhibition events catering to 150+ attendees. Managed critical setup and breakdown logistics.

    • Community outreach: Engaged communicatively with attendees throughout the exhibition lifecycle, directly contributing to 30% improvement in community outreach and event participation metrics.

  • Digital Programming Intern | CBC & Interactive Ontario | Toronto, Canada | 2018 - 2022

    • Competitive Selection: Selected from a highly competitive pool of emerging media practitioners for an intensive, specialized paid apprenticeship program co-facilitated by Interactive Ontario and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). ​

    • Executive Leadership Shadowing: Directly shadowed Chris Harris (Senior Director, CBC Entertainment), gaining primary, high-level operational insights into network-wide television/digital management, corporate creative direction, and national media entertainment pipelines. 

    • Institutional Funding & Capital Strategy: Participated in executive-level strategic funding and portfolio briefings, observing the complex economic frameworks, risk assessments, and capital allocation models used to greenlight and distribute financial resources to network programs and multi-platform content. 

    • Cross-Departmental Operations: Collaborated across diverse corporate divisions, including CBC Kids and the core design unit, analyzing youth-centric digital content strategies, user-centric interactive design pipelines, and network broadcast compliance standards.

  • Production Assistant (< 1 Year Experience) | Workin’ Moms (Season 5, CBC / Netflix) Toronto, Canada | Oct – Nov 2020 

    • Logistical Coordination: Managed and distributed critical, highly time-sensitive daily production documentation, including official industry call sheets, complex set location maps, script sides, and safety protocols to multi-disciplinary cast and crew teams.​

    • Digital Operations & App Management: Spearheaded the deployment of cloud-based logistical tools and production apps (e.g., Crafty.film) to systematically coordinate, track, and streamline dietary compliance and hospitality workflows for a fast-moving set of 100+ daily personnel.

    • Fast-Paced Communications Facilitation: Directed real-time on-set communications and provided agile rapid-response problem solving across diverse technical departments (camera, talent, sound, and craft services) under strict union and network broadcast deadlines. 

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Professional Memberships and Training

  • Student Member: Design Research Society (DRS), Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

  • Professional Training: TouchDesigner Professional Training (via Canada Arts Council Grant)

  • Academic Service Role: 1st Year Student Representative for MDI PhD Program (2022)

Currency

Academic Research Appointment

  • Graduate Research Assistant | Synaesthetic Media Lab | Toronto Metropolitan University | Sept 2018 - Present.

    • Project Leadership: Direct and manage complex, multi-disciplinary, design-based research frameworks involving the coordination of over 20 concurrent internal academic and external industry collaborators.​

    • Service Design: Map comprehensive as-is/to-be user journeys and synthesize intricate service blueprint architectures across varying levels of stakeholder seniority to inform strategic project roadmaps. 

    • Design Advocacy: Act as the core design advocate within the lab, successfully sustaining user-centricity and design-thinking priorities across complex engineering, prototyping, and product-development paradigms.

    • Compliance & Ethics: Expertly navigate institutional compliance metrics, meticulously drafting and submitting protocols to secure necessary Research Ethics Board (REB) approvals for human-centered design studies.

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Institutional Reports

  • CUPE Currency Report: Formally compiled and submitted for the current academic year.

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Full-Length Peer-Reviewed Publications 

  • Nathan, A., Kalinda, D., Hrynyshyn, L., Reade, E., David, R., & Mazalek, A. (2022). Designing a tangible augmented reality experience for cultural heritage research. Proceedings of the Design Research Society Conference (DRS 2022: Bilbao, Spain). https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.699

  • Kalinda, D., Hrynyshyn, L., Resch, G., Nathan, A., David, R., & Mazalek, A. (2020). Tangible Augmented Reality for Archival Research: Using Augmented Reality to Research Cultural Heritage Items. Companion Publication of the 2020 Museums and the Web Conference (MW20).

  • Kalinda, D. (2022). Tangible cultural analytics: How tangible augmented reality can enhance cultural heritage research (Master's thesis, Toronto Metropolitan University). https://doi.org/10.32920/ryerson.14647101 

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Short-Form Peer-Reviewed Publications & Conference Presentations

  • Kalinda, D., Bell, F., Zarrin, H., Weinthal, L., & Mazalek, A. (2026). Tangible Computation: Working with biodegradable materials as interfaces. Proceedings of the Design Research Society Conference (DRS 2026).

  • Kalinda, D., Lo, M., & Mazalek, A. (2025). Reinventing Igisoro: Exploring materiality in a cultural heritage game board. Companion Publication of the 2025 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW Companion '25), 488-491. https://doi.org/10.1145/3715070.3749275

  • Braithwaite, F., Kalinda, D., & Mazalek, A. (2025). Augisoro: Augmenting a culturally significant game as a tangible interface for cultural storytelling. Companion Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY Companion '25), 36. ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3744736.3749347 

Awards, Grants & Funding

  • MDI Graduate Development Award (Internal Research Grant, 2026)

  • The Creative School Passport Fund (Internal Research Grant, 2026, Pending)

  • TMU Bridging Divides Travel Grant (Internal Travel Grant, 2026, Pending)

  • TMU Travel Grant (Internal Travel Grant, 2022, 2026)

  • Museums and the Web Conference Scholarship (External Award, 2020)

  • B2B Payments Innovation Award (External Industry Award, 2020)

  • Independent Project Crowdfunded Grant ($6,000) — Successfully executed an independent crowdfunding campaign to finance the Kitchen Talks documentary project (2020). 

Teaching Skills

  • Relevant Teaching Experience (> 5 Courses): Completed extensive academic support, workshop instruction, and primary teaching workloads spanning more than 5 separate, distinct courses within TMU’s ecosystem, demonstrating high adaptability across multi-level cohorts.

  • Instructor for Specific Courses: Formally recognized by the university as the primary Sessional Instructor (Instructor of Record) for two distinct courses at TMU: Concepts in Narratives (RTA 316) and Experiential Media/Interdisciplinary Practice (NMA 221 / RTA 221).

  • Teaching Skills Workshops & Facilitation: Extensive workshop design and teaching experience in institutional media labs. Invited to lead and facilitate an international workshop at the Design Research Society (DRS 2026) on Biodegradable Tangible Computational Interfaces using a Material-Driven Design Approach. 

  • CUPE Teaching Assessments & Faculty Course Surveys: Maintained highly rated student evaluation metrics throughout academic tenure. Formal Faculty Course Surveys (FCS) and qualitative student reviews are explicitly attached to this application package as evidence of pedagogical excellence. 

  • Pedagogical Practice: Teaching philosophy strongly emphasizes the cultivation of an active studio culture, the implementation of peer learning models, the facilitation of structured critical debate, and the scaffolding of complex physical-to-digital prototyping workflows.

Interactive Skills

  • Service File with No Student Complaints: Maintains an exemplary professional service record, characterized by a clean service file containing zero student complaints across all teaching, grading, and administrative roles. 

  • Nominations and Endorsements: Formally nominated and selected by senior RTA school faculty members to step directly into the primary teaching roles for both RTA 316 and RTA 221, reflecting a high degree of departmental trust. 

  • Interdisciplinary Collaboration & Leadership: Proven history of managing complex, cross-disciplinary communications and facilitating constructive conflict resolution among diverse designers, developers, and institutional research partners within the fast-paced environment of the Synaesthetic Media Lab. 

  • Inclusive Mentorship & Letters of Support: Deeply committed to accessible, equitable, and empathetic teaching principles. Maintained robust, multi-channel communication systems (utilizing D2L, Discord, email, and flexible office hours) to accommodate diverse learning speeds, neurodivergent needs, and varying equity profiles within the student body. Regularly provides mentorship, guidance, and letters of recommendation for undergraduate students advancing to graduate studies or industry roles. 

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