In collaboration with Professor Edwin Hutchins, he directs the Distributed Cognition and Human–Computer Interaction Laboratory at UCSD, and co-directs the Design Lab.
He was elected to the CHI Academy in 2003[1] and received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award in 2015.
The goal is to understand the cognitive and computational characteristics of dynamic interactive representations as the basis for effective system design.
His current research is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Intel, Nissan, and the University of California's Digital Media Innovation program.
Hollan left UCSD to become Director of the MCC Human Interface Laboratory and subsequently established the Computer Graphics and Interactive Media Research Group at Bellcore.