I am a design-researcher, and since 2014 I have worked at Northumbria University as a Graduate Tutor, combining doctoral study with teaching on our Graphic Design BA (hons). My background is in graphic and communication design. I have worked in the publishing industry and as a freelance designer working across graphic and interaction design with clients such as Dr Martins, Durham University and the Young Women’s Music Project, Oxford. My PhD research uses feminist STS to frame and develop an understanding of critical and speculative design research as a means of ‘staying with the trouble’. It is based upon two interrelated projects – a designer-led inquiry into network technology and public space, and an interdisciplinary research project exploring responses to hate crime with LGBT young people.
I am Professor of Digital Living in the School of Computer and Information Science. I study Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and the design of interactive computational technologies. I'm particularly interested in design research methods and the ways in which technology design can be centred on rich understanding of user experiences, cultures and contexts.
I have previously held positions as Senior Lecturer of Experience-Centred Design and then Reader in Cultural Computing at Newcastle University, Lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction in the Mixed Reality Lab and School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham, and as a post-doc in the Socio-Digital Systems group at Microsoft Research Cambridge. My background is in Psychology (BSc) and Ergonomics (MSc) with a PhD in Computer Science. Over the years my work has been heavily influenced by the sociologists, philosophers and designers that I've collaborated with and consequently I take a design-led, social science orientation to understanding human experience and its application to the design of digital technologies. Accordingly, and although trained as an experimental scientist, my research is increasingly based on qualitative methods and design-research practices.
