I am a research assistant on the EPSRC-funded “Playing Out with IoT” project (EP/P025544/1), led by Prof Shaun Lawson in the Department, which is exploring how new IOT technologies might encourage young people to play outside more.
I was awarded a PhD in 2018 where I explored how we can design interactive technologies that transform young people, places and relationships into platforms for new play experiences.
I have previously held positions as lead developer, graphics programmer and tools programmer in the game industry where I am credited on games including Lego Bionicle, Namco’s i-Ninja, PDC World Championship Darts, Cat Woman, Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and Power Drome. I use this experience to challenge design-thinking around games: that we make games that encourage more physical and social play, and move away from our reliance on screen-based experiences. I am also interested in Extended Reality experiences and how this new technology that can understand our movement will change the way we play.
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.
