I am a design researcher with a background in architecture, jewellery and participatory design. My ways of working are rooted in craft practice and dialogue with participants. I recently awarded my PhD for my thesis ³A practice-led inquiry into the nature of digital jewellery² from Northumbria University where I was investigating the potential role of digital jewellery to support self in transition. For this research, I reflected on my own experience of travelling between the UK and Greece and I worked with others to design digital jewellery that suggest more poetic and imaginative aspects of digital technology.
Currently, I am a Research Associate in Design at Northumbria University, on the Enabling Ongoingness project, where we explore new ways in which digital media and digital services could enable dynamic connections between people even after death.
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.
