Engagement

Community Engagement

2020

This year, I am co-chairing the Provocations and Work in Progress track for ACM DIS 2020, through which we will explore exciting new developments for supporting the dissemination of research-through-design, and the exhibition of designed artefacts at the conference.

I have also been centrally involved in the planning of the next edition of the Research through Design conference for 2021, as an active Steering Committee member for the conference series.

2019

In November, I chaired a session at the Halfway to the Future symposium, hosted by Mixed Reality Lab at University of Nottingham, about Arts-based Approaches to HCI.

In July, I presented the INTUIT project at the Department of Health and Social Care, focusing on the applied ethical features of the research as they relate to AI design and personal data, and positioning INTUIT as a case study in responsible research innovation.

In March, Research Through Design (RTD) 2019 took place in Delft and Rotterdam in The Netherlands. I was involved for this edition as one of the Documentation Chairs, focusing in particular on documenting attendee experiences of the conference through participatory methods: http://researchthroughdesign.org/2019/documentation.html.

A photo collection captures this work and the documentation methods we used.

Co-Chair Lenneka Kuijer and I reflected on the new methods we explored for conference in a blog post on participatory documentation.

2018

I was Experiential Knowledge (EKSIG) Track Chair and Conversations Chair at DRS 2018 Conference held in Limerick, Ireland, Summer 2018.  I was Associate Chair for the CHI 2018 Conference Design Subcommittee.  I was on the organising committee for RTD 2019 and remain a Steering Committee member of the RTD Conference series. I have been an AHRC Peer Review College member since 2017.

2017

I was lead organiser for a workshop held on 7th May at the CHI 2017 conference called 'Problems in Practice: Understanding Design Research by Critiquing Cases', and addressing central concerns of the fellowship work. Details can be found on the workshop website. My co-organisers are David Kirk, Jayne Wallace, Simon Bowen, Stuart Reeves and Sara Ljungblad. I was also Associate Chair for the CHI 2017 Conference Design Subcommittee.

I was Proceedings Chair, along with Larissa Pschetz and David Green, for the forthcoming Research through Design 2017 Conference, held in Edinburgh in March. We innovated on the conventional conference proceedings format, by (1) championing and supporting visual communication, and (2) augmenting online digital proceedings with documentation of the conference event.

2016

With Areti Galani and David Chatting I collaboratively developed a new installation called Sit with Me for a museum gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne that fosters visitor engagement and dialogue around the subject of migration into the city.

2015

John Vines and I were General Chairs for the second biennial Research through Design Conference (RTD 2015), which took place at Microsoft Research Cambridge 25-27th March 2015.

Joyce Yee, Jayne Wallace, John Vines and I developed a new website for the RTD Conference Series, which was launched in September 2015. The new RTD series endeavours to create a new dissemination platform for practice-based design research that helps develop an 'epistemology of design' (after Donald Schön) within academia, and supports a burgeoning community of practitioner-researchers. The development of RTD - as a novel dissemination platform for design - forms a case study for the fellowship.

Rachel Clarke, Duncan Rowland and I chaired the British HCI Interactions Gallery  in July 2015, a brand new addition to the BHCI conference series. The Gallery showcased interactive art, design and performance in a diversity of media, inviting provocation on contemporary ideas of human-computer interaction within the BHCI community.

2014

I was lead organiser of an expert panel event at Design Research Society Conference (DRS) 2014, within the ‘Conversations’ thread. The panel was entitled ‘Design for Dialogue: Diverse Voices and Technological Imaginaries’ and forms a key research-community engagement event for the fellowship. The Conversation was co-organised with John Vines, David Kirk, John Bowers at Newcastle University.

Our Discussants were: Thomas Binder, Tobie Kerridge, Bas Raijmakers, Veronica Ranner, and Tim Regan.

'Over the last decade, design processes have come to prominence as a means of integrating knowledge in complex domains and communicating the potential implications of ineffable new ideas and emerging technologies, such as synthetic biology, nano-engineering or smart cities, to broad and diverse audiences. Such audiences may include the public with differing vested interests, and technology research teams engaging diverse sets of expertise that present complex challenges for collaboration.

This Conversation addresses this communicative potential for design in knowledge integration. It speaks to the growing discourse on the significance of design practice and artefacts in making emerging technology research intelligible and accessible to broad audiences and interdisciplinary teams, in terms of potential applications, user experience, public engagement, or other forms of sense making. It also speaks to current conceptual explorations of what it means to do ‘research through design’ and what the research contribution of design could be, what roles designers could adopt in research, and how design practice and artefacts could serve to produce knowledge. Such explorations foreground rich opportunities for design as a form of inquiry, to foster dialogue in complex technological landscapes.’

This event engaged expert perspectives from the international HCI community (on the panel and in the audience) to address key research questions from the fellowship project.

2013

I was on the General Organising Committee and a Submissions Chair for the inaugural Research through Design conference, which was held in conjunction with Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces Conference (DPPI), as Praxis and Poetics 2013.