All my research involves design and the digital economy. One strand concerns design for digital and data literacies to support understanding and agency around who and what to trust or share online, supported by EPSRC Trust, Identity, Privacy and Security funding calls. This includes designing approaches and tangible tools for research into how apparently harmless information shared online collectively can pose unanticipated harm. Radically multidisciplinary work has investigated technical, societal and usability challenges of AI-related design, towards developing outcomes that amplify rather than replace human abilities, and that foreground privacy. Current research is examining the potential and related challenges of designing for ‘eXplainable AI’, in a visual search prototype developed with The National Archives that aims to promote discovery across multiple linked image collections.

Prior research concerned design and the digital collaborative economy; for example, how designed P2P systems and communication practices transform cultural value(s) and socio-material exchange. 

A cross-cutting theme of all my research concerns developing and evaluating creative interdisciplinary methodologies. This draws from and applies my arts and design practice experience to designing research for diverse interdisciplinary contexts, and developing novel forms of dissemination for different stakeholders and wider publics.

Research projects include:

As Principal Investigator/Co-Principal Investigator

• Cumulative Revelations 2019–22. EPSRC EP/R033870/1
  

• Creative Temporal Costings 2015.  AHRC AH/N003799/1

• A Taxonomy of UK Crowdfunding 2014–15. ESRC ES/M00371X/1
  

As Co-investigator

• Buy Now Pay Later 2021–22. Led by Coventry EPSRC Sprite+ (webpage)
  
  
• TAPESTRY 2017–21 inc. COVID ext. Led by Surrey EPSRC EP/N02799X/1
  

• The Trust Map 2014–18. Led by Nottingham  ESRC-led ES/M003566/1/2
  

Other

• The National Archives 2021: leading on ‘generous’ interface designs with explainable AI for visual search.

• Adobe University Research Grant 2021: working with computer vision teams at the University of Surrey and Adobe and School of Design students to collectively build a new vocabulary for visual style.

• AHRC/British Council 2014: Unboxing Future Cities. 
  

I am Associate Professor in the School of Design and most recently have been teaching into the Communication Design and Industrial Design subject areas at undergraduate and/or postgraduate levels. I sit on the School Executive and act as Director of TEF for Creative Arts and Design programmes. I am also a very active researcher, with a portfolio of funded projects, and contibute to the research community as a Strategic Reviewer for AHRC and by regularly reviewing and occassionally sitting on panels for this and other research councils in the UK and abroad.  I was previously a member of the ESRC Peer Review College. I publish in design and HCI, amongst other areas and also co-produce artifacts as research output.