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 researching 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 which foreground privacy including through use of blockchain technologies. 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 my arts and design practice experience and applies them 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. My research is informed by my creative and multidisciplinary education and industry experience as part of a portfolio career that involved part-time lecturing, including at my alma mater Chelsea College of Art and Design. Since my collaborative AHRC PhD on digital cultural literacies I have applied creative learning to delivering on novel interdisciplinary research, and to my teaching practice. I currently teach into the Communication Design and Industrial Design subject areas. I am also Director of TEF for the large cross-department cluster of Creative Arts and Design programmes.

I am a Strategic Reviewer for AHRC, and contribute to the recruitment and training of College members. I regularly review for other research councils in the UK and abroad and was previously an ESRC Peer Review College member. I publish in design and HCI, amongst other areas, and co-produce artifacts as research output.