Teaching & Research

My approach to teaching and learning is that it is fun, interactive, inclusive and inspiring. It is focused on interactive workshops, teamwork and applied, practical learning, e.g., applying design thinking to real world projects developed collaboratively with community organisations or businesses.

My approach to teaching and learning is also inspired by the movement around decolonising the curriculum. I pursue different ways of addressing and transforming the imbalance of content being taught from a Eurocentric perspective. I seek to democratise the curriculum by adopting a more pluralistic perspective and encourage different ways of research and creative practice.

Teaching

Prototyping

Prototyping is an important part of the design thinking process by visualising, communicating, testing and validating potential ideas. I teach prototyping through sketching, cardboards, Lego, service design, product design and 3D printing, sustainable design, graphic design, UX/UI design, video production.

Design & Systems Thinking

This unit examined the interconnectedness of various factors to understand the bigger picture (systems thinking) problems whilst bringing together a human-centred problem solving focus (design thinking) to create innovative solutions to design challenges.

Design Futures

Design Futures is about teaching and learning tools and methods to explore future scenarios, e..g, through speculative design, design fiction, backcasting, scenario planning, storyboarding . Students develop their creative, innovative thinking capability in this unit.

Business Innovation in Practice

In this unit, students gain knowledge and understanding of key theoretical and professional lenses to understanding corporate innovation and change management in practice. Students reflect critically on the organisational and contextual issues that impact innovative value creation.

UX / UI Design

UX / UI design incorporated user research, creating personas, user journeys building and testing wireframes and prototypes following a human-centred design process. Units included psychology of design, facial and emotion recognition, voice user interfaces, augmented and virtually reality applications.

Transdisciplinary Group Project

This unit advances students abilities to generate ideas and solutions that may address unmet needs,. Students work collaboratively to make design decisions, prototype, and demonstrate proof of concept for innovative solutions that address the needs of their highlighted target audience.

Prototyping Present and Futures

Research

In my research, I am primarily interested in responsible design and innovation, sustainable development and especially in the ethics of Artificial Intelligence (AI). I explore the role of the dynamic and evolving nature of human interactions with such systems, e.g., augmented, or automated interaction. I consider how to design human-centred AI applications, especially in high risk, safety critical applications, and how to build and support credibility in these systems.

Ada Lovelace Institute

I led a project which explored solutions for research ethics committees in industry and academia to address the emerging risks of data science and AI research and led a team of collaborating academics from the Alan Turing Institute and the Institute for Data Science and AI at Exeter University. The report was published in 2022.

PhD Thesis: The Ethics of Emotion Recognition Technologies
Drawing on critical and speculative design practices, I used a research-through design approach to examine the production and use of emotion recognition technology as an example of an AI system with a potentially profound impact on people and society. I designed a wearable emotion recognition device as a prompt for critical discussion with participants in the study to examine how these technologies may alter existing human practices around emotions. The thesis developed a human-centered method to prototype ethical, human-AI interactions, for example by simulating autonomous behaviour.