Design Research Works

Making Design Research.... Work

Our mission is to show the world what it can gain from Design Research

Shadowplay and Play of Light at Light up Lancaster

Showing our ever-evolving AI-powered installation at Lancaster's amazing light festival

Seminar and Talk at Politecnico di Milano

Presenting Permission to Muck About and running a Regenerative Design and More-Than-Human Seminar with Dr Maria Luce Lupetti

Paper @ Half Way to the Future

Presenting a paper, Permission to Muck About, Knowledge, and the Grammar of Intuition, at the Half Way to the Future Conference in Santa Cruz

Permission to Muck About @ Detroit Imagines Harder

Taking part in a Design Fiction Summit on the Future of Work

Imagining Machines, the Maternal and Care

One day design-led workshop at Central Saint Martins

Five Contributions at DRS 2024!

Contributions at the Design Research Society Conference 2024

Best Paper Award for Ryelands AI Lab

Our project exploring AI curriculum with 7-8 year olds wins a best paper award at the Designing Interactive Systems conference

5 Levels of Design Research

Exploring Design Research at 5 increasing levels of complexity

Responsible AI Licences Generator

The Responsible AI Licences (RAIL) initative tries to use the licensing system to help developers share their innovations responsibly

Research through Design as a 'Rapid Response Methodology'

Workshop paper speculating about the meta role of Research through Design and Design Research

Shadowplay Installation at Electromagnetic Field Camp

Exhibiting our live interactive Shadowplay installation to over 3000 people at Electromagnetic Field Camp

Responding to Generative AI with Research through Design

Exploring how creating AI curriculum highlights a unique strength of Research through Design

Call for Applications: Design Researchers in Residence

We are inviting proposals to be researchers in residence with Design Research Works

AI for inclusive workshop participation

Using a physical input to AI image generation with participants who are living with dementia

What has AI got to do with free speech?

In this article for The Conversation we explore why the Responsible AI Licensing project might help protect something as important as free speech

Shadowplay

An interactive installation playing with shadows and AI

Two and a half terms later

An open discussion about generative AI in Universities

Productive Oscillation as a strategy for doing more-than-human design research

Exploring strategies for multidimensional more-than-human practice

Drones and Beyond Human Environments

Unlocking drone visions using design fiction

Reflections on the Jamboree

The Jamboree gathered 30 people together for a retreat about Design Research

Reflections on the Lab Engagements

The end of an era? Perhaps, but QuBr lives on

Generative AI Whitepaper

What, if any, challenges does generative AI pose to design education? And what should we do about them?

How science inspires art and art inspires science (?)

Panel session for the Young Academy of Europe

AI Summit North West

Exploring how Creative Industries in the North West of England are journeying through the new AI landscape

Putting design research to work

New book chapter in Flourish by Design exploring the mysterious case of design's future disappearance

Design Research Society Conference Special Track

Inviting submissions to a special track on the subject of More-Than-Human Design in Practice, for the 2024 edition of the Design Research Society conference

Designing Technology for More-Than-Human Futures

Book chapter co-authored with Paul Coulton appearing in Routledge Companion to Design Research (2nd ed.)

Implications of Generative AI on Higher Education Assessment and Design Research

This short paper reports on work conducted at Lancaster University to explore the impact of generative AI on education assessments as well as on Design Research practice

Review of Ron Wakkary's 'Things We Could Design'

Review of Ron Wakkary's book discussing more-than-human design issues

Entoptic Field Monitor @ MozFest House Amsterdam

Exhibiting the latest version of the Entoptic Field Monitor at this year's MozFest

Economist Babbage Podcast: What if generative AI destroys biometric security?

Appearing on the Economist's tech podcast to discuss the design issues arising from the security implications of generative AI

Ways of seeing design research: A polyphonic speculation

In this paper we discuss six speculative designs that all explore the challenge of representing the broad corpus of Design Research in the form of an interactive data repository.

Ryelands AI Lab: Collaboration with a Lancaster Primary School on Generative AI

We designed and deployed six lessons on Generative AI for a local primary school.

Paper on the AI-driven Entoptic Field Camera

We presented a paper at this year's CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing

Beyond Academic Publication: Alternative Outcomes of Research

Call for Participation: workshop exploring diverse research outcomes and situated knowledge

UbiFix Workshop: Tackling Repairability Challenges

Call for Participation: workshop tackling repairability challenges in smart devices

Is data a 'design material' - maybe knots have the answer

We contributed this collection of poetry to a CHI workshop exploring the materiality of data as a design material

Archiving the QuBr Project

The end of an era? Perhaps, but QuBr lives on

Lab Engagement: Edinburgh Design Informatics

Fieldwork trip in Scotland visiting the Institute for Design Informatics - a collaboration between Edinburgh College of Art and University of Edinburgh

Trust as a distributed concern

Part of work funded by the Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Hub, this paper introduces the idea of 'Trust as a Distributed Concern' as a way of conceptualising issues of Trust in the context of autonomous computer systems

Advancing ethical review practices for AI research

This article, organised by Partnership on AI, explores how ethical review processes may help to mitigate the potential harms and unintended consequences arising from AI research

Lab Engagement: OpenLab and Northumbria School of Design

Fieldwork trip in the North East of the UK visiting both Newcastle University's interaction design group OpenLab and Northumbria School of Design

Conversation Paper: Notes on Communicating the Value of Design Research

A summary and writeup of the conversation we hosted at the Design Research Society's 2022 conference in Bilbao

Lab Engagement: The Oslo School of Architecture and Design

A week long fieldwork trip to Oslo to visit the Centre for Design Research

RNIB Connect Radio Appearance

Appearing on the Royal National Institute for the Blind Radio discussing the the Seeing with Sound project with host David Hogg

Entoptic Field Monitor @ Dutch Design Week

Project exhibited at this year's Dutch Design Week.

Interaction Design and Architectures Journal: 'Meet the Authors' Video

This is a video recorded for a 'Meet the Authors' session relating to a Special Issue of the Interaction Design and Architectures Journal. It gives a quick overview of our paper in the issue.

Lab Engagement: Eindhoven University of Technology

The second of our back-to-back visits in the Netherlands took us to TU Eindhoven

Lab Engagement: Delft University of Technology

This lab engagement took us to TU Delft in the Netherlands

Visionary Award for 'Seeing with Sound' co-design project

The coming together of Zach's PhD work and funding received from the Vice Chancellor's Prize for Participatory Research and a fantastic collaboration with Sight Advice South Lakes has resulted in us winning an award from sight loss organisation, Visionary

Lab Engagement: University of Washington, Seattle

Our international lab engagements take us to Seattle to explore the teaching and research culture around Design Research at the University of Washington

Entoptic Field Monitor and Shape of Trust at the V&A

Showing our work at the V&A Museum as part of the Ethical Dilemma Cafe at London Design Festival

Lab Engagement: Simon Fraser University, Vancouver

For the first of our international lab engagement series we visited Vancouver's Simon Fraser University to run workshops, give presentations, and conduct interviews with two prominent research groups

Near Future Lab Podcast Appearnce: A 21st Century Enlightenment?

A podcast where we discuss ways to bridge the gap between academic and non-academic Design Research... and how that relates to a '21st Century Enlightenment'

Lab Engagement Series

Facilitating exchanges, contributions, community building, and sharing with Design Research labs around the world

Podcast: Design Fiction and the Generalist

Appearing the Near Future Laboratory Podcast with Julian Bleecker

Communicating the Value of Design Research

A Conversation session hosted at the Design Research Society's 2022 conference in Bilbao

Podcast: Can AI be Ethical?

Appearing on the Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Hub's Podcast series discussing AI and ethics

Seeing With Sound... Presentation at DiGRA

DiGRA presentation on 'Seeing with sound'

Play at Work: Design Research Society Conference Presentation

Paper documenting our experince of using and creating Gather Town to create shared spaces

More-than-Human: A creative fuel, or short-term fad for design?

Panel discussion at Design Research Society's 2022 conference in Bilbao

'Seeing with sound' Lancaster University's VC's Prize for Participatory Research

In December 2021 we were awarded the Vice-Chancellor's Prize for Participatory Research for a project exploring audio-only games with blind and partially sighted gamers.

The Interview Box

This paper is about 'The Interview Box'. Back in late 2020 we were optimistic that the pandemic was over. We thought we could travel and conduct interviews. We were wrong, so we built the Interview Box. This is a paper about what we learned.

Fixing the Future: The Right to Repair + Equal-IoT

New £1.2m project engaging with technology and the right to repair

MozFest and the Ethical Dilemma Cafe

We had several projects at Mozilla's Ethical Dilemma Cafe in Manchester this year.

Work, Talk, or Play... Presentation at CHI

Workshop paper and talk exploring what embodiment means for humans participating in shared virtual spaces

Trust me? I'm an autonomous machine

Pump-Priming project in association with the EPSRC Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Hub

The Ultimate Measure of Success for Speculative Design (or Design Research, period) is to Disappear Completely

In this article we argue that once we don't have to explain the value of Design Research approaches like Speclative Design, then the project will have succeeded

Design Research and Ambiguity

A paper published at the European Academy of Design Conference based on interviews with several leading design researchers that argues the field is inherently ambiguous

Machine Learning vs Digital Portraits: A Design Researchers Perspective

In this research pictorial apply a Design Research lens to the topic of material interactions between machine learning and digital portraiture

Telling the tales of Design Research

In this 1 day workshop developed for the PETRAS Cybersecurity hub, I introduce the art and science of documenting Design Research.

What is an AI's view of the Design Research landscape?

Twitter bot that responds with views about the world of Design Research.

Making Design Research Funny at Bright Club

Trying my hand at stand up comedy? Whatever could go wrong! (Contains lots of bad language, so watch with discretion)

The Revolution Will (Sort of) Be Televised

In this Design Informatics Webinar Joe and Dave discuss the high levels if Design Research Works.

What is Research through Documentary?

In this invited talk, I discussed my experiences as a researcher and documentary-maker in various professional and research contexts.

QuBr: A community-based interactive documentary about Design Research

QuBr ('Question Bridge') is a novel approach to understanding current issues relating to the Design Research community inspired by a documentary film

Room For Improvement in Video Conferencing 'Space'

A paper published at the Association of Internet Researchers Conference disucussing the future of video conferencing

An Experimental Murmuration at Uroborus Festival

Where to start with this? A crazy paper, rejected by reviewers, has second life at Czech design festival via Gather Town? I think that about covers it.

The World's First Paper That is Not a Paper

This contribution to the ever-popular alternative track at the Human Factors in Computing Conference (alt.CHI) offers a novel lens on what the future of conferences could be.

Uncanny AI: How to Spot a Mutant Algorithm

A paper and interactive event at the Economic and Social Research Councils Festival of Social Science