Professor Andy Dearden
Professor of Interactive Systems Design
Communication & Computing Research Centre
E-mail a.m.dearden@shu.ac.uk
Phone 0114 225 6878
Fax 0114 225 2718
My connection to Lab4Living is leading a team of design researchers and collaborators in the National Health Service investigating User Centred Healthcare Design. Our work crosses over with Lab4Living and I work with other team members to develop ideas, projects and initiatives that relate specifically to living healthily.
My own research centres on the idea of Interactive Systems, i.e. systems that are composed of both people acting and the technologies they are using to achieve particular objectives. Often these systems involve information and communications technologies (i.e. computers and networks), but these are not the only technologies involved. Interactive systems are essential elements that underpin so many of the things that we take for granted, whether it is about enabling us to live healthily, delivering our health services, enabling us to be mobile, enabling us to communicate, enabling us to learn, enabling us to play, i.e. enabling us to have the kind of life we want to live.
I seek to understand the design of these systems, in the sense of uncovering how they fit together and operate, but most particularly I want to discover ways that groups of people can participate in the process of designing and creating these systems. What kinds of methods, techniques and representations help people to make sense of these complex systems and to shape them? My answers have to take into account the people doing the shaping. I am concerned with enabling people and groups who may have limited resources to shape systems for themselves, for example voluntary groups, non-government organisations, and community organisations in developing countries.
What motivates me?
I am motivated by a desire for justice. The inequality in the way that we are organising and operating our society never ceases to appal me. The rubbish that is a consequence of some of the things we design. Design is surely about ‘making things better’ and one of my tests of ‘better’ is to ask who benefits and who might lose out with this particular design. Design thinking can make a big difference to the kind of future we create. It’s not good enough for designers to say ‘I was just following (the client’s) orders’.
What inspires me?
People: People (individually, and collaboratively) putting together solutions for themselves ( The Honeybee network co-ordinated by Anil Gupta that collects grass roots innovations shows how creative people can be and are already being); People who give their time to highlight injustices, rather than ignoring them and progressing their own narrow interests; People who are prepared to live their lives differently and don’t follow the crowd; People who make things; People who make systems; People who make music; People who take time.
Like many others in the Lab4Living team, I am also inspired by ‘not people’ – by the wild places of the world where humans are thinner on the ground.
Professor Andy Dearden
Professor Andy Dearden
Professor of Interactive Systems Design
Communication & Computing Research Centre
E-mail a.m.dearden@shu.ac.uk
Phone 0114 225 6878
Fax 0114 225 2718
My connection to Lab4Living is leading a team of design researchers and collaborators in the National Health Service investigating User Centred Healthcare Design. Our work crosses over with Lab4Living and I work with other team members to develop ideas, projects and initiatives that relate specifically to living healthily.
My own research centres on the idea of Interactive Systems, i.e. systems that are composed of both people acting and the technologies they are using to achieve particular objectives. Often these systems involve information and communications technologies (i.e. computers and networks), but these are not the only technologies involved. Interactive systems are essential elements that underpin so many of the things that we take for granted, whether it is about enabling us to live healthily, delivering our health services, enabling us to be mobile, enabling us to communicate, enabling us to learn, enabling us to play, i.e. enabling us to have the kind of life we want to live.
I seek to understand the design of these systems, in the sense of uncovering how they fit together and operate, but most particularly I want to discover ways that groups of people can participate in the process of designing and creating these systems. What kinds of methods, techniques and representations help people to make sense of these complex systems and to shape them? My answers have to take into account the people doing the shaping. I am concerned with enabling people and groups who may have limited resources to shape systems for themselves, for example voluntary groups, non-government organisations, and community organisations in developing countries.
What motivates me?
I am motivated by a desire for justice. The inequality in the way that we are organising and operating our society never ceases to appal me. The rubbish that is a consequence of some of the things we design. Design is surely about ‘making things better’ and one of my tests of ‘better’ is to ask who benefits and who might lose out with this particular design. Design thinking can make a big difference to the kind of future we create. It’s not good enough for designers to say ‘I was just following (the client’s) orders’.
What inspires me?
People: People (individually, and collaboratively) putting together solutions for themselves ( The Honeybee network co-ordinated by Anil Gupta that collects grass roots innovations shows how creative people can be and are already being); People who give their time to highlight injustices, rather than ignoring them and progressing their own narrow interests; People who are prepared to live their lives differently and don’t follow the crowd; People who make things; People who make systems; People who make music; People who take time.
Like many others in the Lab4Living team, I am also inspired by ‘not people’ – by the wild places of the world where humans are thinner on the ground.