Professor Peter Wright

Professor Peter Wright PhD BSc (Hons)

Visiting Professor at Sheffield Hallam University & Associate of Lab4Living
Professor of Human Centred Design at Newcastle University
Email: p.c.wright@shu.ac.uk
Phone: 0114 225 6773
Fax: 0114 225 6931

I am professor of human-centred design in Lab4Living. Human-centred design is not so much a subject area but a philosophy or way of approaching design problems. Sadly then, my stock-in-trade is not the design and making of beautiful artefacts, but the development of methods and practices which help designers and makers place the people who use and experience such artefacts at the centre of their thinking and making.

Much of my research carer has focussed on people who use computer technology as part of their work or at home, and I have developed methods to help designers design more user friendly, less exhausting, and more error-tolerant systems which improve those people’s experiences rather than detract from them. But at the heart of my enquiry is a desire to understand something of human experience, what makes us different from the machines we build, and how design can be put to use in the pursuit of a society that values life as lived and felt.

What inspires me?
Seeing things differently.

In today’s world we don’t just use technology, we live with it, and through it. When I say technology I have in mind computers, TVs, MP3 players and all those electronic gadgets we encounter every day. Not just the physical objects, but also the content, services, information, interactions, and experiences they make available to us.

Terry Winograd was right when he said designing for the whole range of human experience would be the next great challenge for design, not only of digital products, but of everything from built environments and public services, to telephones and sandwich boxes.

But what does it mean to design for human experience? It means we have to find ways to engage with ordinary life as lived and felt. We have to understand the people we design for, not just as subjects of scientific analysis and measurement, but as people who, as John Dewey would say, grow, love, live, suffer and endure, and who make and do stuff in order to locate themselves in a world.  It means we have to give ordinary people a voice, not only in what- but also in how- we design the brave new world we continually seek to create through design.

What do I do for inspiration when I am not reading and writing? I run the hills, climb the mountains, dive the oceans and shop with my girls.