I work as a designer, researcher and educator. This website mostly focusses on my artwork, which I am doing less of these days, and my written publications.

My background and activities are a mixture of academic research and consulting in design innovation, especially in digital/services and policy, and post-graduate teaching.

I aim to critically explore what design approaches - sometimes called "design thinking" - bring to policy-making, social innovation and organisational challenges. I am particularly interested in making better connections between academic research and practice and how design and participatory innovation enable this.

Current role. I'm director of the innovation insights hub and professor of contemporary design practices at University of the Arts London (since 2015) and associate fellow at Said Business School, University of Oxford (since 2010).

Previous role. I was Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) research fellow embedded in Policy Lab, Cabinet Office, and prinicipal research fellow at the University of Brighton in 2014-15.

Publications. I publish in peer-reviewed journals, usually about design thinking and service and social design, as well as trying to find ways to make academic work more digestible to wider publics. My Service Innovation Handbook which combined services management, innovation studies, customer experience and design research, was published in late 2014 had has been reprinted twice.

Teaching and advisory. Since 2005 I have taught an MBA elective in Designing Better Futures at Said Business School, University of Oxford, where I am associate fellow and where I was previously on the faculty for five years. I also teach the design module on the B.Sc Management Science at University College London. There are few such courses in  schools. For Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, I scoped and designed a MBA launched in 2017 centred on rethinking managemnet as a creative practice. I have been involved in helping develop curricula in design/innovation and as an external for academic reviews, PhD examining and validations such as at Eindhoven Academy of Design, Parsons The New School for Design, Malmo University and the Royal College of Art. 

Research. My academic research combines design studies, with aspects of management and organisation studies and science and technology studies. I am currently Co-Investiagor on a three-year ESRC funded project on Smart Regulation that aims to develop evidence-based regulation to address anti-microbial resistance in India. I was co-Investigator with Professor Guy Juiler (now at Aalto University) leading two studies on "social" design commissioned by the AHRC:  ProtoPublics and on Mapping Social Design Research and Practice. I co-curated the Social Design Talks which ran 2012-14 with Guy Juiler and Jocelyn Bailey (then at Policy Connect). I led the Young Foundation's contribitions to the European Commission Framework 7 research project on mapping controversies, EMAPS. I was also PI on an AHRC-ESRC Designing for the 21st Century project studying service design in science and technology-based enterprises.

Consultancy. In my practice and research I am involved in exploring ways to bring design approaches to organisational problems and community challenges. I am an associate of Normann Partners, an international consulting firm with offices in Stockholm and London. I have about 15+ years' experience of leading multi-disciplinary teams through design projects for organisations such as Vodafone, Deutsche Bank and Metropolitan Housing. Through my consultancy I design and facilitate large (up to 100 people) workshops for entrepreneurs and innovators to try out design thinking and service design. Previously I was head of social design at the Young Foundation, London, where I helped build up its design capability. I published online a toolkit I use in my consultancy and teaching, the Social Design Methods Menu, in 2012, some of which was re-printed in the Nesta DIY Toolkit. I co-founded one of London's first digital media practices, Soda, which makes me some kind of creative entrepreneur.

Speaking. Conference keynotes include Researching Systems Design (2017), Digging into Data (2016), Council on Higher Education in Art and Design (2015), UK Arts and Design Institutions Association (2014), IIT Design Research Conference (2013), International Association of Societies of Design Research (2011), Service Design Network (2010), Design Management Institute (2010), and Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (2008).

Artwork. My artwork has been shown internationally including at TEDGlobal 2011 and in the interdisciplinary exhibition Making Things Public (2005) curated by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel.

Education. I originally studied engineering design and appropriate technology, then a masters in digital arts, and my PhD developed an inventive practice perspective on designing.

2017 Supervising research degrees module
2013 PhD Design, Lancaster University
1996 MA Computing in Art and Design, Centre for Electronic Arts, Middlesex University
1989 B. Engineering Design and Appropriate Technology, Warwick University