Abigail Durrant
Co-Director of Open Lab
I am Professor of Interaction Design and Co-Director of Open Lab, predominantly working as a designer, researcher and educator in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). I’m also Co-Director for EPSRC-funded Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Civics, and I sit on the Directorate for EPSRC Centre for Digital Citizens (CDC) and Newcastle University Centre of Research Excellence for Children and Youth.
I am also the University’s lead for the Digital Health Theme of the N8 Centre of Excellence in Computationally Intensive Research (N8 CIR), collaborating with eight Northern UK universities to enhance skill sharing and training opportunities.
My research addresses the significant design challenges that we face for managing selfhood and wellbeing in our everyday interactions with digital technologies and personal data. I have explored the digital representation of Self in the contexts of: health and care; family relationships; children’s free play; major life transitions and transitional experience; memorialisation and legacy planning; cultural visiting; human rights media management; and personal identity management.
I am particularly interested in the health implications of managing a digitally-mediated Self. I am Newcastle University lead for Well Citizen Challenge Area of CDC, and Co-I for EPSRC AGENCY: Assuring Citizen Agency in a World with Complex Online Harms (EP/W032481/2). I was Principal Investigator for EPSRC INTUIT: Interaction Design for Trusted Sharing of Personal Health Data to Live Well with HIV (EP/R033900/1), completed Autumn 2022. I have also been Co-I on EPSRC Playing Out with IOT (EP/P025544/2), exploring children’s free play with Internet of Things; Co-I for EPSRC Digital Personhood: Charting the digital lifespan (EP/L00383X/1).
I teach Interaction Design on the MSc course in HCI and supervise and mentor UG, PGT and PGR students.
My work is grounded in participatory, co-creative and research-through-design approaches, working closely with key stakeholders to define and conduct research. I am Steering Committee member for the Research Through Design (RTD) Conference series and actively engage in a number of academic service roles in the HCI and Design Research fields, and with the Higher Education Academy for best practice.
Please view my Google Scholar profile for latest publications.
Place-based approach for providing community mental wellbeing
Investigating Daily Practices of Self-care to Inform the Design of Supportive Health Technologies for Living and Ageing Well with HIV
INTUIT Interaction design for trusted sharing of personal health data to live well with HIV
2023
‘Keeping our Faith alive’: Investigating Buddhism practice during COVID-19 to inform Design for the online community practice of Faith
2023 – CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2022
A ‘Planning Revolution’ or an ‘Attack on Planning’ in England: Democratisation, Digitisation and Digitalisation
2022 – International Planning Studies
Tangible Interaction for Supporting Well-being
2022 – CHI EA '22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts
Investigating Daily Practices of Self-care to Inform the Design of Supportive Health Technologies for Living and AgeingWell with HIV
2022 – CHI '22: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Collecting and sharing self-generated health and lifestyle data: Understanding barriers for people living with long-term health conditions – a survey study
2022 – Digital Health
2021
Patient-generated data in the management of HIV: a scoping review
2021 – BMJ Open
Co-Creative Visual Poetic Inquiry for communicating lived experience of HIV self-management and self-care
2021 – Design for Health
Understanding the Barriers and Facilitators to Sharing Patient-Generated Health Data Using Digital Technology for People Living With Long-Term Health Conditions: A Narrative Review
2021 – Frontiers in Public Health
2020
Crafting Critical Heritage Discourses into Interactive Exhibition Design
2020 – CHI '20: Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Co-creating poetry for communicating individuals’ emotional experience of living with HIV
2020 – Design4Health
Trust, Identity, Privacy, and Security Considerations for Designing a Peer Data Sharing Platform Between People Living With HIV
2020 – Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
2019
Understanding, capturing, and assessing value in collaborative design research
2019 – CoDesign
2017
Transitions in Digital Personhood: Online Activity in Early Retirement
2017 – CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '17)
On Speculative Enactments
2017 – Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2016
Understanding the Sociality of Experience in Mobile Music Listening with Pocketsong
2016 – Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS 2016)
The value of designers' creative practice within complex collaborations
2016 – Design Studies
Understanding the Sociality of Experience in Mobile Music Listening with Pocketsong
2016 – 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems DIS 2016
2015
Developing a Dialogical Platform for Disseminating Research through Design
2015 – Constructivist Foundations
2014
Interpersonal expression in the special educational needs classroom: An experience-centred design case study
2014 – International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction
A Study of the Challenges Related to DIY Assistive Technology in the Context of Children with Disabilities
2014 – DIS Companion '14
2013
Design to Support Interpersonal Communication in the Special Educational Needs Classroom
2013 – IDC 2013: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children