David Chatting (he/him)
Designer
David Chatting is an Innovation Fellow in the Centre for Digital Citizens at Open Lab. He is an experienced interaction designer who confronts technical systems through a process he describes as designerly hacking to find alternative design spaces and to make compelling new experiences. He works across a range of emerging and established technologies, being equally comfortable with software and hardware. Over the past 30 years, he has worked with corporate clients, start-ups, artists, and latterly in academia.
David has a PhD in Design from Goldsmiths, University of London; an MA in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art; and a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Birmingham. His recent work concerns the domestication of the Internet, proposing some alternative, practical ways to design technologies for the home. To these ends he takes some critical perspectives on current trends in the design of domestic technologies, and of Internet of Things products in particular.
David was previously a Senior Researcher at BT's Broadband Applications Research Centre and a Visiting Researcher at the MIT Media Lab. He has taught at the Royal College of Art, University College London, as well as Newcastle University.
David holds seven patents for his inventions and has published over twenty peer-reviewed papers in the fields of design research, HCI, tangible interfaces, computer vision, and computer graphics.
David cofounded the Curiosity Collective artist group (2005-2015) and convened the dorkbot anglia talks (2010-2015).
ThinkActive: keeping children fit using low-cost technology in a fun and engaging way
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Family Rituals 2.0
2025
Resound: A Moment of Reflection in a Techno-Spiritual RtD
2025 – TEI '25: Nineteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction
Pace Layers and Research Products
2025 – Research Products and Time: When, For How Long, And Then What? CHI '25
Research Products and Time: When, For How Long, And Then What?
2025 – CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI '25
2024
Data Probes: Reflecting on Connected Devices with Technology-Mediated Probes
2024 – TEI '24: Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction
The Router of All Evil: Designerly Hacking a Network of One’s Own
2024 – TEI '24: Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction
Making Alternatives through Design for Mediated Spiritual Practice
2024 – HttF '24 : Halfway to the Future Symposium
2023
Automated Indifference
2023 – Interactions
Pace Layer Prototyping: How Prototypes Learn
2023 – Interactions
A Network of One’s Own: Struggles to Domesticate the Internet [PhD thesis]
2023 – Goldsmiths, University of London
Seeking Resonances for Remote Communal Chanting Practices
2023 – Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) 2023
The Reappearing Computer
2023 – Newcastle University; Northumbria University; PETRAS
2020
Designing for intersubjectivity and dialogicality in museum interactive installations about migration
2020 – Digital Creativity
2019
Supporting the Cross-cultural Appreciation of Traditional Chinese Puppetry Through a Digital Gesture Library
2019 – ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage
2018
ThinkActive: Designing for pseudonymous activity tracking in the classroom
2018 – CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2017
Interioractive: Smart Materials in the Hands of Designers and Architects for Designing Interactive Interiors
2017 – 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '17)
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
Making Ritual Machines: The Mobile Phone as a Networked Material for Research Products
2017 – CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Open design at the intersection of making and manufacturing
2017 – CHI EA '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Making home: Asserting agency in the age of IoT
2017 – CHI EA '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Designing Documentary Informatics
2017 – Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '17)
Home Network Map: An Instrument for Design-Led Inquiry
2017 – CHI 2017 Workshop on Making Home: Asserting Agency in the Age of IoT
2016
Ritual Machines I & II: Making Technology at Home
2016 – ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2016
Metadating: Exploring the Romance and Future of Personal Data
2016 – CHI '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Sit with Me
2016 – Discovery Museum
2015
Designing for Family Phatic Communication: A Design Critique Approach
2015 – British HCI 2015
2014
Quotidian Ritual and Work-Life Balance: An Ethnography of Not Being There
2014 – Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings (EPIC)