Simon Bowen
Lecturer
I am a designer-researcher with over ten years’ experience coordinating cross-sector and design practice-led collaborative projects across domains including: climate change public engagement; volunteering and community-based services; digitally-supported co-design at scale; community and place-based cultural heritage; academic-industry knowledge exchange, and healthcare service innovation.
In 2016, I coordinated Open Lab’s 2016 Metro Futures project that enabled 300 face-to-face and 3000 online public participants to influence the design of new trains for Tyne & Wear Metro.
I also managed the several academic-industry collaborations within Newcastle University’s part of the Creative Exchange, an AHRC-funded knowledge exchange hub for the creative economy. Within these projects I have developed research of the value of design practice for collaboration and innovation. Since 2016, I have coordinated and contributed to several place-based digital artworks on the topic of climate change.
StoryWeb: creating stories around climate change
⋯
Metro Futures: Co-designing the future of Tyne and Wear Metro
⋯
2024
Public Engagement, Digital Technology and Transport: Engaging through Open, Early and Experience-Centred Perspectives at Scale
2024 – Contemporary Social Science
2023
Metro Futures 2020: Enabling Participation at Varying Depths and Scales via Digital Technology
2023 – International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction
2022
Medievals and Moderns in Conversation: Co-Designing Creative Futures for Under-Used Historic Churches in Rural Communities
2022 – Multimodal Technologies and Interaction
Web Augmentation for Well-Being: the Human-Centred Design of a Takeaway Food Ordering Digital Platform
2022 – Interacting with Computers
"It's all their words, it's just not necessarily all of the words": Balancing Authenticity and Authority in Participatory Heritage Projects
2022 – Participatory Design Conference (PDC 22)
2021
Appetite for Disruption: Designing Human-Centred Augmentations to an Online Food Ordering Platform
2021 – 34th British Human Computer Interaction Conference
Cyclical experience-based design: A proposal for engaging stakeholders in a co-creative model for primary health care service design
2021 – International Journal of Health Planning and Management
2020
Metro Futures: Experience-Centred Co-Design at Scale
2020 – CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2019
Cross-cultural Understanding of Chinese Traditional Puppetry: Integrating Digital Technology to Enhance Audience Engagement
2019 – The International Journal of Intangible Heritage
Supporting the Cross-cultural Appreciation of Traditional Chinese Puppetry Through a Digital Gesture Library
2019 – ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage
Understanding, capturing, and assessing value in collaborative design research
2019 – CoDesign
2018
Decorating public and private spaces: Identity and pride in a refugee camp
2018 – CHI EA '18 Human Factors in Computing Systems
ActuEating: Desiging, Studying and Exploring Actuating Decorative Artefacts
2018 – DIS '18: Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference
Enhancing the Appreciation of Traditional Chinese Painting Using Interactive Technology
2018 – Multimodal Technologies and Interaction
2017
Enabling Polyvocality in Interactive Documentaries through "Structural Participation"
2017 – CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Mindfulness and technology: Traces of a middle way
2017 – DIS 2017 - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems
Participatory design facilitates Person Centred Nursing in service improvement with older people: a secondary directed content analysis
2017 – Journal of Clinical Nursing
2016
Many Makings: Entangling Publics, Participation and Things in a Complex Collaborative Context
2016 – 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS 16)
The value of designers' creative practice within complex collaborations
2016 – Design Studies
Many Makings: Entangling Publics, Participation and Things in a Complex Collaborative Context
2016 – ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems
<em>Unfoldings: </em>Multiple Explorations of Sound and Space
2016 – New Interfaces For Musical Expression
2015
Exploring gesture sonification to support reflective craft practice
2015 – CHI 2015 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Contesting the City: Enacting the political through digitally supported urban walks
2015 – CHI '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Beyond Participatory Production: Digitally Supporting Grassroots Documentary
2015 – Proceedings of the 33rd annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI 2015
Understanding the lived experience of adolescents with type 1 diabetes: opportunities for design
2015 – Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC '15)