Sarah Kettley, a Reader at Nottingham Trent University, will give a guest talk to the lab.
Design research is building a track record of collaboration with healthcare practices and stakeholders, but is currently less conversant with the different approaches or ‘modalities’ to be found in mental health and wellbeing. This talk introduces the recent EPSRC project, An Internet of Soft Things, which applied and reflected on the Person-Centred Approach as a way of doing design research with mental health service users considering near-future IoT service contexts enabled by e-textile interfaces. The presentation will distinguish between key approaches to the human to be found in care services, and explains how the research team attempted to embody the Person-Centred attitude. Through an account of participants’ experiences it will show how the PCA creates a valuing space for individuals to thrive, while challenging normative research expectations. It will finish with recommendations for design researchers seeking to work with mental health stakeholders, focusing on roles and relationships, power dynamics, and wider disciplinary and research expectations.
Sarah is Reader in Relational Design at Nottingham Trent University, working across disciplines to develop design methodologies for embedded technologies. She recently led the EPSRC project, An Internet of Soft Things (IoSofT), working with Bassetlaw Mind to investigate Person-Centred and experiential design research approaches to the IoT in the mental health sector. Sarah’s doctoral study was in craft as a methodology for the development of wearable technologies, and she continues to collaborate across disciplines to deconstruct and rebuild design processes in response to new technologies.
University of Nottingham School of Computer Science Nottingham, NG8 1BB
email: mrl@cs.nott.ac.uk