Hattie Simms, Research Associate
Hattie Simms is a Research Associate in Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. She is working on the REPHRAIN project BUREAU, which is a speculative design project to understand and explore the needs of public audiences through critical and creative engagement activities with the matter of potential online harm.
Her design research practice focuses on developing meaningful and equitable engagement to support people to drive and engage in the design process through co-design and co-production. She is interested in people’s relationship to place and citizenship, and what their sense of identity is within this, and her research explores using sensory and embodied methods to capture and understand people’s experience. She completed a Masters of Research at the Innovation School at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) in 2021 and worked as Community Engagement Officer at GSA from 2018-2023, developing research interests and experience in participatory design, community development, partnership work and creative engagement.
Related
Citizens Data Agency
A year-long design research project exploring people’s data advice needs both today and in the future, with the aim of understanding how to better enhance privacy and security for people using digital technologies.
REPHRAIN
REPHRAIN will develop a wide range of tools to keep people safe and informed online. These include automated tools to flag online harms in social media and a map to identify and avoid different threat such as fraud or disinformation. Researchers at the National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence online (REPHRAIN), will also develop new methods to protect against micro-targeting, a tactic used to gather data about individuals, and a Data Advice Bureau to help citizens navigate online spaces safely.