Simran Chopra, Research Associate
Simran Chopra is a Research Associate on the Peoplehood project, working with Prof. John Vines in Design Informatics in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. She is an HCI researcher, interaction designer and is completing her PhD in Computer and Information Sciences at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Her projects often take a participatory and speculative approach as she intends her work to be a remark on everyday dilemmas and design of digital technologies. By utilising varied research skills, processes, and design principles she believes digital technology can be used as a medium to express, to understand people socially and psychologically to create a sustainable, more equitable world. Her prior work has focused on sustainability, critical design, and discourse of technology use in everyday life through art, design, and social action.
After a disciplinary background in design and industrial experience in India, in Graphic, UX and Design research she embarked on her Ph.D. journey which is a transdisciplinary approach to Sustainable HCI and HCI for alternative food systems. Focusing on practices of ‘futuring’ in grassroots communities and how HCI can facilitate openness, participation, and coordination in constructing visions of the future and reconciling them with everyday practices of the communities.
Research interests:
- HCI for social good
- Community-based participatory design
- Sustainable HCI, Social Justice, and Critical Computing
- Feminist futures and ethics of care
- Participatory speculative approaches to design and research
- Interaction design for human centered, data-driven technologies and services