Research

Fostering Digital Cultural Participation

Exploring Artificial Intelligence in the Street: Working with Leith Walk

This project is motivated by the question “What does Artificial Intelligence mean for the person on the street?”

CoSTAR Foresight Lab

The Foresight Lab’s role in the CoSTAR network is to capture and disseminate a body of industry knowledge, trends and needs – present and future.

Designing Responsible NLP

Designing Responsible NLP is a PhD with intergrated programme being run as part of the newly funded (as of the start of 2024) UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Responsible and Trustworthy in-the-world Natural Language Processing.

Emotional AI in Cities: Cross Cultural Lessons from UK and Japan on Designing for an Ethical Life

Social sciences and humanities led, Emotional AI Lab examines the social, cultural, legal and ethical impact of artificial intelligence technologies that function in relation to data about human emotion, moods, affective states and other intimate dimensions of human life.

Regulation and Design (RAD) Lab

The Regulation and Design (RAD) Lab explores how to create better human-technology interactions by building an interdisciplinary research agenda at the interface of technology, design, and regulation.

Fixing the Future: The Right to Repair and Equal-IoT

‘Fixing the Future’ is an interdisciplinary project investigating how the lack of repairability in the consumer Internet of Things (IoT) will adversely impact equity, inclusion, and sustainability in the digital economy.

Constructing the Agenda: Public Service AI in News and Media Production

Exploring the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) for public service media (PSM), drawing out the big questions AI and data-intensive technologies raise alongside the practical and conceptual challenges they pose.

Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID)

BRAID is a UK-wide programme dedicated to integrating Arts and Humanities research more fully into the Responsible AI ecosystem, as well as bridging the divides between academic, industry, policy and regulatory work on responsible AI.

Mitigating climate risks to Scotland’s festivals

VisHub

The VisHub is an interdisciplinary research lab and hub for teaching, collaboration, and outreach around data visualization hosted by the Institute for Design Informatics and the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh.

Healthier Working Lives and Ageing for Workers in The Care Sector: Developing Careers, Enhancing Continuity, Promoting Wellbeing

The Innovate UK-funded, University of Edinburgh-led Healthier Working Lives programme assesses the challenges and opportunities for the over-50s care workforce.

UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Node in Governance and Regulation

This Node will delve into the development of a framework for regulation of autonomous systems, enabling them to effectively adapt to the intricacies of the environment in which they operate.

CoSTAR Realtime Lab

The vision for the CoSTAR Realtime Lab is to establish a mixed reality R&D centre that supports sector engagement in collaborative R&D.

XR Network+: Virtual Production in the Digital Economy

XR Network is a new research network commissioned to set the agenda for future innovation in virtual production technology, content creation and consumption.

DUCK

DUCK: a deepfake British spy thriller parody starring Sean Connery and Marilyn Monroe. Produced using deepfake visuals and audio, Rachel Maclean, who plays all the characters, swaps her voice and face with the very recognisable cast of actors.

Semi-automatic Data Tours to Support Data Exploration and Visualisation Literacy for Novice Analysts

Developing public engagement and co-design skills with health-data researchers

A case study on co-designing networks of care with rural communities

Supporting Healthy Ageing at Work (SHAW)

Working with four partner organisations, the SHAW project explores ways to support healthy ageing at work, to enable productive later-life employment

Horizon 3.0: Trusted Data Driven Products

The Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute is a multidisciplinary centre of excellence for Digital Economy research.

DCODE

DCODE is a EU-Funded network of seven world-class higher education design institutions and stakeholders from industry, government, and civil society, to explore new ways of designing with data and autonomous systems

IMMERSE: The implementation of Digital Mobile Mental Health in clinical care pathways: towards person-centered care in psychiatry

IMMERSE unites an interdisciplinary team of researchers with the objective of propelling the transformation of mental health care in Europe into true person-centred care.

Critically Envisioning Biometric AI Futures

The project started by mapping the state of the art and different socio-technical and legal issues raised by future uses of biometric artificial intelligence systems in law enforcement. Drawing insights from this analysis, the project informed the development of a series of speculative design fictions that focused on different applications, such as live automated facial and emotion recognition or DNA phenotyping. 

ekip – European Cultural and Creative Industries Innovation Policy Platform

The European Commission has granted the ekip partnership 6 million euros to develop innovation policies for the cultural and creative industries. New policies for innovation are needed to provide the ecosystems in these sectors with more tailormade support, faciliating access to funding and incubators.

VisActivities: An Open Online Platform for Collecting, Browsing, and Discussing Activities for Visualization Empowerment and Data Literacy

The VisActivities Platform is an open platform designed to help capture, characterize, and share visualization activities used as part of visualization teaching and workshops at large.

Future Infrastructure for Retail Remittances (FIRE)

The FIRE project explores the design requirements for cash-like digital payment systems as part of an efficient and robust payments infrastructure of the future.

Building Public Value via Intelligible AI (PubVIA)

The PubVIA project aims to build public value via intelligible AI (Artificial Intelligence) and to enable the BBC to consider the potential threats and risks AI and IoT (Internet of Things) pose for journalism.

PETRAS 2

Addressing socio-technical barriers to adopting blockchains for social good

Intelligent Governance Design

Centre for Investing Innovation

The Centre for Investing Innovation is a strategic partnership between global asset management company abrdn and the University of Edinburgh.

Building and testing a user-centred, Accessible Long COVID fatigue rehabilitation smartPHone App (ALPHA)

Electricity control room algorithms for a decarbonised system

Centre for Digital Citizens

The Centre for Digital Citizens is a "next stage digital economy" research centre, led by Newcastle University and Northumbria University in partnership with 33 partners including the Design Informatics at University of Edinburgh.

UKFin+

UKFin+ is a "network plus", with a mission to bridge the gap that currently exists between research in universities and the needs of the financial services industry, its consumers and the regulator.

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.

Developing a Theory of Change for Digital Mental Health

This project was conducted in collaboration with Togetherall (formerly Big White Wall), a multimodal peer-support DMH community platform providing anonymous, round-the-clock peer support made safe by professionally registered moderators, self-help materials, guided courses, digital art and self-monitoring of psychological symptoms.

Peoplehood: Value Exchange in Later Life Communities

The Peoplehood project is a large collaborative project led by Blackwood Homes and Care, involving a wide range of organisations including University of Edinburgh researchers across Informatics, the Business School and the Institute for Design Informatics.

Autistic Adults Online

Advanced Care Research Centre (ACRC)

High‐quality data‐driven, personalised and affordable care that supports the independence, dignity and quality‐of‐life of people in later life living in their own homes and in supported care environments.

Qualified Selves: Co-Creating Meaning Post-Big Data

Qualified Selves is a joint project between Lancaster and Edinburgh Universities. Its novel approach to co-design and co-creation has so far allowed for new and exciting prototypes to be developed to help us think about tracking data in different ways.

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.

DECaDE

DECaDE recognises this position and asks what can we do to transform this emerging future economy into one that is fair, that has appropriate governance, and maximises opportunites for everyone to create value. How can decentralised platforms enabled by emerging data-centric technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Distributed Ledgers and Blockchain transform our future economy – and the way we work, interact and create value.

Inspace: Exhibitions

Inspace is a unique events and exhibitions space which is part of the Institute of Design Informatics within the University of Edinburgh. Inspace commissions and produces creative activity that unlocks digital technology and explores its role in society, through public programmes that connect data, research and creative talent.

ICT4D and Covid-19

Visual+Interactive Data

Visual+Interactive Data is a research group that investigates data visualizations and intreractive means to make data more immediate, tangible, and understandable across a variety of media such as paper, screen, and immersive.

Inspace: Artist Residencies

Inspace is part of the Institute for Design Informatics; commissioning and producing creative activity that unlocks digital technology and explores its role in society. Our public programme will connect data, research and creative talent.

SAIDS Project

Mydes - SAIDS project aims to digitally enable public and third sector services that are typically paper-based or repeated manual data entry

Data Lates

Data Lates and PRETERNATURAL exhibitions

Data Play: Festival 2019

summer activities part of Edinburgh Fringe