Graduate Student, School of Design
artist / designer / researcher
Bob Young
Joyce Yee
About
My background was originally in psychology. I trained at Newcastle University, UK (BA with First Class Honours, psychology), and then was a researcher there for several years before moving into design.
Since then, I've worked as a consultant for universities and organisations like Marie Stopes International, Uscreates (www.uscreates.com) and Sense Worldwide (http://senseworldwide.com) - mostly developing inventive ways to engage so-called hard-to-reach groups. The biggest of these was DASH - http://www.dott07.com/go/dash - part of the Designs of the Time 2007 programme, on which I was lead designer.
I still do freelance work but am mostly occupied at the moment with my phD thesis, which I'm writing up at Northumbria. It concerns the development of critical approaches to service design (and to an extent also answers the question of how service design can be used as a critical approach to issues and events outside design). In particular, it rejects the uncritical adoption of 'community' as site and aim of design, which has become something of an intellectually shallow substitute for actually *thinking* within 'socially responsible' design practices.
Communities of whom? Doing what? And why? And how can design be used to explore the kinds of communities we want to participate in and to surround us?
Projects include ARK-INC (e.g. http://www.allemandi.com/cp/ctc/book.php?id=105 ), in collaboration with Jon Ardern (http://www.jonardern.com/), and an as yet-untitled biotech project with Jess Charlesworth (www.jessicacharlesworth.com).
Contact Information
http://www.servicedesignresearch.com/benedict-singleton-interview/
