Dr. Chris Elsden

Job title:

Chancellor's Fellow in Service Design

Role:

Co-Director and Cohort Lead for MSc Service Management and Design programme, EFI

chris.elsden@ed.ac.uk

Office:

1.51, Design Informatics, Bayes Centre

Research Output:

Edinburgh Research Explorer link

Biography

I am a Chancellor’s Fellow in Service Design, in the Institute for Design Informatics, working across the Edinburgh Futures Institute and ECA. I am a design researcher, rooted in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), with a background in sociology, and expertise in the human experience of data-driven services.

I'm Co-Director and Cohort Lead for the new MSc Service Management and Design programme in EFI, where I teach several courses related to design methods. I have also been a founding member of the EFI Data & Design Lab supporting innovation and co-creation within EFI.

I completed my PhD in 2017 at Open Lab, at the University of Newcastle, before working as a Post-Doc in Co-Create at Northumbria University. I joined the Institute for Design Informatics as a Post-Doc on the AHRC Creative Informatics project, before becoming a Chancellor's Fellow in 2021.

Teaching

I teach extensively in the Edinburgh Futures Institute on the MSc Service Management and Design programme, where I also serve as Cohort Lead. In addition to project supervision, I am course organiser for:

Introduction to Service Design

Introduction to Participatory Methods

Applied Co-Creation

Research

My research is rooted in the field of Human-Computer Interaction, but is fundamentally inter-disciplinary, applying design research methods to understand the human experience and social meanings of data-driven services. Using and developing innovative design research methods, my work undertakes diverse, qualitative and often speculative engagements with participants to investigate emerging relationships with technology – particularly data-driven tools, FinTech and blockchain technologies. In so doing, I hope to reveal the many nuanced relationships people and organisations have with digital technology in their everyday lives, and use these insights to identify new and future opportunities for design.

Current Funded Projects
DeCaDE Centre for Decentralised Digital Economy (PI, Edinburgh)

The Secret Lives of Children's Digital Monies (New project)

Past Projects

What is a Ticket? (British Academy Small Grant)

FestForward

ZoomObscura

Creative Informatics

OxChain

My full publication record is available via Google Scholar.