I completed Sonic the Hedgehog on my auntie's Sega Mega Drive before I
started primary school, and my entire childhood and adolescent life I
knew with absolute certainty that I wanted to be a games programmer. Until I attended a games programming course at university and realised
with absolute certainty that I did not want to be a games programmer.
Two years into a four year degree, it dawned on me that I didn't really
know what I wanted; yes, I wanted to work with technology, but there was
something I was missing. It was at that point that I moved to the
University of Dundee, where I began an undergraduate degree in
Applied Computing.
During the final year of my degree I
worked on my dissertation as a part of a research group within the
computing department. I explored how technology could support children
with severe disabilities to engage in personal narratives with their
families, observing the children during their day and interviewing the
people around them. It was then that I realised what I had been missing all this time. I wanted more than to just work with technology; I wanted to work with people.
My research interests lie in how technology can positively impact life
experiences, with a particular focus on sensitive life processes. These
are times of transition in a person's lifespan, such as a
relationship break up, gender transition, or being diagnosed with an
illness. Taking a primarily qualitative approach to exploring sensitive
life processes, I aim to support people experiencing these through
the use of digital technologies.
My PhD research specifically explores romantic relationship break up; for more information, click here. I
am currently a Joint-PhD student at the University of Dundee, and at
the University of Technology Sydney; I expect to graduate from both
universities with a PhD in HCI and Design in 2018.
I am incredibly grateful to the EPSRC for funding my postgraduate studies, and to both the University of Dundee and the Graduate Research School at UTS for supporting my travel as part of my Joint-PhD. I am jointly supervised by Professor Wendy Moncur as part of the Living Digital Research Group in Dundee, and by Professor Elise van den Hoven as part of the Materialising Memories Research Group at UTS.
"Surprising what you can dig out of books if you read long enough, isn't it?"
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EMAIL & PHONE
dherron@dundee.ac.uk
(01382) 386539
ADDRESS
Research Studio, Matthew Building
DJCAD, University of Dundee
Dundee, Scotland
DD1 3DH