The QUT Design Lab was founded in 2016 to employ bold, fresh, and rigorous design-led research.
As our world gets increasingly complex, volatile and uncertain, we need ideas, innovative collaborations and imagination – the ability to reshape what is and conceive, create, and design things that don’t yet exist. That is the mission and vision of the QUT Design Lab: to reimage and redesign our future.
We are a collaborative, cross-disciplinary community of designers, engineers, roboticists, creative thinkers, makers, artists, health practitioners and innovators, who work together to speculate, imagine, design, and innovate. We are a catalyst for new thinking and drive technological innovation through design-led approaches, with our research privileging end-user engagement, sustainability, cross-disciplinarity, and industry collaborations.
We ask how tools, methods and approaches from design and creative practice foster world-changing ideas and innovation in different settings – industry, manufacturing, healthcare, public spaces, and urban and regional places. We create, test, and deploy prototypes with collaborators across industry, government, and community and our imaginative, thought-provoking and high impact research.
Our mission is ‘Change by Design’, focused around three core programs:
Design for Emerging Technologies
The Design for Emerging Technology program fosters innovation, reflection and experimentation with technology in an increasingly complex and augmented world. It addresses the role that new technologies – such as the Internet of Things, AI and Machine Learning, Extended Reality and Digital Fabrication – can play in shaping and enabling design practices. It investigates the critical role of participatory design approaches in shaping the development and application of these technologies in areas such as advanced manufacturing, extended reality and collaborative robotics.
Research Theme Leader:
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Dr Levi Swann
Levi Swann (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer in Industrial Design within the School of Design, Queensland University of Technology. His research is transdisciplinary, exploring the complex interactions that take place among humans, technology and their broader environments. Current focus areas are the design of health wearables using additive manufacturing, human...
Design for Health
Drawing on a human-centred design-led approach, the Design for Health program re-designs places, products and processes to foster mental and physical health, as well as social interactions and wellbeing. Our interdisciplinary researchers prioritise an inclusive ‘design for all’ approach to amplify the voices and perspectives of people with disabilities, older people, children and youth.
Research Theme Leader:
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Assoc Prof Sean Maher
Associate Professor Sean Maher (PhD) is a researcher and teacher in Film, Screen & Animation in the Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice (CIESJ). He is a Faculty Ethics Chair in CIESJ and a Visiting Professor at the University of Greenwich, London (Sept 2023 - Sept 2028). In...
Design for Mobility Futures
Mobility and transportation are significant issues for all major cities around the world. In this emerging research theme, Design Lab researchers join other QUT researchers in interdisciplinary research for mobility futures that are safe, sustainable and inclusive. In this theme researchers investigate how design-related issues across mobility and transportation will positively impact people, communities and the environment now and into the future.
Research Theme Leader:
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Assoc Prof Rafael Gomez
Currently seeking PhD applications across emerging technologies application to advanced manufacturing, experience design, design and emotion, wearable tech for design and health, and design with technology for empathy. Learn more around the project for Design with Technology for Empathy. Apply for QUT scholarships (2021). Also seeking PhD and Master of...
