Matt Sinclair

Dr. Matt Sinclair is Head of Art, Design, and Photography at Edinburgh Napier University. His research is broadly situated within the field of Design Futures, generating speculative plausible scenarios to challenge the ‘preferable’ futures advertised by those invested in the technological status quo. Increasingly, this has centered on the transition to Responsible and Regenerative Design and the pedagogical approaches this demands. By utilizing research methods from the discipline of User Experience Design, his work places the needs of all stakeholders in the future of our planet, both human and other, at the center of movements for change. He uses observational research, design probes, co-design workshops, and conceptual prototypes to reveal insights for the development of fictional scenarios, personas, and customer journey maps. These scenarios have previously considered issues such as consumer interventions within circular economy models of production, models of localization of digital manufacturing, the future of creative work, the ownership of data and its usage, and the UX of consumer design toolkits.

He is a consistent advocate of practice-based research in design, both in his own research and the direction given to his students, which is grounded in an understanding of professional practice established through more than 20 years’ experience as an industrial designer, design manager, and creative director