Dr Heather McKinnon
Faculty of Creative Industries, Education & Social Justice,
School of Design,
Interaction Design
Biography
Dr Heather McKinnon is a Lecturer in Interaction Design in the School of Design, Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice at the Queensland University of Technology. Dr McKinnon is a designer-researcher whose work and interests lie in the cross section of:Sustainable Interaction Design / More-than-Human design / Speculative Design Futuring
After completing her Masters of Interaction Design and Electronic Arts (MIDEA) at the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urban Planning at the University of Sydney, she went on to complete her Doctor of Philosophy in Interaction Design from the Urban Informatics Research Lab at QUT, in which she explored how design methodologies and practices are connected to cultures of resource waste, frugality, and resourcefulness within everyday domestic life in urban and regional areas of Australia. Her past research has explored how creative values and practices of ecological consciousness and resource sufficiency - living well on less - are learned, experienced and passed on to others. Heather has had her work recognised internationally, being awarded the Design Studies Journal Best Paper 2019.
Current research sits within the following areas:
- Sustainable methodologies for research-through-design
- Designing for Ecological Futures
- Designing interactive wearables for climate resilience
- Speculative design futuring for more-than-human ecological futures
- Ecofeminist approaches within Human-computer interaction & Interaction Design
- Research-through-design
- Rapid prototyping techniques
- Cultural probes/Design Research Artefacts
- Collaborative data analysis
- Speculative methods for world building
- Digital Illustration
- Surrealist Digital Collage
- Analogue/low fidelity interactive materials for connection to the environment
- Interactive 3D mapping projections
- Interactive illustration/murals
Personal details
Positions
- Lecturer in Interaction Design
Faculty of Creative Industries, Education & Social Justice,
School of Design,
Interaction Design
Keywords
Sustainable Interaction Design, Designer Researcher, Design Artefacts, Sustainability, Research-through-Design, Climate Resilience, More Than Human
Research field
Design
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2020
Qualifications
- Doctor of Philosophy (Queensland University of Technology)
Publications
- McKinnon, H. & Sade, G. (2019). Exploring the home environment: Fusing rubbish and design to encourage participant agency and self-reflection. Design Studies, 63, 155–180. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/128982
- McKinnon, H., Foth, M. & Sade, G. (2020). 1300 Pieces of Rubbish: A Collaborative Approach to Making Sense of Everyday Resource Sufficiency in the Home. DIS 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, 1351–1364. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/200268
- McKinnon, H., (2016). Domestic reflections, electric reflections: design interventions foregrounding energy mundanity in the home. Design Issues, 32(4), 29–39. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/89232
- McKinnon, H., (2016). Finding design value in modern mundanity. Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, 1059–1071. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/94370
- McKinnon, H. & Foth, M. (2017). The work of making: reflections on the process, form and function of two sets of design research artefacts. Proceedings of the 29th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference (OzCHI 2017), 191–200. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/111566
- McKinnon, H., (2016). The [everyday] future by design: opportunities for the design exploration of everyday sustainability. Presented at: Designing Interactive Systems Conference, 37–38. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/96058
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Heather, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).
Supervision
Completed supervisions (Doctorate)
The supervisions listed above are only a selection.