Professor Hua Dong
- Director, Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design
Trained in Industrial Design, Architecture, and Engineering, Hua specialises in inclusive design research. She had taught design at Brunel, Loughborough & Tongji universities before joining the Royal College of Art.
Hua’s PhD research at the University of Cambridge has laid the foundation of her focused research into inclusive design. She has edited more than ten books/special issues on design for inclusion, universal access and assistive technology.
Hua has extensive experience in providing specialised research consultancy to industries. She led the Inclusive Design Research Centre’s team to help Ant Financial to develop China’s first industrial guidance on inclusive design.
Hua believes in the power of education. She has supervised hundreds of students’ projects/dissertations and supervised 15 PhD/EngD students to successful completion. She was voted by students as the ‘best supervisor’ (2017).
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Research interests
Hua has published research papers on:
- Creative and systematic approaches to inclusive design
- Human-centred design methodologies and co-design methods
- Ergonomics and human factors in relation to inclusion and exclusion
- Theories and practices of design
- Designing for knowledge users (e.g., designers)
- Design pedagogy (especially on how undergraduate students learn design and empathy)
- Design heuristics and stimuli to counter fixation
- Physical activity and health
- Design for healthy ageing
- M-health adoption among older people
More recent research topics Hua has been exploring with PhD researchers include:
- Co-competition as a strategy for inclusive design
- Designing as care
- Behaviour economics and inclusive design
- Co-designing robots’ companionship with older people
- Bias in Artificial Intelligence-assisted design and interventions for better inclusion
- Involving older migrants in the Net Zero discourse and action
Through research projects, Hua also investigates:
- Making data visualisation accessible
- More-than-human inclusion
- Co-creation eco-systems for neighbourhood transformation
- Cross-culture research and innovation collaboration in creative industries
Hua encourages PhD candidates to propose their own research topic and discuss it with her. She is used to co-supervise with colleagues from different disciplines.