I’m an industrial designer, engineer and researcher interested in environmentally sensitive consumer product design, transportation, mobility, the relationship between technology and society, digital rights, and widening the public’s practical understanding of technology.

Overall, I’d characterise my design/technology interests as being about design for independence: reducing society’s resource dependence, reducing vulnerable users’ dependence on other people, and reducing users’ dependence on ‘experts’ to understand and modify the technology they own.

Doctoral research
In September 2007 I started as a PhD researcher at Brunel University’s School of Engineering & Design, Uxbridge, Middlesex, as a member of the Cleaner Electronics Research group.

Briefly, I’m investigating applying Design with Intent thinking in an ecodesign context: using design to change users’ interactions with products and systems, so that they are used in a more environmentally friendly manner (reducing whole-lifetime energy use, reducing waste generation, and so on). The aim is to test, practically, the relative effectiveness of different approaches (including ‘control’ versus ‘persuasion’ and ‘guidance’), within the context of consumer product technology, to produce a set of techniques which will be useful to environmentally sensitive product designers, interaction designers and engineers.
[More details on the research]

Professional experience
As an independent consultant, I’m currently engaged in lightweight transport and consumer product R&D for Sir Clive Sinclair (previously, I was a member of the team that developed the A-Bike and WDU) and have recently worked on research into product/market segmentation for Tangerine, for whom I’ve also done branding research in the past.

My work as a freelancer has tended to involve carrying out a variety of short engineering, product and graphic design and business research projects for corporate and private clients - in various capacities, previous clients have included Mayhem UK, Wilson Bros, Daka Designs, Wright Fenn (now Pharma Engineering) and a number of individual inventors and entrepreneurs. Ongoing personal projects have included the development of Incluminate, an award-winning lighting backup system primarily intended for elderly or infirm people (patent applied for), a series of wheelchair drive prototypes, and (very much in the early planning stages) an electric conversion of a Bond Minicar.
[My portfolio]

Writing
I’ve recently completed a substantial series of commissioned pieces for Inventor Resource intended to help inventors through the process of turning their ideas into businesses, and my blog, Architectures of Control | Design with Intent, started in November 2005, has caught the attention of a diverse worldwide audience, collaboratively exploring a hitherto under-recognised field of design thinking and practice. As result of the blog, I’ve been asked to write one-off articles for a couple of other websites - the TAXI Design Network, and Ballardian.

I’m also the author of Rebel Without Applause (ISBN 1870519647), an analysis of the Reliant Motor Company’s history and its impact on automotive technology, published by Bookmarque in 2003, have contributed articles to magazines such as Engineering Designer, Original Tin and Gown, and the AROnline website; in addition, I co-edited Good Thinking [PDF link] (ISBN 190231641X), a handbook of innovative new technology products from young designers and engineers accompanying the show [PDF link] of the same name.
[Full list of articles and papers]

Background
From 2000-4 I studied Industrial Design Engineering at Brunel University’s former Runnymede design school in Surrey, and then undertook a Cambridge-MIT Institute Master’s programme in Technology Policy at the Judge Institute of Management (now the Judge Business School), University of Cambridge, where I was a member of Downing College, from 2004-5.

I grew up near Dawlish, Devon, went to school in Cockwood and in Exeter, and now live in Windsor, Berkshire with my wonderful girlfriend. My aim is to leave the world in a better state than I found it.

dan@danlockton.co.uk | Daniel.Lockton@brunel.ac.uk | December 2007