Margot Brereton researches the collaborative design of new humanitarian technologies and their interfaces. She co-designs with real user communities in selected challenging contexts, focused on underrepresented groups: older people, people with intellectual disabilities, endangered species, and indigenous communities. Prototypes aiming to meet community aspirations are deployed within communities over significant periods of time (6 months to years) and evolved in response to characteristics of use (or non-use) and growth or non-growth of participation.

Margot’s approach recognizes that technologies are always embedded within networks of relations and her research seeks to understand those relations and how relations and technologies co-evolve. She focuses on emerging technologies such as tangibles, AI, IoT etc., leading to innovative designs, methods, and theories, with varying degrees of success, uptake, failure and learning. Her group’s co-designs include: the messaging kettle which connects older adults in a delightful way through the routine of boiling the kettle; the ambient birdhouse which helps people to discover nature; and bilingual community digital noticeboards supporting endangered languages.

Margot is Professor of Engineering and Interaction Design at Queensland University of Technology. She is Joint Editor in Chief of the journal, CoDesign (Taylor & Francis). She is a Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. She holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering Design from Stanford University, a Masters in Technology Policy from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BSc.Eng(Hons) from University of Bristol, UK.