Understanding Personalisation : New Aspects of Design and Consumption

Dr Iryna Kuksa holds a permanent Senior Research Fellowship in art and design at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Educated at Oxford, LSE and Warwick, she has extensive research expertise in industrial design, digital and social media, and digital humanities. Her influential book Making Sense of Space: The Design and Experience of Virtual Spaces as a Tool for Communication (Chandos, 2014) redefined the use of digital spaces for communication and creative practice. Her innovative approach to understanding the role of design in social media and consumer culture, led to the launch of a new research field of design for personalisation (Design for Personalisation, Routledge, 2017). Iryna’s research on 3D visualisation and digital design as a tool for education has been recognised by the prestigious award of Harry Ransom Fellowship. Her 3D reconstruction of 1921 Norman Bel Geddes’ set design for Dante’s The Divine Comedy has been part of the first exhibition of Bel Geddes’ industrial and theatre designs ‘I Have Seen The Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America’ in Austin, USA. In 2019-2020, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and acts as a guest reviewer for the Master in Design Engineering program. Iryna leads a major ECR development initiative; co-leads the Design Research Centre and is a Board member of the Creative and Virtual Technologies Lab at NTU. In 2021, she was elected to the National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online College of Peer Reviewers.

Tom Fisher is a gardener, craftsperson, musician and academic. Professor in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University since 2007, he has worked in art schools since 1985 and made his living as a furniture designer/maker before his first university appointment. He is now developing a business custom-making French horns. His academic interests derive directly from this – prominent themes include materials in everyday consumption (the subject of his 2004 PhD from the Sociology Department at the University of York) and the acquisition of skill in material practices, informed by theories of cognition. His research has produced a book on the everyday re-use of packaging, (Designing for Re-Use, Earthscan, 2009), a special issue of the Journal of Design History on the meaning of materials’ surface qualities, a special issue of Critical Studies of Fashion and Beauty on fashion and materiality, a 2017 book for Routledge, Design for Personalisation, and an edited collection of essays on design and ethics for Bloomsbury in 2019. He has led funded research on sustainable clothing (Defra), and industrial heritage (AHRC). His current work is focusing on personalisation and skilled practice in the context of repair.

Tony Kent is Professor of Fashion Marketing in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University. His research interests are in the convergence of physical and online worlds in fashion retail and the consumer’s branded experience, in emerging concepts of personalisation and sustainable fashion. He has authored over 60 conference papers and journal articles in business and design and has published three books on retail and retail design. He is an Executive member and Chair of the Research Committee of the International Foundation of Fashion Technology Institutions, co-organiser of the International Colloquia on Design, Branding and Marketing and Deputy Chair of the Marketing Special Interest Group of the British Academy of Management. He graduated with a BA (Hons.) in Modern History from Oxford University, an MBA and PhD from the University of the Arts London.