Researching & designing
What I’m currently up to
UX Research & Accessibility Lead at Aviva
Designing inclusive products that help people build resilient financial futures
APRIL 2022 – PRESENT
Advisory Committee Member at DARA
Investigating inclusive dataVis for human-centred decision-making
2024 – 2026
Industry Advisory Board Member at BCU
Masters in UX Design & College of Computing
2024 – 2026
Blog
Reflections, desk research, and observations that sit between academic literature and real-world practice.
On changing tools, and tools changing us
Changing research tools changes research practice. This reflection takes a CSCW-informed view of tool migration, examining how new platforms reshape workflows, redistribute expertise, and influence what teams come to treat as valid insight. I draw on a recent experience of changing tools in a large complex organisation.
Feb 2026
Bias in Human-AI Collaboration
Human–AI collaboration is now common in both low- and high-stakes settings, but human cognitive biases can distort how people evaluate AI outputs. Biases like automation bias (over-trust), algorithmic loafing (reduced effort), and automation-induced complacency (reduced vigilance) can all weaken oversight and lead to serious errors…
Jan 2026
Fragments
Fragments from what I’m consuming: papers, links, quotations, and unfinished ideas.
Competence Penalty is a Barrier to the Adoption of New Technology [academic paper]
A three-part study examining why generative AI coding tools remain under-adopted even when access and training barriers are removed. The findings suggest a “competence penalty”: engineers who use AI receive lower competence ratings for identical work, with stronger effects for women.
The Cloud Next Door: Investigating the Environmental and Socioeconomic Strain of Datacenters on Local Communities [academic paper]
The Cloud Next Door (Ngata et al.) is a short and relatively accessible paper (especially by academic standards) authored by an MIT undergraduate, examining the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of data centres on local communities. Most discourse on data centres focuses on global or systemic effects: energy consumption, water use, and emissions. Far less attention is…
Interpersonal Trust Development in GenAI-Augmented Organisations [academic paper]
Interpersonal Trust Development in GenAI-augmented Organisations (Norkin) examines how interpersonal trust forms and shifts when GenAI becomes embedded in knowledge-intensive team workflows. GenAI is reshaping work at a pace that often exceeds organisations’ ability to recalibrate processes, norms, and expectations. While productivity gains are evident, the uncertainty introduced by autonomous content generation raises questions about reliability,…
Doraemon’s Gadget Lab: Unpacking Human Needs and Interaction Design in Speculative Technology [academic paper]
In Doraemon’s Gadget Lab, Tran analyses 379 of Doraemon’s gadgets, categorising them into 33 subcategories and 10 higher-level groupings, to examine the human needs they address and their parallels with contemporary technologies. One of the core findings is that while fundamental human needs remain remarkably stable, the technological forms we use to meet them vary…
Brian Grellmann 