Dr Leon Cruickshank

Associate Director and Reader in Design

Open Design and Innovation, User Centred and User-Led Design, Interactive Design, Technology and Society, Design Methodology, Design Theory and Philosophy

+44 (0) 1524 510874

l [dot] cruickshank [at] lancaster [dot] ac [dot] uk

Leon's core interests relate to how technology can enable new relationships between users and designers and through this allow users to become more active in shaping our society, environment and media. This requires a radical change in the way we think about designers and designing.

This has led to the emergence of designing knowledge exchange as a research area. He is currently involved in 6 funded projects in this area. He is Director of Knowledge Exchange for the £4 million AHRC Creative Knowledge Exchange Hub and UK lead for the €4 million PROUD project looking at knowledge exchange through co-design

Blog: imaginarium42.blogspot.com

City Park Strategic Workshop

Articleby Leon Cruickshank, Gemma Coupe

Dee Hennessy facilitated this workshop as part of her activites on the Proud project. The purpose of the workshop was to explore the contrasting, overlapping strategic goals of policy makers and opinion shapers in Lancaster for areas such as transport, culture and heritage, environment and community engagement and how the City Park project could advance the strategic aims of the sectors to make a positive contribution to the economic, cultural...Read full article

Platform Development

Multi-user platform in development, allowing collaborative data to be created and visualised using a suite of software and hardware tools.

We’re building a new piece of software here at Imagination, put simply it’s a “tool-kit architecture” but it has the promise of being so much more. Think...Read full update

Brief Encounter Workshop

Academics from around the UK and Europe attend a workshop with industry representatives to explore the possibilities to make distributed and digitally augmented design more effective and fun.

This one day workshop brought together academics for a wide range of institutions including Cambridge...Read full update

Beyond the Castle

The new design team for the City Park co-design challenge came together for the first time this week and renamed the co-design project to 'Beyond the Castle'.

Together for two days their brief was to develop an innovative programme of events and activities to support the co-design of creative...Read full update

PROUD – Urban Culture in Helsinki

Articleby Leon Cruickshank, Gemma Coupe

Our regular Proud project meetings led us recently to Helsinki (World Design Capital). Helsinki is always a great place to be, but with the world Design Capital preparations and the large CUMULUS conference, it was especially vibrant. One of the activates laid on for us by the City Council (our Proud partner hosts) was a series of themed visits across the city. One of the highlights of this was a tour of activities looking at Urban...Read full article

PROUD Partner Meeting in Helsinki World Design Capital 2012

The World Design Capital designation is a unique city promotion project that celebrates the accomplishments of cities that have used design as a tool to reinvent themselves and improve social, cultural and economic life.

We had a busy schedule of PROUD partner meetings to exhange knowledge and...Read full update

Proud Master Classes Taking shape

The Master Class work package that Lancaster are leading as part of the Proud project took a big step forward recently with structures, techniques and topics fixed at a meeting in Eindhoven hosted by Capital D with Designregion Kortrijk from Belgium also in attendance.

We will be delivering 3...Read full update

PROUD Local Design Challenges

The PROUD project aims to demonstrate the value of user-led co-design processes by responding to three design challenges to create new products, processes or spaces. With a number of local challenges to choose from, the team felt it was important to define clear challenge selection criteria;...Read full update

Brief Encounters: Funding Awarded

Really excited that this AHRC Network bid has been funded, we have an excellent group of international academics that we are bringing together to explore new forms of design process.

List of Participants: 1, Dr James Moultrie, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK 2, Mr Luke Wilson, Mayborn Baby...Read full update

CX Funded PhD Studentships

Lancaster University is seeking to recruit five PhD students to participate in an exciting collaborative project with a range of academic and industrial partners in the creative and digital industries.

The five studentships are funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via The...Read full update

PROUD Project Meeting in Paris

The newly appointed Design Managers for Lancaster University and The Storey Creative Industries Centre presented the concept for the Lancaster Design Innovation Hub to partners from across North West Europe.

The ‘Two Locations: One Centre’ concept aims to facilitate the flow of ideas and...Read full update

First CX Management Meeting

The Creative Exchange is picking up pace after the first management meeting for 2012

The Creative Exchange Hub Management team members from Lancaster University, Newcastle University and The Royal College of Art met in Newcastle to make key decisions about how the Hub will develop over the...Read full update

Maximising Impact of EPSRC: Workshop for 60 academic and industry participants

Articleby Leon Cruickshank

The first EPSRC funded Impact Acceleration Account day took place on May 8th in the event space at LICA. The event was designed to encourage collaborations that will bring to life and increase the impact of research and encourage the development of a series of robust and fundable collaborative proposals. To assist in this IAA has secured the services of Dee Hennesy, a skilled facilitator and PhD student in Imagination to assist in the delivery of...Read full article

Calling All Masters Of Co-Design a 'reverse masterclass' in Eindhoven

Articleby Leon Cruickshank, Gemma Coupe

Facilitating masterclasses in co-design has always provided us with a bit of a headache. The notion of a master (or more interesting mistress) in co-design sets up a hierarchy just when we want to break them down. This was especially true when we were invited to run a masterclass for more experienced co-designers. Our response was the event “Calling All Co-Design Masters”. This event was all about sharing best and worst practice. In particular we...Read full article

Co-Design Master class

Articleby Leon Cruickshank, Gemma Coupe

On 19th March 2013 we joined our excellent partners in Capital D in Eindhoven to run a master class on co-design. This was aimed at design participants thet were new to co-design. We had a fantastic mix of young products designers, service designers as well as entrepreneurs and business leaders. In this session we explored 8 fundamental factors that designers need to think about and in some cases be challenged by, these are - Agree how the...Read full article

Designing Knowledge Exchange - Lecture and Workshop in Dundee

Articleby Leon Cruickshank

With Imaginations leadership of one of the AHRC Knowledge exchange hubs (ours is called the Creative Exchange) one of the advantages of being involved in this is the connections made with other institutions both within the hubs and beyond. A case in point was a recent invitation to lecture and give a workshop with the good folks at DJCAD (Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design). ...Read full article

Future Infrastructure UK: Engineering Roadmap Final Report

Articleby Rachel Cooper, Roger Whitham, Leon Cruickshank

This report describes the results of a workshop undertaken as part of a programme of advice commissioned by Infrastructure UK to consider the interdependencies and future engineering challenges as part of an ‘engineering roadmap’ for the next National Infrastructure Plan (due to be published in autumn 2011). This plan will include specific actions needed to achieve an integrated, reliable, secure and resilient national infrastructure. ...Read full article

PROUD partners in Lancaster and the design of meetings

Articleby Leon Cruickshank, Gemma Coupe, Laura Morris

One of the joys of academia is that you get to collaborate with great people that you really like. This is certianly the case with the PROUD project. The flip side of this is that you offten meet up with these great people in meetings, endless meetings. For big EU funded projects like PROUD these can take over 2 days and after that much time with 15 people or so sat around a table its pretty easy to loose the will to live. ...Read full article

Books

The Citizen in Open Design. / Cruickshank, Leon .

Gower Publishing Company, 2013.

Research output : Book/Report/Proceedings › Book

Book Chapters

Applied Imagination - Designing Innovative Knowledge Transfer Approaches. / Cruickshank, Leon ; Mather, Alison ; Evans, Martyn .

Innovation Through Knowledge Transfer. ed. / Robert James Howlett. Berlin : Springer-Verlag, 2010. p. 219-229 (Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, 2010; 4).

Research output : Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings › Chapter (peer-reviewed)

The Case for a Re-evaluation of Deconstruction and Design: Against Derrida, Eisenman and their Choral Works. / Cruickshank, Leon .

O Triunfo do Desenho. ed. / Eduardo Corte-Real. Lisboa, Portugal : Livros Horizonte, 2010. p. 353-361.

Research output : Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings › Chapter

The Augmenting of Textual Conversation with User Created Icons. / Cruickshank, Leon ; Barfield, Lon.

Iconic communication. ed. / Philip G. Barker; Masoud Yazdani. Bristol : Intellect Books, 2000.

Research output : Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings › Chapter

Other Book Contributions

IDEAS: A Knowledge Platform for Innovation, Competitive Performance and Economic Development. / Cruickshank, Leon ; Mather, Alison ; Howells, Jeremy .

The 32nd ISBE (Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship) Conference - Liverpool, 3rd to 6th November 2009. 2009.

Research output : Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings › Conference contribution

Journal Articles

The Citizen in Design and Innovation: Post-Structural Perspectives. / Cruickshank, Leon .

In: Design Philosophy papers , 2013.

Research output : Contribution to journal › Journal article

Nets : applied cognitive design tools for social networks. / Cruickshank, Leon ; Mortati, Marzia.

In: Tangible and Embedded Interaction, A special issue of the International Journal of Arts and Technology , Vol. n/a, No. n/a, 2012, p. n/a.

Research output : Contribution to journal › Journal article

Designing creative frameworks: Design thinking as an engine for new facilitation approaches. / Cruickshank, Leon ; Evans, Martyn .

In: International Journal of Arts and Technology , Vol. 5, No. 1, 2012, p. 73-85.

Research output : Contribution to journal › Journal article

NETS: a design tool for activating social networks. / Mortati, Marzia ; Cruickshank, Leon .

In: International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research , Vol. 18, No. 4, 2012, p. 509-523.

Research output : Contribution to journal › Journal article

Understanding Design Interventions in Democratic Innovation: a Toolkit Approach. / Cruickshank, Leon ; Carolan, Natasha.

In: Design Research Journal , Vol. 2, No. 10, 2011, p. 33-38.

Research output : Contribution to journal › Journal article

The Innovation Dimension: Designing in a Broader Context. / Cruickshank, Leon .

In: Design Issues , Vol. 26, No. 2, 2010, p. 17-26.

Research output : Contribution to journal › Journal article

Designing cultures? Post-disciplinary Practices.. / Buscher, Monika ; Cruickshank, Leon .

In: Proceedings of the 8th European Academy Of Design Conference: Connexity. 1st-3rd April 2009, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. , 04.2009.

Research output : Contribution to journal › Journal article

The Case for a Re-Evaluation of Deconstruction and Design: Against Derrida, Eisenman and their Choral Works. / Cruickshank, Leon .

In: The Radical Designist , No. 3, 2009.

Research output : Contribution to journal › Journal article

MAKING INTERACTIVE TV EASIER TO USE:INTERFACE DESIGN FOR A SECOND SCREEN APPROACH.. / CRUICKSHANK, Leon ; TSEKLEVES, E. ; WHITHAM, R. ; HILL, A.

In: The Design Journal , Vol. 10, No. 3, 14.12.2007.

Research output : Contribution to journal › Journal article

Designing interactive TV with users in mind. / Cruickshank, Leon ; Tsekleves, E; Hill, A; Kondo, K ; Whitham, Roger .

In: User Experience Magazine (Usability Professionals Association) , Vol. 6, No. 3, 2007.

Research output : Contribution to journal › Journal article

Rapid Prototyping and Fast User Trial of Multimedia Broadcast and Cellular Services.. / Cruickshank, Leon ; Cosmas, J.; Elgohari, T.; Itagaki, K.

In: International Journal of Mobile Communications , Vol. 3, No. 3, 01.09.2005, p. 263-286.

Research output : Contribution to journal › Journal article

Facilitating the evolution of a user driven iconotextual internet patois. / Cruickshank, Leon ; Hughes, Brian.

In: Digital Creativity , Vol. 10, No. 2, 1999, p. 79-89.

Research output : Contribution to journal › Journal article

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Conference Contributions

Innovation through the Design of Knowledge Exchange and the Design on Knowledge Exchange Design. / Cruickshank, Leon .

2012. Paper presented at DMI Conference - Leading Innovation Through Design, Boston, United States.