Co-design, tools, design for knowledge exchange, creative interactions, distributed co-design, virtual environments
Dr Ros Galabo is a Research Associate at ImaginationLancaster, Lancaster University. His research focuses on developing equitable and inclusive ways of living and working together by creating mechanisms that enable communities to collectively transform their current situations into more sustainable ones through co-design.
Imagine a future where communities bridge the digital divide by co-creating tools and infrastructure that empower them. This is the vision that drives his research agenda. He focuses on empowering communities, particularly in the Global South, to create equitable digital futures through co-design and digital commons. His research tackles the challenge of ensuring that digital technologies are not simply tools of consumption, but rather platforms for shared ownership, resource management, and social good. I explore the intersection of co-design, digital commons, digital equity, and online engagement to empower communities, particularly in the Global South, to create equitable digital futures. He focuses on design-led methodologies that ensure user participation and knowledge exchange throughout the design process, leading to more effective and sustainable digital products.
He is the PI for the DGN-ESRC-funded project Cooperativa Digital, where he works in partnership with Universidade Federal do Maranhão (Brazil) and Publicidade Jove (REAPP) to create a digital commons platform to enable NGOs in São Luís to have control over the management of a mobile app called Reapp through an equitable commons design approach.
He previously conducted his PhD research as part of the Leapfrog project, where he delivered a series of co-design workshops to academics and public sector practitioners in the short project called Improve It. In these workshops, participants, as experts in their own field, co-designed improvements of tools and evaluated which suggestions led to the improvement in their practice.
Workshop 2 summary
Workshop 1 Highlights
Publication day
Sharing Imagination's involvement in a new local node of the Design Justice Network
Conference paper published in proceedings – Design Research Society DRS2022 Bilbao
Imagination researchers are going to DRS 2022 in Bilbao
Creative West End Christmas Market and Guerrilla gardening in strategic places in the West End Morecambe
Reflections from the fieldwork activities
Reflections from the fieldwork activities
Reflections from the fieldwork activities
New paper published in the CoDesign journal
ImaginationLancaster Design Summit: Flourish Together
Paper presented and published in the DVHG Virtual Conference
Creating a community-run mobile app in Brazil
Envisioning sustainable futures together
The Leapfrog project will be a close collaboration with public sector and community partners to design and evaluate new approaches to consultation.
Testing of a new improvement process to support a collaborative redesign of the leapfrog tools