Hattie Simms is a Research Associate in Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. She is working on the REPHRAIN project Citizens Data Agency, which is a speculative design project to understand and explore the needs of public audiences through critical and creative engagement activities with the matter of potential online harm.

Her design research practice focuses on developing meaningful and equitable engagement to support people to drive and engage in the design process through co-design and co-production. She is interested in people’s relationship to place and citizenship, and what their sense of identity is within this, and her research explores using sensory and embodied methods to capture and understand people’s experience.

In 2022 Hattie worked on the Digital Lifelines project at the Digital Health and Care Institute (DHI), which explores opportunities to develop digitally enabled services to support people who use drugs, supported through co-design and lived experience engagements. She completed a Masters of Research at the Innovation School at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) in 2021 and worked as Community Engagement Officer at GSA from 2018-2023, developing interests and experience in participatory design, community development, partnership work and creative engagement.