Design
as Inquiry
Design is not just problem-solving, usability, or deliverables.
It is a way of asking questions about the world — and giving those questions form.
A method of investigation
A choreography of thought
A way of uncovering systems, tensions, and patterns
A tool for epistemic exploration — not just functional output
This is the foundation of my research and design practice.
I design for epistemic clarity not just usability.
I research experience as choreography not just tasks.
My practice sits at the intersection of interaction design, spatial analysis, and cultural theory. I work across media, contexts, and methods, but with one persistent question:
How do systems shape meaning — and who gets to participate in that meaning-making?
I don’t approach design as problem-solving. I approach it as sense-making: tuning into friction, absence, memory, and affordance. Whether I’m modelling cognitive offloading in AI systems or mapping how people cluster around a plaza screen, my methods ask not just what works, but
what world is being built.
Methodological Toolbox
Situated Systems Thinking
I build design research that is aware of its own conditions — historical, spatial, affective. My tools change depending on the context, but my lens is always reflexive. I study not just outcomes, but the infrastructures of meaning.
Multi-modal Ethnography
From behavioural observation and prompt testing to sensory mapping and post-occupancy interviews, my methods draw from HCI, anthropology, and architecture. I believe in designing experiences that are rigorously situated — not abstracted.
Spatial Cognition & Space Syntax
Spatial configuration is not neutral. I use space syntax and visibility graph analysis to understand how built form, digital stimuli, and movement patterns shape social cognition and co-presence. Public space is data-rich — we just haven’t been listening closely enough.
Pluriversal Research Ethics
I refuse design practices that flatten cultural nuance into “user insights.” My research draws from decolonial frameworks, epistemic plurality, and slow knowledge. I believe interface logic is a political act — and I study it as such
EXPERIMENTS
My research practice isn’t just theoretical. It’s materialized as ongoing design experiments. Each project is a live question: part toolkit, part provocation, part design.
These experiments blend narrative, spatial behavior, and epistemic critique —
and they form the heart of how I translate inquiry into public form. Here’s a glimpse of what I’m working on:
Experment 01.
Narrative Infrastructures Toolkit
What does a city remember — and who gets to narrate it?
This toolkit explores how spatial configuration encodes power, visibility, and story.
It draws from space syntax, narrative theory, and Islamic urban design — to help civic technologists and urban practitioners map cultural legibility across built environments.
Format: Visual guide + workshop canvas + speculative civic scenario
Status: In development — rooted in my PhD proposal
Looking for: Urban researchers, public interest designers, cultural mappers
Experment 02.
AI as Epistemic Interface
What happens when intelligence feels fluent, but isn’t shared?
This experiment reframes AI not as a tool of automation, but as a frame of understanding.
It investigates how generative systems shape trust, offloading, and epistemic harm and what designers can do to reintroduce friction, clarity, and moral weight into interaction.
Format: Miro template + facilitation prompts + meta-framework
Status: Based on published essays, evolving into a workshop tool
Looking for: Collaborators in AI ethics, critical UX, or design education
These are evolving artifacts — not final outcomes.
If you're curious to explore them further:
Experment 03.
Spatial-Ritual Mapping Installation
How do we wait together — and what can space tell us about the rituals we don’t name?
This installation translates insights from my MRes research into a sensory exploration of public ritual, visibility, and co-presence.
Built on behavioral observations and spatial analysis from three central London plazas, it maps how people gather, pause, and relate through environmental cues and cultural memory often without conscious awareness.
Format: Site-specific or virtual installation + visual narrative artifact + observational media
Origin: Based on my MRes dissertation on spatial rhythm, socio-visual fields, and plaza behavior
Looking for: Public or gallery spaces, spatial media curators, participatory research collaborators
Learn More
My Research is My Design Practice
I don’t separate them.
Research, for me, is not background to design. It is the design. It’s how I tune systems toward care, clarity, and cultural intelligence.
In a world of accelerating automation, I design for what remains un-automated:
Judgment. Interpretation. Shared sense-making.
If you're building systems and want them to think with people — not just for them —
this is the work I do.
My research is not driven by technology alone, but by a commitment to epistemic care — making space for doubt, dissent, and multiplicity within the systems we design.
I believe design research must evolve to meet the complexities of generative systems. That means questioning not only what works, but also what gets erased, what is made legible, and what is invited to speak.
Design is no longer a discrete act of problem-solving. It is an ongoing, situated negotiation between interfaces, bodies, memories, and meaning.