Dr Haider Akmal
- PhD Design, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom
- MA Design Management, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom
- Bachelors of Fine Arts (Printmaking), National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan
Haider Ali Akmal is a speculative design researcher, future-focused service designer, and practicing printmaker at UNSW Art, Design, & Architecture, specialising in playful speculative approaches towards design solutions imagined through innovative and unconventional applications of technology. His research in design discusses the need for playfulness in design practice, opens in a new window through post-anthropocentric visions of human computer interaction. Originally from Pakistan he is an alumnus of the Natio...
- Publications
- Grants
- Research Activities
- Teaching and Supervision
- National Heritage Lottery Foundation UK funded research for the Remembering Resistance Project, 2019
- ESPRC UK Funded PhD Fellowship in Internet of Things Research, 2017
Often indulging with current and future pervasive technologies such as the Internet of Things, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence, a large part of Haider's work explores playful approaches towards understanding and solving design problems in a More-than Human Centred view of design and technology. Overlapping with practices of philosophy, ludic design, and speculative design Haider's research interest lies in the use of ambiguity and play within design.
Affiliated with the Creative Robotics Lab and the Interactive Media Lab at UNSW, his research explores post-human perspectives/implications of design and their future applications of technology. As a visual artist his works focus on the relationship one has with their past(s), working primarily in the graphic medium where his visuals act as trinkets of entangled moments gathered for their powers of attraction. In their own way as both a designer and artist his work observes the entanglement of human interaction through lenses of fermented experience.
My Research Supervision
- Syna Chen (PhD), Co-performance in fashion through post-human perspectives
My Teaching
Courses previously taught and/or currently teaching
- SDES9311, Introduction to Interaction Design (Tutor)
- SDES9312, Human-Centred Design Methods (Tutor)
- SDES9214, Design Studio Project 2 (Tutor)
- DDES1150, Interaction 1 (Convenor/Tutor)
- DDES2150, Interaction 2 (Convenor)
- DDES2151, Interaction 3 (Tutor)
- DART1140, Printmaking 1 Relief & Screen (Tutor)
- DART2140, Printmaking 2 Etchings (Convenor/Tutor)