History of Design Informatics
People who work at or with our Institute often ask about where it came from. On this page, we give a short history ….
The Centre for Design Informatics was established in 2013, following the merger of Edinburgh College of Art with the University of Edinburgh (in 2012), and funded through a Scottish Funding Council grant to create a new research centre between ECA’s School of Design and the School of Informatics. It was led by two founding co-directors – Chris Speed and Jon Oberlander – and was underpinned by an entirely new joint MA / MSc programme in Design Informatics. Chris and Jon were soon joined by Jane MacDonald, as Research Projects Producer (now at Colin Parker Furniture), and Mark Kobine, as Design Informatics Technician, supporting research, teaching, events with wider stakeholders, and Design Informatics’ students.
During the first five years, the Centre’s small core team put energy into a range of research initiatives, with particular success in UKRI’s cross-council Digital Economy theme where projects were funded to explore the representations of value in digital money, personal data trading and privacy, and the internet of things in the connected high street – amongst many others. The academic team expanded, welcoming colleagues including Dave Murray-Rust (now at TU Delft), Maria Wolters (now at OFFIS), Bettina Nissen and Larissa Pschetz, Robin Hill, and with them new PhD students, PostDocs, and specialist design and technical colleagues.
Five years in, all change
Five years into its life, the Centre for Design Informatics experienced substantial changes. The most shocking of these was the sudden passing of founding co-director Jon Oberlander in December 2017. Jon continues to be sorely missed by friends and colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, and each year we award a student each from our MA and MSc programmes the Oberlander Prize in his memory. In the spirit of the qualities that Jon valued in learners, the prize goes to the students that demonstrate extraordinary sustained engagement and achievement over the course of the year, with an emphasis on creativity and risk taking and not just final grades.
Through 2018 the Centre continued with funding successes, the most notable of these being the AHRC Creative Informatics Creative Industry Cluster, the legacy of which continues to underpin a large proportion of our research at the intersection of creative industries, data and artificial intelligence. In mid-2018, Design Informatics relocated from ECA’s Evolution House to its current location in the (then brand new!) Bayes Centre. This came with a new dedicated research office, a studio dedicated to the Master’s programmes, an on-site digital fabrication workshop, and stewardship of Inspace, our public engagement, exhibition and collaboration facility. The locational change and growth of the research and teaching programmes also meant the Centre was given Institute status, and since 2018 has been referred to as the Institute for Design Informatics (IDI).
Activity since 2019
Since 2019 the Institute for Design Informatics has grown substantially. In 2018 IDI had 8 academic faculty members (5 in ECA, 3 in Informatics). As of 2025, IDI now has 20 academic faculty (11 ECA, 9 Informatics) and an expanded core professional services team (5 ECA) providing specialist support across the Institute. The increased number of academics in the Institute has come with a diversification of our research, as illustrated by our research groups, specialist expertise and the projects related to these. Much of this research has been funded by external bodies, with the Institute bringing in funding totally more than £51m in value to the University of Edinburgh between 2019 and 2024. This includes 5 further projects funded by the Digital Economy programme, and co-leading the prominent AHRC Bridging AI Divides programme. Beyond this, IDI academics are important contributors to several large industry-funded University centres (Advanced Care Research Centre, Centre for Investing Innovation), and key partners in high profile programmes such as AHRC CoSTAR (partnering in both the CoSTAR Realtime Lab and CoSTAR Foresight Lab).
In 2020, IDI established a prototype for interdisciplinary PhD training through being a University partner in the DCODE Marie Curie Innovative Training Network. This philosophy was translated into the Centre for Doctoral Training in Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing, led by IDI, which was awarded in 2023 and will continue to train 50 to 60 PhD students until 2032.
Our Master’s programmes have also changed dramatically since our relocation into our new facilities. Between 2019 and 2024 our MA and MSc programmes have graduated 342 Master’s students. In 2017/18 – the last year the programmes were taught in the ECA Evolution House building – the number of enrolled students was 28. In 2025/26 we have 89 enrolled students at the start of the year, and several thousand applications each year.
Through Creative Informatics and Inspace, and the support of our Research Projects Producer and Inspace Manager (Miriam Walsh), we have also now established a regular programme of public events (talks, workshops, exhibitions, open doors) focused on outreach and engagement. This included running 293 events between 2019 and 2024, with 84,421 – this includes a period of twelve months of closure due to Covid-19! You can see more about the great public events we run in our Events page.
Finally, with time also comes changes of personnel. John Vines joined in 2021 to co-direct the Institute alongside Chris Speed. John’s arrival enabled the creation of the new role of Institute Manager, taken up by Nicola Osborne, who works closely with the Co-Directors. Chris moved on from his Directorship at design informatics in 2022 to lead the Edinburgh Futures Institute and subsequently to RMIT in Australia in 2024. We were joined by Frauke Zeller in 2024, who now co-directs the institute with John.