A team at Swansea University is weaving together social scientists, computer scientists, medics, lawyers, and artists to design digital technologies that work for people in the most difficult situations—a dementia patient struggling with a medical device, a low-income community with no reliable internet, or a journalist trying to communicate securely on the dark web. Most digital products are built for ideal conditions: fast connections, tech-savvy users, stable environments. This ignores the reality of health crises, poverty, and security threats. The CHERISH-DE Centre treats these "challenging human environments" not as edge cases but as the design brief. By studying how people actually live in health and social care, resource-constrained communities, and safety/security contexts, the researchers aim to produce case studies, proofs-of-concept, and toolkits that force future products and services to fit real human needs rather than the other way around. If successful, the centre will train a new generation of "digital economy" researchers who can move between academia, industry, and government—and who will advocate for this human-centred approach. Partners include the BBC, DVLA, Microsoft, IBM, and a network of small businesses. The immediate output is not a single product but a method for making future digital innovations more effective, comforting, and useful.
View original technical description
The CHERISH-DE Centre at Swansea University is predicated on an extensive understanding of the human context and condition alongside the potential and limitations of digital technologies. It draws on - and unfolds - the broad experience and talent available to it, in its multidisciplinary researchers, to weave new socio-technical materials that will provide effective, comforting and pleasing fabrics to support future living. We combine researchers (both in the Centre and in our partners) from social science, computer science, economics, medicine, arts and humanities and law. Over the past decade, the Swansea team has developed a unique focus on multi-disciplinary work within challenging human environments. Specifically, we have collaborated with a broad range of stakeholders to understand and address fundamental challenges connected with health and social care; resource constrained communities; and, safety and security.This perspective has built a platform of enabling concepts, technologies, policies and approaches ready to facilitate next stage digital economy innovations and the people skills required. The CHERISH Centre will use the notion of an extreme and challenging human environment as the fulcrum to drive understandings of how future products and services can evolve to fit and extend the human condition. By focussing on a person's lived experience in relation to the three challenging human environments and contexts (C1-C3), we will maximise the likelihood that digital innovations address real human needs and values and hence lead to effective products and services. Each interconnected context theme will be led by investigators from a mix of disciplines. *C1 Health and social care (e.g., medical devices, e-health, health informatics, patient services); *C2 Resource Constrained Communities (e.g., novel devices and services to access technology for social development and economic regeneration); *C3 Safety and Security (e.g., cyberterrorism, cybersecurity, 'dark web'). Using the lens of a challenging human environment, the CHERISH-DE Centre will provide concrete, diverse impacts, stimulating and supporting digital innovation by: *producing compelling case-studies, proofs-of-concepts and toolkits to platform future product, policy and service development that will enrich the social, economic and cultural life of UK citizens. *creating and equipping a cadre of next generation Digital Economy (DE) researchers. The Centre will begin life with a dedicated core of experienced multidisciplinary research leaders, along with Early Career Researchers (ECRs) who have already been developed through the distinctive DE style of working. This team will draw in, train and innovate with strong discipline researchers across the host institution and partners in the UK - including the other DE Centres and related activities - and internationally. This growing team will not only be able to do DE-type work in private and public sector organisations but, critically, will be a credible and powerful advocate for the approach's methods and motivations. The Centre has been shaped and will evolve through the support and intense engagement with key private, public and third sector stakeholders including the BBC, DVLA, Microsoft, IBM and, critically for the economy, a broad and deep network of Small to Medium Enterprises
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know