Professor Joyce Sheau Roei Yee

Professor

School: Design Arts and Creative Industries

I am a design researcher, author and designer in the areas of design and social innovation, service design and interaction design.I am a Professor of Design and Social Innovation at Northumbria School of Design. I hold a BFA in Graphic Design, an MA in Visual Communication and a PhD in Design. I lead the subject development in the school at various undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral levels. I primarily teach undergraduate Interaction Design students and supervise a number of doctoral students in the subject of service design, design and social innovation and emergent interaction design practices.

My research focuses on the role, value and impact of design in organisational context. Specifically, I am interested in the ways design is used to support, enable and drive change through the creation of innovative practices in organisations. I was the lead investigator for the Valuing Design project, an AHRC funded research that identified and mapped the impact and value of design in public and voluntary and community sector organisations. Building on this work, my 2017 book, Transformations: 7 Roles to Drive Change by Design introduces 7 roles that design play in driving change in organisations. This book builds on a previous book, Design Transitions (2013) that explored how design practices are changing and identified a key requirement for designers to externalise their approaches and demonstrate value beyond design in service innovation projects.

Extending my interest in design in social spaces, I co-founded the Designing Social Innovation in Asia-Pacific network (www.desiap.org) with Yoko Akama at RMIT, Australia. DESIAP (previously funded by the AHRC Research Network grant) is a research platform, a community of practice, and a network for collaboration and ongoing knowledge sharing for various practitioners, researchers, communities, and professionals working in the Social Innovation space in the UK and the Asia-Pacific region. I also co-founded the inaugural Research Through Design (RTD) conference with Jayne Wallace as an experimental conference series for disseminating practice-based design research.

Campus Address

Squires Annexe, Room 108
City Campus
Newcastle
NE1 8ST

Email Joyce Sheau Roei

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Joyce is Professor of Design and Social Innovation at Northumbria School of Design, UK. She is passionate about designing for social good and advocates for culturally diverse and locally relevant practices that challenge the dominant industrialized and western-centric models of design.

She co-founded the Designing Entangled Social Innovation in Asia-Pacific network (www.desiap.org) in 2015 with Dr Yoko Akama, RMIT in Australia, as a peer learning network for social innovation practitioners using design. Her ongoing work through the network ranges from seeking to understand cultural practices of designing, to repositioning the role of impact evaluation in designing social innovation (DSI) practices, to exploring how relationships are enabled and supported in DSI initiatives.

Her work is framed through a critical praxis lens that seek to contribute to the decentring of dominant Design narratives, through the recognition of different practices, knowledges and wisdoms. Recent collaborative research includes an investigation into the societal impact of creative districts in Thailand and an application of a reflective learning approach to social impact measurement. Her current research focuses on addressing intersectional barriers for women through a mentorship programme supporting women in social innovation and creative economy sectors in the Asia-Pacific region.

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Invisible Designing: Emotional and Affective Labour in Relational Participatory Practices, Yee, J., Akama, Y., Avendano Franco, A., Chen, K., Imanishi, H., Kikuchi, Y., Kushinsky, S., Ralston, N., Teasley, S., Teerapong, K. 31 Aug 2024, PDC '24: Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Exploratory Papers and Workshops - Volume 2, New YorK, US, ACM
Recasting ‘shadows’: expanding respectful hierarchies in participatory design practices, Akama, Y., Chen, K., Imanishi, H., Kikuchi, Y., Kushinsky, S., Teasley, S., Teerapong, K., Yee, J. 29 Aug 2024, PDC '24: Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2024: Full Papers - Volume 1, New York, USA, ACM
Building a shared relational identity: shifting notions of self in designing social innovation, Petrella, V., Yee, J. 28 Nov 2023, ServDes.2023, Linkoping, Sweden, Linkoping University Electronic Press
Calling on “aunties” and “nieces”: Empowering women in creative sectors in Southeast Asia through designing mentorship, Yee, J., Teerapong, K., Akama, Y. 17 Nov 2023, Entanglements of Designing Social Innovation in the Asia-Pacific, New York, US, Routledge
Entanglements of Designing Social Innovation in the Asia-Pacific, Akama, Y., Yee, J. 17 Nov 2023
Celebrating the plurality of design research, Rodgers, P., Yee, J. 31 Jul 2023, The Routledge Companion to Design Research, Abingdon, Routledge

Current and Recent Projects

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Research on Best Practices for Creative and Cultural Districts: Case Studies from the UK and Thailand, Yee, J. (Principal Investigator), British Council, 17/10/22 - 17/02/23, £9,959.00

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Other: Adjunct Professor (Taylor's University, Malaysia) 2022
Examination: Programme External Examiner (Lancaster University) 2021
Other: Adjunct Professor (RMIT, Australia) 2019
Other: Programme External Examiner (Kingston University, UK) 2017
Other: Programme External Examiner (Royal College of Art, UK) 2017
Other: Programme External Examiner (University of South Wales, UK) 2016
Other: Programme External Examiner (Ballyfermot College of Further Education) 2012
Other: Programme External Examiner (Dundee University, UK) 2012
Examination: PhD Examination (External and Internal) 2012

PGR Supervision

Chenfan Zhang Start Date: 15/09/2025
Chenfan Zhang Start Date: 15/09/2025 End Date: 17/10/2025
Laura Smitheman Start Date: 01/10/2025
Katie Hill A place-based approach to grassroots social designing with communities Start Date: 18/01/2021
Katie Hill A place-based approach to grassroots social designing with communities Start Date: 18/01/2021 End Date: 17/10/2025