Former Lab4Living research staff - Lab4Living | Design for Health & Wellbeing

Lab4Living is a community of people working collaboratively and bringing their unique skills and research expertise over the years. These include the researchers below who have now moved onto other roles:

Prof Peter Lloyd Jones
Remi Bec
Paul Emmerson
Helen Fisher
Tom Maisey

Dr Rebecca Partridge
Naomi Raszyk
Chris Redford
Dr Gemma Wheeler
Dan Wolstenholme

We also acknowledge the significant contribution of our former administrators Rebekah di Maolo, Bethany Guy and Becci James.

Prof Peter Lloyd Jones

Professor Peter Lloyd Jones was a life scientist, medical educator, academic and designer with a passion for forging links between design and science for health and wellbeing. He sought to find new solutions to complex problems via extreme collaborations within seemingly unrelated fields, including fashion, industrial, textile and architectural design. A cell and molecular biologist by training, his discoveries uncovered fundamental mechanisms in stem cell biology and human disease, including breast cancer and lung development.

Jones was educated and trained at Cambridge University, UC Berkeley and the University of Toronto before becoming a tenured professor of pathology and lab medicine and lecturer in architecture at The University of Pennsylvania (2005) where he also co-founded LabStudio with architect Jenny E Sabin. He was appointed Associate Dean of Design in Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. In 2013, he founded MEDstudio@JEFF; a research and education space focused on RE(IN)FORM(ULAT)ING medicine.

Peter Lloyd Jones (bottom right) with members of the Lab4Living team at the Design4Health Review day at The Waag, Amsterdam, January 2020

Returning to the UK in 2018 to be closer to family, he was Visiting Studio Scientist at ImaginationLancaster (Lancaster University) before joining Lab4Living in 2020. Whilst at Lab4Living, Peter led on the BioDesign Challenge (an international education program and competition which challenges students to envision and develop applications in biotech) with MA design students. He collaborated with Prof Kaisu Koski on bio-art and biohacking research interests, which developed into the Citizen Surgery Collective. His networks with the Raymond Neutra and the Neutra Institute have informed Paul Chamberlain’s research on the Future Home.

Peter sadly died in Lancaster in August 2022. His sharp intellect, humanity, broad interests, wicked sense of humour, passion for collaboration, and his care and interest in those he worked with are sorely missed. We are seeking ways to formally recognise his contribution to our community.

Related Projects: The Beacon for Health & Wellness Futures; BioDesign Challenge; Future Home; LabStudio

Dr Remi Bec

Remi is a designer with expertise in the use of games to promote engagement and behaviour change. He co-developed, prototyped and evaluated iteratively Boost Up!, a board and card game promoting physical activity, now part of social enterprise GoFit4Fun CIC.

Remi graduated with a Master’s and a PhD in Design from Sheffield Hallam University and was part of the User-Centred Healthcare Design team (UCHD) which was part the Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care South Yorkshire (CLAHRCs) funded through the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR).

LinkedIn: Remi Bec

Paul Emmerson

Paul’s practice relates to design for wellbeing and sustainability, with a particular interest in sustainable communities and how design can empower citizens and local organisations to steer social change.

Researcher blog post: Paul Emmerson

Helen Fisher

Helen is a design researcher with over 10 years experience and skills in participatory research, human-centred design and visual communication.

She is a freelance designer focussing on projects that promote dignity, inclusion and quality of life; specialising in areas such as dementia, ageing and developing health and wellbeing related services and interventions.

LinkedIn: Helen Fisher

Tom Maisey

Tom’s research relates to exploring the role of objects in the context of ageing, and the responsibility of designers to consider issues of dignity and respect when designing assistive products for older people. He has worked with Alzheimer’s Society to develop a music product for individuals living with dementia which aims was to improve wellbeing and quality of life by reconnecting people with music.

Tom trained in Industrial Design and qualified as a teacher before joining Lab4Living as a design researcher.

LinkedIn: Tom Maisey

Dr Rebecca Partridge

Rebecca’s research interests include using creative, participatory and experiential methods to engage and include stakeholder voices in research, develop interventions, improve services and create lasting change. She is concerned with the role of the design professional in the facilitation of Design methods.

Rebecca studied design and completed a PhD at SHU exploring the practice of Research through Design in healthcare. Rebecca has experience on a range of projects as a service designer and user researcher, and qualified as a workshop facilitator in Lego Serious Play.

LinkedIn: Rebecca Partridge

Naomi Raszyk

Naomi is a user researcher and industrial designer. Her skills include prototyping and product development, and she has experience on a range of projects as a service designer and user researcher.

Naomi trained in product and industrial design and graduated with an MDes at Sheffield Hallam. She worked as an industrial design at Design Futures on a range of commercial projects before joining Lab4Living.

LinkedIn: Naomi Raszyk

Chris Redford

Chris is a designer and illustrator, working with design researchers and academics to help communicate their research in visually engaging ways and to make knowledge more accessible for everyone. His interests include co-design, live illustrating and understanding the patient experience, in particular in the context of children and young people’s health.

Chris trained in product and industrial design and graduated with an MDes at Sheffield Hallam. He worked as a brand and packaging designer, before joining Lab4Living.

LinkedIn: Chris Redford

Dr Gemma Wheeler

Gemma is a co-designer and project manager with experience using Participatory Design and codesign methods in complex healthcare contexts. She is interested in the role of creative, empathic, design-led methods in creating a ‘common language’ between patients, family members and healthcare professionals. Focusses include identifying unmet health needs, mobilizing knowledge, and working with children and young people.

After completing her MDes in Product Design at Sheffield Hallam, she undertook a Doctoral study between the Glasgow School of Art and the Queen Elizabeth National Spinal Injuries Unit, Glasgow before joining Lab4Living.

LinkedIn: Gemma Wheeler

Dan Wolstenholme

Dan worked closely with Lab4Living during his time in the User-centred healthcare design (UCHD) team (which brought together patients, healthcare staff, families and communities to explore and understand the real-life experiences of healthcare) and as Project Manager for NIHR CLAHRC for Yorkshire and Humber at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals. His expertise includes UCHD, codesign and knowledge mobilisation, and he was closely involved in developing the Design4Health conference.

LinkedIn: Dan Wolstenholme

Related projects: Better Out Patient Services for Older People (BOSOP); GRIP: Pulmonary Rehabilitation and Knowledge Translation into Care and Life (PRaKTiCaL)