Dr Jo Briggs Reader, User Experience

My non-linear career path includes a decade of art practice working out of my London studio. I then completed a MSc in Multimedia Systems (Trinity, Dublin) to learn how nascent digital tools could be exploited to create interactive experiences. After several more years I undertook an early AHRC collaborative doctoral project (Belfast School of Art) to investigate the notion of digital cultural literacies in ‘post conflict’ Northern Ireland. The participatory design aspects were enabled through the Nerve Centre digital hub for young people in L/Derry. Throughout this time I taught at various art and design schools in the UK and abroad. During the nineties I ran a small publishing business alongside teaching and my practice, working with international galleries and their artists producing limited edition prints.

More recently my interdisciplinary research has focussed on design for human-digital interaction and devising co-creative and participatory methodologies for understanding new digital experiences. I publish across design and Human Computer Interaction and, given the multi- and interdisciplinary nature of most of my research, the wider computer- and social sciences. I am a Peer Review College member for AHRC (Strategic) and ESRC, and work with the Daphne Jackson Trust as a trustee and assessment panel chair for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences fellowships. Other external roles include with the University of Oxford and Queen’s MediaLab Belfast.

Contact

j.briggs@mmu.ac.uk

Office

School of Digital Arts

Research

Projects

The majority of my research has been enabled by leading a dozen researchers on cross-university, cross-sectoral programmes of design-led enquiry, latterly concerned with issues of online privacy, trust and the associated challenges of designing ethical research to investigate and promote people’s understandings of their online lives. Since arriving at SODA I have been working on new research that speaks to these themes focussing on designing for and the experience of using new and emerging digital technologies. My grant capture includes:

PL: EPSRC Co-creating Interdisciplinary Capacity for Upstream XR Mental Health Interventions with Young People (GBP430,000 fEC total grant) (May 2026–April 2028). Grant No. tbc, working with a youth charity in the North East. With the Universities of Lincoln and West of Scotland.

CO-PI: EPSRC Cumulative Revelations of Personal Data (GBP239,262) (March 2019–Sept 2022). Grant No. EP/R033870/1, led on iterative design, deployment and evaluation of creative methods and prototype tools to raise awareness of otherwise imperceptible online risks. With Universities of Edinburgh and Strathclyde.

CO-I: EPSRC Sprite Network+ (GBP35,000 fEC total grant) (Nov 2021–Feb 2022). Buy Now Pay Later in the UK: Current and emergent digital vulnerabilities. Led by Coventry.

CO-I: Adobe University Research Grant (USD7,500) (January–March 2021). Working with the University of Surrey and Adobe’s US computer vision team to design and run workshops with undergraduates to collectively build a new vocabulary for visual style features on Adobe’s design portfolio site Behance.

PI: The National Archives user research/UX contract from AHRC Deep Discoveries (GBP12,000) (February–May 2021). Led on developing user experience and ‘generous interface designs with explainable AI’ for visual search discovery platform.

CO-I: EPSRC TAPESTRY: Trust, Authentication and Privacy over a Decentralised Social Registry (GBP1,066,000 total grant) (Jan 2017–May 2021). Led by University of Surrey. Grant No. EP/N02799X/1; led on devising ways to visually communicate an impression of an online identity’s provenance, informing a prototype trialled with owners of small businesses to evaluate its acceptability and efficacy in helping their decision-making around the legitimacy of online identities.

CO-I: ESRC-led EMoTICON: The Trust Map: Investigating Power, Trust and Empathy in Minority Communities through Digital Interventions (GBP753,639 total grant) (Aug 2014–Jan 2018). Led by University of Nottingham. Grant Nos. ES/M003566/1 and ES/M003566/2; Briggs led researchers on projects and publications involving design for community planning and to support poverty action, trust and participatory governance, and young people’s trust in and uses of social media. Also with Universities of Newcastle and Durham.

PI: ESRC A Taxonomy of UK Crowdfunding and Examination of the Potential of Trust and Empathy in Project Success (GBP92,500) (June 2014–Sept 2015). Grant No. ES/M00371X/1. First RCUK award on online crowdfunding. Briggs’ team looked at recent and live crowdfunding campaigns, conducted interviews with funders, fundraisers and crowdfunding experts, and organised a programme of engagement. With Queen’s University Belfast.

PI: AHRC Creative Temporal Costings: exploring the multiplicity of value through collaborative exchange with and within a creative timebank (GBP15,000) (June–Sept 2015). Grant No. AH/N003799/1; 3-month ‘sprint’ collaboration with Leeds Creative Timebank investigating artists’ experiences of exchanging time to promote tangible forms of cultural action. With the Universities of Warwick and Dundee and the RCA.

Book Chapters

Light, A., Briggs, J., 2020. 'The Design of Paying Publics'. In CrowdAsset: Crowdfunding for Policymakers, pp. 105-120.

Blythe, M., Hook, J., Briggs, J., 2018. 'From Evaluation to Crits and Conversation'. In Blythe, M., Monk, A. (eds.) Funology 2: from usability to enjoyment, pp. 241-254, Springer International Publishing, Cham.

Journal Articles

Armstrong, A., Briggs, J., Moncur, W., Carey, P., Nicol, E., Schafer, B., 2023. 'Everyday digital traces', Big Data & Society, 10 (2), pp. 1-13.

Armstrong, A., Flynn, E., Salt, K., Briggs, J., Clarke, R., Vines, J., MacDonald, A., 2023. 'Trust and temporality in participatory research', Qualitative Research, 23 (4), pp. 1000-1021.

Schafer, B., Briggs, J., Moncur, W., Nicol, E., Azzopardi, L., 2023. 'What the Dickens: post-mortem privacy and intergenerational trust', Computer Law and Security Review, 49, pp. 105800-105800.

Nicol, E., Briggs, J., Moncur, W., Htait, A., Carey, D.P., Azzopardi, L., Schafer, B., 2022. 'Revealing cumulative risks in online personal information: a data narrative study', Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 6 (CSCW2), pp. 323-323.

Steane, J., Briggs, J., Yee, J., 2020. 'T-shifting identities and practices: interaction designers in the fourth industrial age', International Journal of Design, 14 (3), pp. 85-96.

Yang, Y., Cooper, D., Collomosse, J., Dragan, C.C., Manulis, M., Steane, J., Manohar, A., Briggs, J., Jones, H., Moncur, W., 2020. 'TAPESTRY: a de-centralized service for trusted interaction online', IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, 15 (3), pp. 1385-1398.

Wilkinson, C., Briggs, J., Salt, K., Vines, J., Flynn, E., 2019. 'In participatory budgeting we trust? Fairness, tactics and (in)accessibility in participatory governance', Local Government Studies, 45 (6), pp. 1001-1020.

Clarke, R.E., Briggs, J., Armstrong, A., MacDonald, A., Vines, J., Flynn, E., Salt, K., 2019. 'Socio-materiality of trust: co-design with a resource limited community organisation', Co-Design, 17 (3), pp. 258-277.

Briggs, J., 2012. 'Investigating situated cultural practices through cross-sectoral digital collaborations: processes, policies, insights', Digital Creativity, 23 (2), pp. 98-112.

Conference Papers

Azzopardi, L., Nicol, E., Briggs, J., Moncus, W., Schafer, B., Nash, C., Duheric, M., 2025. 'Assessing Risks in Online Information Sharing', Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 24/3/2025 - 28/3/2025, in CHIIR '25: Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval, pp. 71-80.

Holmquist, L.E., Briggs, J., 2023. 'Projection mapping in the city: co-creating public digital installations for climate awareness with animation and interaction design undergraduates', EduCHI: 5th Annual Symposium on HCI Education, Hamburg, Germany, 28/4/2023 - 28/4/2023, in EduCHI '23: Proceedings of the 5th Annual Symposium on HCI Education, pp. 91-95.

Azzopardi, L., Briggs, J., Duheric, M., Nash, C., Nicol, E., Moncur, W., Schafer, B., 2022. 'Are Taylor's posts risky? Evaluating cumulative revelations in online personal data', SIGIR '22: The 45th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, Madrid, Spain, 11/7/2022 - 15/7/2022, in Proceedings of the 45th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, pp. 3295-3299.

Green, C.P., Nash, C., Briggs, J., Dong, X., 2022. 'Born in Fair Haven: Procedural Generation of Cultural Sign Systems', Krakow, Poland, 7/7/2022 - 11/7/2022, in Proceedings of DiGRA 2022 Conference: Bringing Worlds Together.

Nash, C., Carey, D., Nicol, E., Htait, A., Schafer, B., Briggs, J., Moncur, W., Azzopardi, L., 2022. 'Making sense of trifles: data narratives and cumulative data disclosure', Universität Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria and Hybrid, 23/2/2022 - 26/2/2022, in Jusletter IT, 24 (1), pp. 63-71.

Ruta, D., Gilbert, A., Aggarwal, P., Marri, N., Kale, A., Briggs, J., Speed, C., Jin, H., Faieta, B., Filipkowski, A., Lin, Z., Collomosse, J., 2022. 'StyleBabel: Artistic Style Tagging and Captioning', pp. 219-236.

Nash, C., Briggs, J., Carey, D., Sellers, L., 2021. 'Four Speculative Design F(r)ictions: Designing for Personal Data Awareness', n Proceedings of Workshop on Human-Data Interaction through Design (CHI'21)..

Nash, C., Briggs, J., Sellers, L., Carey, D., 2021. 'Where is the Human in HDI?', Proceedings of Workshop onHuman-Data Interaction through Design (CHI' 21).

Nash, C., Briggs, J., 2020. 'All Innovation Is Social', IASDR 2019, Manchester School of Art.

Collard, H., Briggs, J., 2020. 'Creative Toolkits for TIPS', European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS) 2020, Guildford, United Kingdom, 14/9/2020 - 18/9/2020, in Computer Security: ESORICS 2020 International Workshops, DETIPS, DeSECSys, MPS, and SPOSE, Guildford, UK, September 17-18, 2020, Revised Selected Papers, pp. 39-55.

Yang, Y., Collomosse, J., Manohar, A.K., Briggs, J., Steane, J., 2019. 'TAPESTRY: visualizing interwoven identities for trust provenance', 2018 IEEE Symposium on Visualization for Cyber Security (VizSec), Berlin, Germany, 22/10/2018 - 22/10/2018, in 2018 IEEE Symposium on Visualization for Cyber Security, VizSec 2018.

Manohar, A., Briggs, J., 2018. 'Designing InWith Black Box Technologies and PD', DRS2018: Design as a catalyst for change, 25/6/2018 - 28/6/2018, in Proceedings of DRS.

Elsden, C., Manohar, A., Briggs, J., Harding, M., Speed, C., Vines, J., 2018. 'Making sense of blockchain applications: a typology for HCI', 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Montreal, Canada, 21/4/2018 - 26/4/2018, in CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 458-458.

Gatehouse, C., Wood, M., Briggs, J., Pickles, J., Lawson, S., 2018. 'Troubling vulnerability: designing with LGBT young people's ambivalence towards hate crime reporting', 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Montreal, Canada, 21/4/2018 - 26/4/2018, in CHI '18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 109-109.

Johnson, I.G., McDonald, A., Briggs, J., Manuel, J., Salt, K., Flynn, E., Vines, J., 2017. 'Community conversational: supporting and capturing deliberative talk in local consultation processes', CHI '17: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Denver, Colorado, USA, 6/5/2017 - 11/5/2017, in CHI '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 2320-2333.

Light, A., Briggs, J., 2017. 'Crowdfunding platforms and the design of paying publics', CHI '17: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Denver, Colorado, USA, 6/5/2017 - 11/5/2017, in Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 797-809.

Clarke, R., Briggs, J., Light, A., Wright, P., 2016. 'Situated encounters with socially engaged art in community-based design', DIS '16: Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2016, Brisbane, Australia, 4/6/2016 - 8/6/2016, in DIS '16: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, pp. 521-532.

Qaed, F., Briggs, J., Cockton, G., 2016. 'Social media resources for participative design research', PDC '16: The 14th Participatory Design Conference, Aarhus, Denmark, 15/8/2016 - 19/8/2016, in PDC '16: Proceedings of the 14th Participatory Design Conference: Short Papers, Interactive Exhibitions, Workshops, 2, pp. 49-52.

Clarke, R.E., Briggs, J., Heitlinger, S., Light, A., Crivellaro, C., 2014. 'Socially engaged arts practice in HCI', CHI '14: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 26/4/2014 - 1/5/2014, in CHI '14 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 69-72.

Briggs, J., Blythe, M., 2013. 'Apps for art's sake: resistance and innovation', MobileHCI '13: 15th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, Munich, Germany, 27/8/2013 - 30/8/2013, in MobileHCI '13: Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services, pp. 45-54.

Hook, J., Briggs, J., Blythe, M., Walsh, N., Olivier, P., 2013. 'Repentir: digital exploration beneath the surface of an oil painting', CHI '13: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Paris, France, 27/4/2013 - 2/5/2013, in CHI EA '13: CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 2947-2950.

Blythe, M., Briggs, J., Hook, J., Wright, P., Olivier, P., 2013. 'Unlimited editions: three approaches to the dissemination and display of digital art', CHI '13: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Paris, France, 27/4/2013 - 2/5/2013, in CHI '13: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 139-148.

Kwon, H., Briggs, J., Freeth, B., Ladha, K., Thomas, J., Blythe, M., Olivier, P., 2013. 'Wet Pixels: from digital to analogue originals', CHI '13: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Paris, France, 27/4/2013 - 2/5/2013, in CHI EA '13: CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 583-588.

Blythe, M., Briggs, J., Olivier, P., Hook, J., 2012. 'Digital originals: reproduction as a space for design', NordiCHI '12: Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Copenhagen, Denmark, 14/10/2012 - 17/10/2012, in NordiCHI '12: Proceedings of the 7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Making Sense Through Design, pp. 1-10.