Design Against Crime Research Lab

At the core of the Design Against Crime Research Lab's activity is research that serves the public and communities. The Lab's focus is “socially responsive design and innovation”: its primary driver is social issues, its main consideration is social impact, and its main objective is social change. Overall, the team's approach embraces action research, user-centred and participatory design methods, as well as diverse ethnographic approaches.

The Lab delivers design against crime responses that are recognised as impactful benchmarks. These address everything from personal security and theft to youth violence, public safety and social wellbeing.

For an overview of the Lab’s work over the last 20 years, read this case study.

To understand more about DAC's approach, view this visual representation of the Lab's methodology.

DAC's design work is delivered without compromising the look and functionality of objects or service provision. The team use engagement processes that are connected to strong partnerships through an “open innovation” approach, as well as a rigorous design and crime methodology. Ultimately, they believe that their designs should involve communities in the design process, be user-friendly and abuser-unfriendly, and also serve communities, as well as business, commercial and public service providers and policymakers.

The team have created numerous design platforms to do this and to enable collaboration between communities, UAL courses and students on projects that address diverse social challenges.

Mission statement

The core mission of DACRL is to disrupt crime by bringing together government, businesses, local communities, prisoners and citizens to generate strong socially responsive, co-created crime prevention strategies and crime diversion projects. The Lab aims to use socially responsive design to

• Reduce the negative consequences of criminogenic affordances (i.e. likely to cause criminal behaviour or serve criminal goals) of products, services, environments and communications and instead design affordances that discourage crime but are ‘fit for purpose’ and contextually appropriate.
• Equip design practitioners and educators to understand ‘environmental complicity’ with crime, so that design within the built environment actively discourages crime and promotes the increased wellbeing of individuals, helping to create more sustainable communities.
• Clearly demonstrate why ‘secure design does not have to look criminal’ or compromise on aesthetics, by utilising practice-led user-centred design and social innovation benchmarks aimed at public, semi-public and private space.
• Share design against crime thinking, methods, tools, design processes and best practice with key stakeholders, dutyholders, policymakers and partners in the UK and internationally.
• Equip design practitioners and educators with the cognitive and practical tools and resources to design against crime and help democratise innovation by introducing participatory and open innovation design methods when collaborating with stakeholders and dutyholders.
• Prove and promote the many social and commercial benefits of designing against crime to communities, manufacturing and service industries, as well as those concerned with the ‘social economy’.
• Transfer our effective practices and methodology, which have a strong evidence base of success, to other social/policy issues by design, such as health, ageing, climate change, social justice and incarceration issues.

Ultimately, the team acknowledges that the causes of crime are complex and that, to be useful, design responses will usually need to address multiple drivers, often including those beyond crime incidents.

Reflecting this, the Research Lab operates across a variety of platforms in encouraging communities, design students and PhD researchers to address these issues. This often happens via the Public Collaboration Lab and the diverse projects it has generated.

Core team

• Professor Lorraine Gamman, Director
• Professor Adam Thorpe, Co-Director
• Marcus Willcocks, Research Fellow
• Prof Paul Ekblom, Emeritus Professor
• Dr Matt Malpass, Reader
• Jeffrey Doruff, Research Associate and Stage Leader, BA (Hons) Product and Industrial Design

Current PhD students

• Carlotta Allum - Grasping the soul: a practice-led investigation of storytelling, design and crime
• Alvaro Bravo Cole - Design Knowledge in Times of Crisis: Integrating the Creativity  of Lived Experience into Design
• Toyin Gbomedo -  Fashion through Design Activism and Co-design for Cultural Sustainability to Influence Policy Change and Support UK-based Refugees, Migrants and Marginalised Communities.
• Bahbak Hashemi - Becoming strangers: defamiliarisation as critical research method in participatory design
• Katrin Ho - Fostering discursive civility by creating hybrid artefacts
• Dayhe Kim
• Lucy Russell - WHAT I SEE I OWN? Can fashion/media body images via the process of drawing be re-appropriated to positive effect as part of the creation of a social innovation design tool that can be accessed or shared with groups to question negative body image/s and to build well-being and “body confidence”?
• Hongig Zho

Past PhD students

• Joana Casaca Lemos - Communication design for sustainability: exploring the role of communication design in catalyzing engagement and participation
• Roxanne Leitao - Intimate partner abuse, technology, and cyber-aggression: co-designing support around issues of cyber-security and privacy
• Alaistair Steele -  Through the hole in the wall: The ATM as a tool of users or criminals in digital/public space
• Rosie Wallin - Sustainable heritage and innovation for future luxury

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