Matthew Lee-Smith is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Design and co-convenor of the Poly community of practice. Matthew is an interdisciplinary designer, coder, researcher, and “aspiring” philosopher with a background in posthumanism, discursive design, research through design, and human-computer interaction. Matthew’s core research and design is on the expansion of our understanding and expectations of technology through presenting alternatives through high-quality research artefacts.
Matthew’s academic background includes a BSc in Product Design from Brunel University of London, an MA in Interaction Design from Goldsmiths University of London, and a PhD from Loughborough University, focused on Design and Posthuman-Computer Interaction, supported by the Centre for Doctoral Training: Embedded Intelligence (EPSRC) and in collaboration with Ordnance Survey.
Matthew has a growing involvement in the wider academic community, including being an associate chair on the Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) and Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) conferences, co-chair of the Design Research During and After Artificial Intelligence track at the Design Research Society 2026 conference, and a reviewer for various design and human-computer interaction journals.
Matthew’s research agenda is broadly around the critique and reimagining of technology in diverse contexts to present alternative realities through interactive design outputs that can challenge hegemonic narratives. In other words, Matthew seeks to question what we expect and can experience from technology through design.
The Technological Beingness Framework, one of the core outputs of Matthew’s PhD dissertation, is an example of challenging framings of technology by presenting a post-anthropocentric view of technological entities where certain “technological beings” can be designed to exist for their own sake and even be designed for.
Matthew is contributing to work around food systems and community farms through design with colleagues at Loughborough University and beyond, alongside preliminary explorations of Tiny Machine Learning in design artefacts and creative industries.
Finally, Matthew organises “polys” to bring together colleagues to discuss and explore novel, emerging, or alternative ideas in short-form sessions to rapidly scope and experiment with potential future research avenues.
Matthew applies their practical and theoretical background to a variety of teaching contexts across the school and undergraduate and postgraduate levels. In particular, Matthew contributes to teaching on Tiny Machine Learning in designed products, interaction and user experience design, and enhancing the provision of alternative design methods and practices into the teaching programme, such as discursive design and research through design.
PhD Supervision
Matthew is passionate about interdisciplinary research that employs design as a core part of the research methodology to conduct exploratory and experimental works.
Matthew welcomes applications from prospective doctoral researchers interested in:
- Posthuman and more-than-human explorations of technology
- Emerging and niche technologies in creative industries and practices
- Designing against wealth inequality and techno-feudalism.