Jenny is Assistant Professor (Service Design) in the Department. She is passionate about inclusivity and accessibility ‘following a Design for All approach’. That means that, from the outset, services, and the products that are part of those services, are designed in a holistic way as mainstream services that cater for a wide range of users and contexts of use. Many designers shun accessibility issues, so some of her research and teaching activity has been to encourage designers to engage with accessibility, and understand it as a challenging and exciting area of research and development, that often engenders innovation.
Her interest in service design comes from her appreciation of its fairly recent emergence and organisation, and especially its preoccupation with the topics of such as new value systems and social innovation. This means that Service Design provides a fascinating area that can both accommodate accessibility as well as add pragmatic dimensions to it. In its turn, Service Design as a new discipline, offers many openings for theoretical frameworks and tools that can accommodate systems thinking approaches in design, or Systemic Design. Such frameworks and tools help design to navigate and benefit from the complexity that holistic design methods generate.
Jenny is active in standardisation work at ISO and EU levels in standards-making activities for the accessibility and safety of products and services for people with disabilities, especially cognitive disabilities; people who are older; and in general, consumers with vulnerabilities.
Previously, Jenny was awarded a Marie Curie Experienced Fellowship 2016-2018 which she spent at the University of York, UK. She was an adjunct lecturer 2004-2016 in the Department, and also has worked as a researcher on a variety of EU funded projects dealing with human-centred aspects of systems for Information Management, HCI, Design for All and Accessibility.
Research topics
- Service Design
- Design for All / Accessibility
- Systemic Design
- Information Design
PhD from City University, U.K
BA from the University of London, U.K.
Selected Publications:
- Darzentas, J.S. Lydakis, A.E., Darzentas, J. (2021) Systems Thinking in Food Security Research Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD9) 2020 Symposium, virtual conference organised by National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India, October 9th-17th 2020.
- Petrie, H.& Darzentas, J. S. (2020) Digital Technology for Older People: A Review of Recent Research in Yates, S. and Rice, R.E. (Eds) The Oxford Handbook of Digital Technology and Society. New York: Oxford: Oxford University Press (Peer Reviewed content and consequently commissioned chapter)
- Darzentas, J.S. & Petrie, H. (2019) Patient self-service paradigms in hospital and healthcare service design settings in. Pfannstiel, M. and Rasche, C (Eds) Service Design and Service Thinking in Healthcare and Hospital Management, Springer Cham pp 447-462
- Darzentas J.S, Darzentas J. (2019) Perspectives on Systemic Design: examining heterogeneous relevant literature to provide a historical and ‘systemically inspired’ review. In Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD7) 2018 Symposium. Turin, Italy, October 24-26, 2018.
- Darzentas J., Darzentas J.S, de Bruin A., Power M., Prado P., Carmien S., Hobbs E. (2019) Systemic Design in food security and resilience: Building a holon. In Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD7) 2018 Symposium. Turin, Italy, October 24-26, 2018
- Petrie, H., Weber, G., Jadhav, C. & Darzentas, J. S. (2018) Issues of culture in designing for accessibility: Global thoughts, local designs: INTERACT 2017 IFIP TC 13 Workshops, Mumbai, India, September 25-27, 2017, Revised Selected Papers. Clemmensen, T., Rajamanickam, V., Dannemann, P., Petrie, H. & Winckler, M. (eds.). Cham, Switzerland: Springer, Vol. LNCS 10774, p. 55 – 67 13 p. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science)
- Petrie, H., Darzentas, J. S. & Carmien, S. (2018) Intelligent Support Technologies for Older People: An Analysis of Characteristics and Roles, in Langdon, P., Lazar, J., Heylighen, A., Dong, H. (Eds.) Breaking Down Barriers Usability, Accessibility and Inclusive Design, Proceedings of Cambridge Workshop on Universal Access and Assistive Technology (CWUAAT), pp 89-99
- Petrie, H, & Darzentas, J.S (2018) Accessibility and Usability of Self-Service Terminals, Technologies and Systems in Miesenberger, K.; Kouroupetroglou, G.(Eds) Proceedings of International Conference of Computers Helping People, (ICCHP 2018), Proceedings of International Conference of Computers Helping People, (ICCHP 2018), Linz Austria, July 11-13, 2018, Springer Verlag
- Darzentas, J.S. & Petrie, H. (2018) Standards, Guidelines and Legislation Related to Self-Service Technologies: Developments since 2013 (2018) in Miesenberger, K.; Kouroupetroglou, G.(Eds) Proceedings of International Conference of Computers Helping People, (ICCHP 2018), Linz Austria, July 11-13th 2018, Springer Verlag
- Gilligan, J., Chen, W. & Darzentas J.S. (2018) Using MOOCs to promote Digital Accessibility and Universal Design, the MOOCAP experience, Transforming our World Through Design, Diversity and Education No 256 of Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, pp78 – 86 DOI10.3233/978-1-61499-923-2-78