Professor Lucy Kimbell is the Director of the UAL Innovation Insights Hub and Professor of Contemporary Design Practices at the University of the Arts London (UAL)
Lucy is an experienced researcher, postgraduate educator, and strategic design consultant. She has spent much of her career on design’s fringes, intersecting with other disciplines and contexts including social innovation and policy. Lucy has been involved in research, teaching and assessment within leading international universities for over a decade, with a particular focus on the role of design in society, services and innovation. Her leadership and facilitation skills are complemented by research in design thinking and service design and art experiments in visualising data.
Before joining UAL Lucy was AHRC research fellow in Policy Lab in the Cabinet Office (2014-15) and principal research fellow at the University of Brighton where in addition she jointly led projects for the AHRC around social design. Previously Lucy was Clark fellow in design leadership at Said Business School, University of Oxford for five years, where she remains an associate fellow. Lucy co-founded one of the UK’s first digital arts groups and went on to work in digital innovation consultancy before joining academia.
As an educator, she has been involved in developing the joint MBA between CSM and Birkbeck College and UAL’s executive training offer. She’s taught an MBA elective on design innovation at Said Business School, University of Oxford, since 2005. Lucy also designs and delivers training in people-centred design for the UK Civil Service.
The Service Innovation Handbook: Action-oriented creative thinking toolkit for service organizations