About - ANYONE AT HOME

Anyone At Home celebrates the lived experience of design.

It was developed as design research platform dedicated to exploring the integral role of design in our daily lives and homes.

Recognizing that our homes are more than mere showcases, it delves into how personal spaces evolve amidst ever-changing political, economic, sociological, and technological landscapes.

Anyone At Home explores how and where design is part of people’s lives – and home.

We have lived a life before today – and hopefully a life after tomorrow.

More than just a showpiece, our home is a place were we live day to day.

It is the centre of our life already lived through different lifestages and changes in our personal circumstances.

Our ‘home’ is the one place/space we ‘make’ our own It is the one space where we can truly be ourselves and where we can express our creativity, interests and lifestyle.

‘Home’ means different things to different people. And so…

No-one knows our home as we know it.

No-one sees our home as we see it.

Interviews

Everyone has a story to tell.

Everyone has a voice.

In the Interviews section people, from different walks of life, share their personal story of their home.

This is an intimate glimpse into someone’s life, their unique journey, their lived experience and the factors that have influenced their design choices. As personal accounts these stories provide a rich insight into contemporary lifestyles. Collectively, they offer readers a chance to see, listen, and think more deeply about how we inhabit our space.

Each of these accounts contributes to a wider range of personal stories of lived experience.

When viewed together this provides a unique insight into contemporary lifestyles and ways of living.

This website documents the private space/world that few people will ever see, or know. It seeks to expose something of the context, time and place in which everyday design decisions are made. And how we live with those decisions.

The Interviews section also features charities working at grass roots level that either offer people a home, a service or support with the immediacy of basic needs through a critical time in their life..

Insights

Design plays a hidden yet integral role in our daily life. It permeates every facet of human existence, influencing our thoughts, actions, and interactions.

We know that good design shapes our surroundings to inspire and enable individuals to lead enriched lives. But, in the real world, poor design is something with which many of us have to live on a day to day basis.

The Insights section explores broad, far-flung ideas.

These are the thoughts, bigger themes and questions that emerge from the interviews where I delve deeper to pose questions to encourage further research and exploration of design related issues.

Who Is This For?

Anyone At Home is an open resource for anyone interested in lived experience and experiential design.

It serves as a resource to highlight the many blurred issues and themes related to ageing, health, lifestyle, geography. It sets out to position design in the context of an ever changing world where out lived experience affects our perception and in what way this relates to how our physical space evolves through changes in personal circumstances.

Avenues for further research…

Real-world problems require actionable outcomes.

Through sharing these stories I hope to inspire thoughtful design research that reaches out and resonates as applied design.

These stories highlight an opportunity for others ( marketing, business, design or health) to develop and test lived experience in more detail in order to deliver targeted outcomes.

This site uniquely uses visual and oral data to connect the physical environment to an individual’s life experience. It is a lens, not just of a space and a place, but of someone’s lifeworld at a moment in time.

These are their words.

This is their home.

My hope is that these stories will inspire others, spark ideas, develop understanding, widen connections, dispel myths and fill existing gaps in our knowledge of home.

I would like to thank everyone who participated in this project. All the individuals who kindly let me into their lives and homes so I could share this with you.

People × Society × Home × Design

BIO

Nuala Rooney, PhD, FHEA

Dr Nuala Rooney is an independent human-centred design research consultant based in Northern Ireland.

I have been championing human-centered design research since the early 1990’s. With 25 years of expertise in higher education and design consultancy my work aims to bridge the gap between academia and real-world thinking by focusing on the human stories that effect design solutions.

My PhD (1998) research into high-density living pioneered a shift in focus from ‘housing’ to lived experience. This was further developed into a successful award-winning film, “A Thousand Pieces of Gold.”

I believe that design is a reflection of human life and am passionate about fostering conversations that explore empathy, creativity, and a deeper appreciation for the spaces we inhabit.

I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Association (FHEA) and have held appointments as External Examiner for academic institutions across the UK, New Zealand and Ireland. I was an invited judge at many prestigious design competitions, including the UA Design Awards and Asia-Pacific Interior Design Awards (APIDA)

Anyone At Home is a radical approach to design and design research.

Life stories help us to see, listen, and think more about the questions, problems and solutions that affect people everyday.

In such a fast-changing world it is essential that we know what it is that people truly think, and how they experience, everyday life.

To understand the world as others see it requires bespoke, flexible and alternative ways of looking and listening. Above all, it required empathy.

So, whether you work in business, technology, education or health and want to find out more about design, home and lived experience, please get in touch.

Please contact me on: Email: nuala@anyoneathome.com