Dr Danielle Barrios-O’Neill
Committee Member

Danielle Barrios-O’Neill is the Head of Information Experience Design at the Royal College of Art. This programme is about the translation of information into transformation, through experience design. The programme initiates approaches to art and design that are self-consciously situated as well conversant with complexity, taking a systems view of the world in which practice happens.

Danielle is committed to the belief that arts education has a fundamental role to play in investigating and influencing future societal shifts and how they are managed, and that post-disciplinary models of learning and teaching are vital to realising this potential. Her pedagogical practice and research are actively engaged with serious play and game-led experiences, active multiplatform interaction, and post-disciplinary study. She is especially interested in bold approaches to curriculum design and unconventional possibilities for best practice in arts education. She has published on digital and post-digital pedagogy across the arts and humanities, with a special focus on socio-environmental influences and interactions. This explores arts pedagogy in relation to socio- environmental transitions including climate change, political conflict, emerging technologies and technological change.

As an experience designer Danielle has explored environmental experience and creative engagement in a variety of contexts, including through game simulation, virtual and augmented reality, multiplatform and audio, and designing pervasive games for urban spaces. In all cases, her work is motivated by a desire to meet social and often global challenges by rendering unconventional, meaningful experiences of human existence within larger living networks. Danielle has managed projects with a number of public and private sector organisations with interest in these areas, serving as Principal Investigator on RKEI projects in immersive experience design, education and public engagement.