Dr Denise Heffernan

Denise’s research interest lies in participatory research, co-design, and community-engaged approaches to inclusive digital transformation, centring the lived experience of people at every stage of the research process. Producing practical outputs that are accessible, actionable, and grounded in community experience. Her role at Nimbus bridges community needs and design practice. She brings participatory methods into complex, interdisciplinary projects, working alongside communities, policymakers, and researchers to ensure that the people most affected by digital systems have a meaningful voice in shaping them. She has played an active role across several significant research projects, including as Design Lead on IDEate, a Research Ireland National Challenge Fund project, and the SEAI-funded MOBILISE project, exploring energy poverty with the Irish Traveller community. Her PhD, Playful Spaces: A Framework for Designing and Sustaining Collaborative Play in the Museum, focused on studies of social play in museums, using analogue and digital artefacts to explore visitor engagement with exhibits. It produced a framework that articulates the activity and practice of social play in museum settings, informing strategies for designing exhibition experiences that enhance social engagement. She also contributes to postgraduate student supervision and mentoring early-career researchers and to building human-centred design capacity across Nimbus and MTU.