Dr Tara Capel is a Lecturer in Design Informatics with an interest in how technology can support people’s health and wellbeing. Her research combines participatory and feminist research, collaborative design (co-design), design probes and making practices to explore new areas of technology design. Her primary research areas are Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Human-Centered AI (HCAI), studying human-AI interaction across a range of domains including health and wellbeing, radiology, radiation therapy and agriculture. Her current research explores people’s use of generative AI systems, such as ChatGPT and Dall-E, for their wellbeing practices, creating a framework that maps these practices as a tool to further investigate new technology design for health and wellbeing.

Tara completed her PhD in Human-Computer Interaction at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia in 2023, which investigated how makerspaces can be designed in more inclusive ways to promote participation by women. Her research identified three core qualities – appropriate labelling, the configuration of learning, and turning ambitions into an artefact – that foster women’s participation and growth into confident and competent makers. Her research also demonstrates how the configuration of new spaces, which facilitate engagement with new tools and materials, can lead to new areas of design, allowing opportunities for self-expression, dialogue and reflection. Throughout her doctoral research, she also worked closely with a group of women from a community centre facing a range of life disruptions, collecting narrative data through design probes and co-design workshops. The research positioned participants as experts of their experience and integrated those experiences into the design process, using them to both guide and inform each phase of the research design and the design itself. This work culminated in the design of a digital noticeboard through which women at the community centre could share stories and experiences. She has also received a Master of Information Technology degree from the Queensland University of Technology and a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Queensland.