Dr. Robert Phillips is a Reader in Sustainable Futures at the Royal College of Art, Design Futures Programme. A Product Designer with 20 years’ experience, working commercially and independently with broad experience (to date) including; 5 international patents, large scale manufacture with 3 + million products in retail, leading research papers, live saving fire and ballistics equipment, revolutionary material developments, user orientated proposals and involvement in design for team GB. His RCA MA students have raised in excess of £2.5 million through crowdfunding (for their projects). He are also a Design Council ‘design for planet expert’, working with that community.

His PhD informed the relationship between Open Design and Citizen Science, resulting in methods taught at MIT Media Lab, Stanford, Cornell and the BBC. His research work (to date) has collaboratively raised over 3.5 million pounds for research projects, through EPSRC and Arts Council Funding. A collaborative vision of Ecological Citizenship that founded this book was awarded £3.4m by the EPSRC, working with SEI (York) and Wrexham University. A previous collaborative project with the Interaction Design Research Studio (www.mynaturewatch.net) used distributed design to foster people’s interest in the natural world around them and was broadcast on the BBC’s SpringWatch programme. His research (to date) collaboratively raised over £7 million. 

He has run design workshops with interdisciplinary teams, cultures and international participants, spanning a 20 year career. His research seeks to ‘Engage Design’, to decrease people’s impact, gaining insight into what people really do… and not just what the ‘world of design’ does… thinking how we can be FutureKind to Humankind. Prior work ‘FutureKind, design for and by the people’ (published by Thames & Hudson) culminates his research interests that design practice should be holistically sustainable, going beyond solving consequences but deal directly with mitigation.