Chananchida Promma is a PhD researcher in the School of Design and Creative Arts at Loughborough University, supervised by Dr Darren Southee and Dr Matthew Lee-Smith. Her academic background includes a BSc (Hons) in Industrial Design from the University for the Creative Arts and an MSc in Integrated Industrial Design from Loughborough University, where her practice spanned clay 3D printing, interactive art, electronics, assistive technology, illustration, branding and photography.
Her doctoral research sits at the intersection of design methodology and embedded intelligence, examining how designers adopt and engage with emerging technology, particularly Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML), as an active design material rather than a purely technical concern. Her work interrogates the role of design practice within a field predominantly shaped by engineering and computer science.
Chananchida's doctoral research is supported by the Royal Thai Government Scholarship.
Title of thesis: TinyML and Design Practice: How Product and Industrial Designers Adopt Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML)
Research area: Design and Emerging Technology
Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML) enables advanced machine learning models to run locally on small, energy-efficient devices, shifting intelligence from the cloud into everyday physical objects. While the field has grown rapidly within engineering and computer science, there is currently limited understanding of how product and industrial designers conceptualise or engage with this technology. This research investigates the awareness, perceptions, and barriers that designers face when encountering TinyML, and explores what would be needed to support meaningful adoption within design practice. The aim is to investigate how designers currently engage with embedded intelligence, and to equip them with the conceptual tools and frameworks needed to adopt TinyML meaningfully within their practice.