Victoria Haines heads the User Centred Design Research Group in the Loughborough Design School. She is a Research Fellow and holds a degree in Ergonomics, a Diploma in Professional Studies and a Professional Certificate in Management. She is a Fellow of the Ergonomics Society and a Registered European Ergonomist.

Victoria has worked extensively on projects with commercial and industrial partners as well as other academics, focusing on ergonomics and user-centred design.

Victoria currently is Co-Investigator on two EPSRC/E.ON funded projects: CALEBRE (Consumer Appealing Low Energy Technologies for Building Retrofitting) which is investigating user behaviours and comfort relating to the implementation of retrofit energy saving technologies in the home and is focusing on owner-occupied, solid-walled houses; and CCC (Carbon, Control and Comfort) which is investigating user-centred control systems for comfort, carbon saving and energy management, with a focus on social housing.

Victoria also led ESRI’s contribution to the Equipment Management and Services Aggregation Trials for the DTI (2002-2005) under ‘The Application Homes Initiative’. These multi-partner projects researched and developed new systems to provide householders with targeted information about domestic energy use. ESRI’s role was to identify what information people wanted (as opposed to what the technology could offer) and how it should be presented. Researchers conducted home trials with retrofitted equipment to establish the benefits and necessary design improvements.

Victoria is responsible for managing a team of 15 human factors experts, who can bring user-centred design methods and expertise to the research. Her research focuses on how people interact with their environment and the products and services they use, particularly in the domestic energy field.