PhD Mobile Urban Imaginarium: Participatory AI and Smart Mobility in Dubai

Heriot-Watt University Dubai invites applications for a PhD in Design investigating how people can participate more meaningfully in shaping AI-enabled mobility, urban services and future city life.

Dubai is an innately entrepreneurial City and is advancing rapidly in autonomous mobility, intelligent infrastructure and AI-enabled public services. The success of these systems will depend on technical performance, and on whether residents, users and stakeholders can understand, question and influence the values and priorities embedded within them.

This PhD will explore how design might support more transparent, inclusive and publicly accountable approaches to AI in smart-city development. The research will be connected to the concept of a Mobile Urban Imaginarium: a design-led platform for investigating how people imagine, question and engage with future scenarios for mobility, public space and urban life.

The research may draw on interactive visualisation, immersive technologies, generative AI, participatory design, co-design workshops, design ethnography, systems and service design, prototyping, and qualitative or mixed-method research. Practice-led research may also be appropriate where it is connected to a clear research question and contribution to knowledge.

Applicants might explore questions such as:

• How might design research contribute to more understandable and accountable forms of public engagement with AI-enabled mobility and urban systems?
• Under what conditions can immersive and interactive design tools support meaningful public engagement with future urban scenarios?
• What values, concerns and aspirations emerge through participatory design processes focused on AI-enabled mobility futures, and how might these inform more socially responsive urban innovation?
• How might mobile and public-facing design research platforms widen, limit or reconfigure participation beyond conventional consultation processes?
• What role might design research play in developing culturally responsive approaches to AI governance in Dubai and comparable urban contexts?

Applicants are not expected to address all of these questions. If invited to interview, they should be prepared to discuss and propose a focused, original, and feasible doctoral project that contributes to design research and addresses the broader challenge of people-centred smart-city innovation.

Research environment

The PhD Design will be based at Heriot-Watt University Dubai and will sit within an interdisciplinary research environment spanning design, innovation, AI, urban systems and emerging technologies.

Depending on the final research direction, the project may engage with researchers and external stakeholders working in areas such as autonomous mobility, immersive interaction, smart-city development, urban informatics, human–machine interaction and responsible innovation. Potential fieldwork may involve public-facing urban, cultural, educational or innovation settings in Dubai, subject to relevant approvals.

The research should take a responsible approach to ethics, privacy, data governance and participant inclusion. It should not assume access to personal, identifiable or sensitive data.

Potential contribution

The PhD in Design may contribute to knowledge and practice in areas including:

• participatory and inclusive AI governance;
• public trust in autonomous and intelligent urban systems;
• design methods for engaging people with future mobility and city scenarios;
• ethical and culturally responsive smart-city innovation;
• immersive and mobile platforms for civic participation;
• frameworks, prototypes or toolkits for policymakers, designers and urban innovation stakeholders.

Outputs will include a doctoral thesis and may include academic publications, design prototypes, participatory tools, public-facing research outcomes, visualisations or practical guidance for future use.