Benedetta Lusi
I am a design researcher working at the intersection of interaction design, Human–Computer Interaction (HCI), and Science and Technology Studies. My work explores how design can engage with sensitive, complex, and often controversial experiences of care, with a particular focus on reproductive healthcare. I investigate how technologies and design artefacts can support people navigating emotionally and ethically complex healthcare decisions. Through Research through Design, co-design, and qualitative methods, I develop tools, probes, and speculative artefacts that open spaces for reflection, communication, and care within both clinical and everyday contexts. I completed my PhD at the Interaction Design Group at the University of Twente (Netherlands), where I explored how technology can be designed for compassion in mental healthcare. My research later focused on reproductive health experiences, including work on premenstrual disorders, pregnancy, and abortion care. Across these projects, I combine feminist and intersectional perspectives with design practice to explore how technologies can acknowledge the complexities, contradictions, and emotions embedded in lived experiences of health. I am currently working on the Medicines and Pregnancy project at Queen Mary University of London, funded by the NIHS. I am exploring how people with experience of pregnancy make sense of their experiences, concerns, and strategies when making decisions about medicines in conversation with clinicians.
Publications on Care, Reproductive and Trasformative justice
Benedetta Lusi, Anna Vallgårda, Safra Martinussen, and Geke D.S. Ludden. 2025. In Adjunct proceedings of the sixth decennial Aarhus conference: Computing X Crisis (AAR Adjunct 2025), August 18–22, 2025, Aarhus N, Denmark. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 6 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3737609.3747115
What We Took From Metaphors: A Case of Designing For Care After Abortion.
Benedetta Lusi, Anna Vallgårda, Harvey Bewley, Halfdan Mouritzen, and Geke Ludden. 2024. In Proceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (NordiCHI '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 14, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1145/3679318.3685347.
Reproducing Crisis: A Walkthrough Review of Abortion Care Infrastructure Technologies.
Adrian Petterson and Benedetta Lusi. 2025. In Adjunct proceedings of the sixth decennial Aarhus conference: Computing X Crisis (AAR Adjunct 2025), August 18–22, 2025, Aarhus N, Denmark. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3737609.3747118
Conducting Research in Oppressive Settings.
Adrian Petterson, Benedetta Lusi, Cristina Bosco, Ashique Ali Thuppilikkat, Anupriya Tuli, Catherine Wieczorek, Robert Soden, Emily Tseng, and Priyank Chandra. 2025. In Companion Publication of the 2025 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW Companion '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 88–91. https://doi.org/10.1145/3715070.3748282
Behind the Scenes: A SIG on Researcher Care and the Invisible Care Work.
Anupriya Tuli, Kamala Payyapilly Thiruvenkatanathan, Benedetta Lusi, Adrian Petterson, Alejandra Gómez Ortega, Karthik S. Bhat, Sachin R. Pendse, Asra Sakeen Wani, Laia Turmo Vidal, Azra Ismail, Joo Young Park, and Dilisha Patel. 2025. In Companion Publication of the 2025 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW Companion '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 74–77. https://doi.org/10.1145/3715070.3748278
Care technology as a room of one's own: Designing for compassion to support mental health and wellbeing.
Benedetta Lusi. 2025. Doctoral Dissertation.
For a more updated list, check my Scholar page here.
Benedetta Lusi, Armağan Karahanoğlu, Charlotte M. van Lotringen, Randy Klaassen, Matthijs L. Noordzij, Geke D. S. Ludden. 2025. Behaviour & Information Technology, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2025.2559290
Compassionate Technology: A Systematic Scoping Review of Compassion as Foundation for Blended and Digital Mental Health Interventions.
Charlotte van Lotringen, Benedetta Lusi, Gerben J. Westerhof, Geke D.S. Ludden, Hanneke Kip, Saskia Kelders, Matthijs L. Noordzij. 2023. JMIR Mental Health. https://doi.org/10.2196/42403
Embodiments of compassion in caring and non-caring products: exploring design for values with a multi-sensory approach.
Benedetta Lusi, Geke D. S. Ludden, Randy Klaassen, Charlotte M. van Lotringen, Matthijs L. Noordzij. 2022. DRS22, Design Research Society Conference, June 2022, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.288.
Third International Workshop on Worker-Robot Relations: Futuring Worker Empowerment through Worldbuilding around Human-Robot Interactions
Wilbert Tabone, Benedetta Lusi, Alessandro Ianniello, J. Micah Prendergast, Deborah Forster, Olger Siebinga, Maria Luce Lupetti, Eva S. Verhoef, Dave Murray-Rust, Marco C. Rozendaal, Ann M. Pendleton-Jullian, and David Abbink. 2026. In Companion Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI Companion '26). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1378–1380. https://doi.org/10.1145/3776734.3788828
Compassionate technology, value-based design for (e-)mental health. Geke D. S. Ludden, Matthijs L. Noordzij, Benedetta Lusi, Charlotte M. van Lotringen. 2024. In Design for Dementia, Mental Health and Wellbeing. Kristina Nieddederer, Geke D. S. Ludden, Tom Dening, Vjera Holthoff-Detto (eds.). Routledge, London.
For a more updated list, check my Scholar page here.
OTHER STUFF
@Milano Base
Milan Design Week - FuoriSalone
19-26 April
2026
for INAF Universe
Italy, 2019
National Arts Award 2018
for Universe on Rome
Italy 2018
contact info
Centre for Preventive Neurology Wolfson Institute of Population Health
Queen Mary University of London
Charterhouse Square, London EC1M 6BQ, UK.
b.lusi@qmul.ac.uk
Last Updated 11.04.26
5 language agents for care after abortion
Research Project carried out at University of Twente, in collaboration with Anna Vallgarda at ITU Copenhagen
The abortion care package is a carefully curated ensemble of elements dedicated to people who have experienced an abortion— referred to henceforth simply as abortion. The care package was designed primarily for the individual undergoing the abortion in their lived context. The care package seeks to elicit self-compassion and compassion from others through different ways of self-expression. The care package includes a diary, a dictionary of new words describing feelings around provoked abortion, a set of stamps, a story printer, and a color token to visualize the interior transformation the individual has been going through. Together, the elements aim to support individuals to find the words to describe what they lived through, are living through, and feel. The invitation is to use the elements to express oneself, for one self’s sake, and share one’s story with others. For more details, please refer to the papers indicated below.
-> [Publication: What we took from metaphors}
-> [The abortion feelings archive]
3D Animation Course
Professor Mauro Palatucci
ISIA Roma, 2017
This 3D Animation was completed during the course of System Design at the ISIA University in Rome, designed entirely with Blender3D. The concept behind it is very simple: in every transformation the shape has to go back and balance itself, this in a never-ending process of self-development. The original soundtrack was created by myself and guitarist and composer Michele Di Filippo.
Video: 3D Modeling+Animation -Blender3D
Original track by Michele Di Filippo
Mapping and Navigation System
Master Thesis in Interaction Design
Video Presentation + Printed Paper
Isia Roma, 2018
leicht is a mapping and navigation system of the spatial environment. It is inspired by the way the human brain maps the space and orients itself. It is the design of a basic interface where the user moves through a map of places, generated by his own experience. Basic elements and interface functions are here explored in order to create an elementary language that could eventually be used on any device at any point in time.The goal is to improve the user’s memorization, eliminating information overload and the dependance between system and user, bringing them to augment each other.
Video exploration
Isia Roma, 2018
The video is an exploration of how data is imagined, materialised, and made visible. I used close-up videos of sugar crystals seen through a microscope. The shimmering grains appear abstract and data-like, blurring the line between material and information. Each crystal could be read as a three-dimensional visualisation of a single bit of data — or perhaps that is only what we want to see.
A visual exploration of queer values for fashion design
Paint on printed paper
Images: Still frames from Video
Visual Research
Diesel, 2019
At the very beginning of my experience in Diesel, I was asked to conduct a visual research on the meaning of the word UNISEX, with no context restriction. After some research on how the concept of unisex came to be in the world of fashion, I chose to take inspiration from videos that represent the human body communicating universal values. In the selected images strenght, desire and sexuality are infact represented above the level of gender distinction, because the message is strong enough to be universally recognized regardless of the gender attributes. From those images I draw lines and directions that I would later use to create a new concept for a unisex watch.
Still frames from:
Define Beauty: His sweat, directed by Matt Lambert
Untaggable: What is #perfection?, directed by Chelsea McMullan for Audi
Generative waking up
Multimedia Course,
Professor Mauro Palatucci,
ISIA Roma, 2017
Shapeshifter represents the generative design of a car that follows nature’s rules. More specifically the car parts are designed after animals movements and characteristics. The project brief was to choose and enhance a car function, so I decided to research the car’s micro-movements, for example the rearview mirror being opened, and the story opened up from there.
Video: 3D Modeling+Animation -Blender3D
Editing+Compositing -AfterEffects
For INAF - National Institute for Astrophysics
Research Project developed with Giovanni Gioia
ISIA Roma for INAF, 2017-2018
Awards:
Premio Nazionale delle Arti 2018
Premio Eccellenze del Lazio 2019
The Museum of the Universe is the only Astronomy Museum in Rome, Italy. It is located on Monte Mario Hill, in the Villa of the National Institute for Astrophysics. The Museum needed to be renewed, to be recognized and linked to the astronomic sites hidden all over the city. For this purpose we designed a new coordinated image and an interactive installation, to be located in the Museum’s garden, representing the astronomic sites in Rome. We then developed the MUN online application, which provides a mapping system of the city leading up to the Museum, where the collected experiences come to life through the installation.
Design Concept and Sketching
3D Model + Wood Model
Photography + Video