Rate My Professor Nathan Crilly

Nathan Crilly is Professor of Design in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, affiliated with the Engineering Design Centre. He holds a B.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Southampton (1999) and a Ph.D. in Design Research from the University of Cambridge (2005). Crilly specialises in human behaviour in the context of innovation, investigating the creativity of designers, inventors, and entrepreneurs, and the experiences of users, customers, and stakeholders interacting with designed artefacts. His research interests include design thinking, systems thinking, entrepreneurial thinking, creativity and problem-solving processes such as fixation and co-evolution of problems and solutions, user experience of design encompassing inclusive systems and aesthetics of efficiency, analogical and bio-inspired design, and complex systems. He employs interdisciplinary approaches drawing from engineering, psychology, computer science, and philosophy, using experimental, qualitative, and conceptual methodologies.

Crilly has held an EPSRC Fellowship (2013–2019), Clare College Fellowship (2009–2016), and a fellowship with the Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (2014), and is a Fellow of the Design Research Society. He received the Pilkington Prize for teaching excellence in 2023 and led the team awarded Gold at the 2025 Learning Technologies Awards for the Cambridge Advance Online course 'Creativity, Problem Solving and Design Thinking'. As academic lead for this and other professional courses, including Creative Leadership at the Møller Centre, he coordinates undergraduate engineering modules on design processes, user-centred design, systems thinking, and visual communication, and delivers outreach lectures. His key publications include the book *Design Thinking and Other Approaches: How Different Disciplines See, Think and Act* (Cambridge University Press, 2024); highly cited papers such as 'Seeing Things: Consumer Response to the Visual Domain in Product Design' (Design Studies, 2004), 'Fixation and Creativity in Concept Development: The Attitudes and Practices of Expert Designers' (Design Studies, 2015), and 'Where Next for Research on Fixation, Inspiration and Creativity in Design?' (Design Studies, 2017). Crilly advises companies on creativity and design thinking, conducts user insight studies, and supports public-sector transformation via the Cambridge Centre for Science and Policy.