I believe that design has an important part to play in the development of a better society.

This conviction has been formalised through evidence-based design work and research, and is deeply engraved in the studio’s ethos. I believe that design can help bridge the gap between experts and the general population through thoughtful and engaging communication.

To date, my research has focused on two main areas: sustainability and culture.

Below you can explore the applied research projects and publications.

Research Projects

Research Projects

My research interests lie in the intersection between different media and their communication potential in a design for impact approach.

Biotopia

Biotopia is a transmedia experience that aims to connect museum and nature walk visitors with entangled natureculture and more-than-human heritage.

More about Biotopia

Un-centering: a posthuman zine

This zine is a small companion for thinking, sketching, and being with the more-than-human. Rooted in posthuman design thinking, it invites you to slow down, step outside, and listen differently. This is not a toolkit. It’s a gentle provocation. A chance to notice, draw, and reflect with the beings that co-create our shared worlds.

More about Un-centering

Dear Nature

A five-week experiment where I, from Portugal, exchanged data-sketch postcards with Sherry Hsi, a colleague from the USA. We propose data drawings as a design method for surfacing human-nonhuman tensions towards posthuman design thinking.

More about Dear Nature

Finding Arcadia

My PhD followed a Research-through-Design approach (RtD), mainly focused on the development and study of consecutive design iterations of an interactive data-story prototype. Finding Arcadia is an interactive data-story with the purpose of improving interaction with, and communication about, climate change data.

More about Finding Arcadia

Book is a book is a book

This project explores the printed book as a creative medium of communication that would, simultaneously, help disseminate restricted printed assets to audiences that can’t access them (e.g. incunabula or rare books from restricted collections). This process resulted in the creation of Book is a book is a book, my MA thesis project. The full MA thesis is available here.

More about this project

A book on books

I’m particularly interested in the printed book as an object of communication. This interest led to the creation of a conceptual book that centres around the status of the book as object – A book on books (learn more).

Covid-19

During the Covid-19 pandemic, I collaborated in two projects that had the purpose of helping people go about their daily lives in safety.

The Maré Project had the vision that digital technologies could play an essential part in the mitigation of the pandemic. I helped design the Maré app and the Madeira Passive Wi-fi public-spaces map.

Publications

Publications

Designing Biotopia: A Transmedia Experience for Natureculture Heritage and More-than-Human Entanglements
Marta Ferreira, Pedro Galvão-Ferreira, Lavinia Rossini, Matteo Cappello, Maritza Silva, Ying Xu, Mathilde Gouin, Nuno J. Nunes, Valentina Nisi
July 2025   |   DOI: 10.1145/3715336.3735803  |   PDF   |  ACM DIS’25, Funchal

Towards Relatable Climate Change Data: Untangling Tensions in Engaging with a Hyperobject
Marta Ferreira, Nuno Nunes, Valentina Nisi
July 2024   |   DOI: 10.1145/3643834.3661606  |   PDF   |  ACM DIS’24, Copenhagen

Connecting Audiences with Climate Change: Towards Humanised and Action-focused Data Interactions
Marta Ferreira, Nuno Nunes, Pedro Ferreira, Henrique Pereira, Valentina Nisi
July 2024   |   DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2024.103341  |   PDF   | International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

Dear Nature: Using data drawings to promote sensemaking in human-nature relations
Marta Ferreira & Sherry Hsi 
July 2024   |   DOI: 10.1145/3643834.3660732  |   PDF   |  ACM DIS’24, Copenhagen

The Russia-Ukraine war and climate change: Analysis of one year of data-visualisations
Marta Ferreira, Nuno Nunes, Chiara Ceccarini, Catia Prandi, Valentina Nisi
October 2023   |   DOI: 10.21606/iasdr.2023.431  |   PDF   |  IASDR’23, Milan

Interactions with Climate Change: a Data Humanism Design Approach
Marta Ferreira, Valentina Nisi, Nuno Nunes
July 2023   |   DOI: 10.1145/3563657.3596003   |   PDF   |  ACM DIS’23, Pittsburgh

Interaction for crisis: a review of HCI and Design projects on climate change and how they engage with the general public
Marta Ferreira, Valentina Nisi, Nuno Nunes
November 2022   |   DOI: 10.1007/978-981-19-4472-7_56   |   PDF   |   IASDR’21, Hong Kong

Designing HCI Strategies to Communicate and Suggest Action for Climate Change Mitigation
Marta Ferreira, Valentina Nisi, Nuno Nunes
November 2022   |   DOI: 10.1007/978-981-19-4472-7_240   |   PDF   |   IASDR’21, Hong Kong

Catering for Students’ Well-being during COVID-19 Social Distancing: a Case Study from a University Campus
Shuhao Ma and Marta Ferreira, Hugo Nicolau, Catia Prandi, Augusto Esteves, Nuno Nunes, Valentina Nisi
September 2022   |   DOI: 10.1145/3524458.3547261   |   PDF   |   ACM GoodIT’22, Cyprus 

Interacting with Climate Change: A Survey of HCI and Design Projects and Their Use of Transmedia Storytelling
Marta Ferreira, Nuno Nunes, Valentina Nisi
December 2021   |   DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-92300-6_33   |   PDF   |   ICIDS’21, Tallinn

Climate Change Communication in HCI: A Visual Analysis of the Past Decade
Marta Ferreira, Miguel Coelho, Valentina Nisi, Nuno Nunes
June 2021   |   DOI: 10.1145/3450741.3466774   |   PDF   |   ACM C&C’21, Venice

Other Publications

The entangled tales that landscapes tell: An embodied HCI pedagogy for re-enchanted nature walks
Pedro Ferreira, Marta Ferreira, Maritza Silva, Nuno Nunes, Valentina Nisi.
2025   |   DOI: 10.1145/3689050.3705012   |  ACM TEI’25
From visual sketching to knotted figurations: Fabulating in the contact zone.
Valentina Nisi, Mathilde Gouin, Marta Ferreira, Nuno Nunes
2025   |  DOI: 10.1145/3689050.3704418   |  ACM TEI’25
The brain inside the heritage machine: Exploring inclusive natural history neuromuseology
Pedro Ferreira, Marta Ferreira, Nuno Nunes, Valentina Nisi. 2024.
2024   |  ACM Hypertext & Social Media
Designing a Digital Game for Natureculture Heritage encounters​
Valentina Nisi, Marta Ferreira, Pedro Galvão-Ferreira, Beste Syobilge, Mathilde Gouin, Nuno Nunes
July 2025   |   DOI: 10.1145/3698061.3726956   |   ACM C&C’25
Unusual suspects – visualizing unusual relationships of complex social phenomena with climate change​
Chiara Ceccarini, Marta Ferreira, Catia Prandi, Nuno Nunes, Valentina Nisi
September 2023   |   DOI: 10.1145/3582515.3609572   |   GoodIT 2023
The design of Tecnico GO!: catering for students’ well-being during the COVID-19 pandemics
Valentina Nisi, Catia Prandi, Shuhao Ma, Marta Ferreira, Hugo Nicolau, Augusto Esteves, Nuno Nunes
2023   |   DOI: 10.1007/s11042-023-16320-x   |   Multimedia Tools and Applications 82
Hitting the Triple Bottom Line: Widening the HCI Approach to Sustainability
Sabrina Scuri, Marta Ferreira, Nuno Nunes, Valentina Nisi, Cathy Mulligan
April 2022   |   DOI: 10.1145/3491102.3517518   |   CHI22
Addressing the Challenges of COVID-19 Social Distancing Through Passive Wi-Fi and Ubiquitous Analytics: A Real World Deployment
Miguel Ribeiro, Nuno Nunes, Marta Ferreira, João Nogueira, Johannes Schöning & Valentina Nisi
September 2021  |   DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-85616-8_1   |  Interact 2021
See the World Through the Eyes of a Child: Learning from children’s cognitive maps for the design of child-targeted locative systems
Cláudia Silva, Catia Prandi, Marta Ferreira, Valentina Nisi, Nuno Jardim Nunes
June 2019   |   DOI: 10.1145/3322276.3323700  |   PDF   |   ACM DIS19
Towards Locative Systems for, and by, Children: A Cognitive Map Study of Children’s Perceptions and Design Suggestions
Cláudia Silva, Catia Prandi, Marta Ferreira, Valentina Nisi, Nuno Jardim Nunes
June 2019   |   DOI: 10.1145/3325480.3326568  |   PDF   |   ACM C&C19

 

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