Umeå Institute of Design brings interaction to the north
NEWS
March 24-26 students from all over the world will attend the 6th edition of SIDeR- a student run Interaction Design Conference, hosted by Umeå Institute of Design. The theme for the event is playfulness – an essential ingredient to create interactive systems.
The three-day event will combine a mixture of keynote speakers, student research presentations, workshops, interactive sessions and social events. In addition to the student paper sessions Umeå Institute of Design is proud to announce the keynote speakers: Heather Martin of Smart Design, Zachary Lieberman of Open Frameworks and Erik Stolterman, professor of Informatics and the Director of Human-Computer Interaction Design Program at Indiana University.
Following the keynotes and paper sessions SIDeR 2010 has variety of hands on workshops that range from discussions on How to Become a Good Designer with Erik Stolterman, to Handcrafting a Textile Sensor from Scratch with Hannah Perner-Wilson from MIT Media Lab’s High-Low Tech research group in Cambridge, USA. With the title, Ingredients in Gradients, Umeå Institute of Design aim to communicate the essential playfulness of the process behind creating interactive systems. We hope to evoke the range and openness of this field and allow for creative interpretation both from the student presenters and from the keynote speakers.
“Having a diversity of people in Umeå, both students and industry, including the high profile keynote speakers, is a great opportunity for us to create a dialogue on interaction design research that spans world wide,” says first year MA Interaction Design student Nirvana Soltani from Iran.
The conference, sponsored by Smart Design, one of the worlds leading design consultancies, is open to the public, and the Institute of Design encourages students and industry of all disciplines to attend.
SIDeR (Student Interaction Design Research) is a non-profit conference run by students and it takes place at a host university every year. Relying solely on the funding of industry sponsors, SIDeR enables students to participate in and contribute to the emerging discipline of interaction design.
About Umeå Institute of Design
Umeå Institute of Design at Umeå University opened in 1989 focusing on industrial design driven education from BA education to MA programmes in Interaction Design, Advanced Product Design, and Transportation Design.
Mike Stott (RCA) created the MA Interaction Design Programme in 1996 with the objective of better understanding the relation between people and Information Technology. With a particular focus on the interaction between product and user, the MA Interaction Design Programme looks at how the cognitive and physical interface integrates into a successful whole. The aim is to enable designers to create sustainable, comprehensible and pleasurable information based products, services and environments. Listed in Business Week’s Best Design Schools in the world for the third year in a row, Umeå Institute of Design offers a highly competitive professional and international design education supported by exceptional technical facilities, resources, and professionals from the industry.
