FRIDAY INFORMATICS SEMINAR

Professor Kim Halskov
Center for Participatory IT - www.PIT.au.dk
CAVI - www.CAVI.au.dk
Aarhus University

*Date: Friday, February 21, 2014*
Talk: 3:00 PM
Location: 6011 Donald Bren Hall

Refreshments: 4:15 PM, to be served in the 5th floor lobby.

Title: Urban computing: Designing media architecture.

ABSTRACT:
Urban space is emerging as a prominent arena for information systems design and presents a unique set of challenges and potentials for the design of interactive systems and installations. In this talk I will focus on Media Architecture  - a category of urban computing concerned with the integration of displays into the built environment of social public space. Based on a number of design cases, primarily form our own research lab, I will look into how some of the design challenges in this domain may be understood and addressed in the design process. As one of the cases I will look into the design of a 300 m long low-resolution curvilinear media facade part of the Danish pavilion at the Expo 2010 in Shanghai.
The design challenges concern a broad range of issues: interfaces, physical integration, content, stakeholders, situation, social relations, and emergent use. The challenges reflect the fact that the urban setting as a domain for interaction design is characterized by a number of circumstances and sociocultural practices that differ from those of other domains.
I will present a conceptual framework for addressing how content for a media architecture may be designed taking into account the specific qualities of the display of media architecture: scale, shape, pixel configuration, pixel shape, and light quality, and address how these qualities of the interface may be investigated using a repertoire of design visualization tools and design materials.
At a more general level, I suggest a framework for understanding and maneuvering design spaces based on insights from research into creativity constraints.

Bio:
Kim Halskov is professor in interaction design at Aarhus University, Denmark where he in addition to being director of Centre for Advanced Visualization and Interaction, see cavi.au.dk, also is co-director of the Centre for Participatory IT, see PiT.au.dk He is currently on sabbatical at Centre for Social Computing, UC Irvine. He has received grants totaling $15 mill for his research on interaction design.
From a background in participatory design Kim Halskov's research areas includes design processes, participatory design, creative processes, and experience design. Current research project include CIBIS, which in collaboration with LEGO and Designit develop and explore Blended Interaction Spaces supporting the creative potential of young people at the high school level. The objectives are 1) to demonstrate the potentials of integrating multiple digital devices and physical materials in a shared environment to support individual and collaborative creativity, 2) to develop the theoretical foundation for the study of creativity constraints, design ideas, generative design materials and creative methods in design processes.
Kim Halskov is chair of ACM's steering committee for the Designing Interactive Systems conference series (DIS) and member of the advisory board for the Participatory Design Conference series (PDC).

_______________________________________________
Informatics-seminar mailing list
Informatics-seminar@ics.uci.edu
https://mailman.ics.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/informatics-seminar