William Gaver
Professor of Design, Goldsmiths, University of London

'Designing Technology for a More Curious World"

Date: Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
Time: 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Place: 40 St. George St. Bahen Centre for Information Technology Room 1180 (1st floor)

Seminar Poster

Abstract
Digital technologies increasingly pervade our everyday lives. Sadly, they tend to reflect life as an endless round of work, shopping and commodified entertainment. But it doesn’t need to be this way. In my studio, we design computational products that tell more interesting stories about who we are and what we care about. The Drift Table, for instance, is like a digital hot air balloon you control from the comfort of your own front room. The Local Barometer displays text and images from local sources as if blown through the home. The Home Health Monitor picks up indicative information about household activities and reflects this back in the form of automatically generated horoscopes. In this talk, I explain some of these designs and describe what happens when people live with them for extended periods of time. I explain the design-centred methods we use for understanding people, exploring new ideas, and assessing the results. Finally, I propose our methods as an alternative to more traditional science and engineering approaches, and our products as a meaningful alternative to the utilitarian and escapist technologies that currently surround us.

Biography
William Gaver is Professor of Design and leader of the Interaction Research Studio at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has pursued research on innovative technologies for over 20 years, working with and for companies such as Intel, France Telecom, Hewlett Packard, IBM and Xerox, and gaining an international reputation for a range of work that spans auditory interfaces, theories of perception and action, and interaction design. Currently Gaver’s research focuses on design-led methodologies and ludic technologies for everyday life.

More information on Gaver and his work can be found at: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/design/staff/gaver.php

Nigel Cross
Professor of Design Studies, The Open University, UK

'Designerly Ways of Knowing: Understanding how Designers Think and Work'

Date: Tuesday, May 20th, 2008
Time: 11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Place: 40 St. George St.  Bahen Centre for Information Technology Room 1220 (1st floor)

Seminar Poster

Abstract
Design ability is often thought to be a mysterious ‘gift’. But, through a variety of research methods, design researchers are gradually building a deeper understanding of ‘designerly’ ways of knowing and thinking. I will begin with some quotations from expert, outstanding designers, to illustrate the kinds of ‘mysterious’ things that they say when they are interviewed about their work, and I will relate what they say to the more generalised insights about the nature of design thinking that researchers have begun to compile. I will also present findings from a selection of my own studies of expert and outstanding designers related to understanding the nature of creative cognition in design. In conclusion, I will suggest how expertise in design is different from expertise in normal problem-solving.

Biography
With backgrounds in architecture and industrial design, Nigel Cross has conducted research in design since the nineteen-sixties, ranging across computer-aided design, design methodology, design epistemology and design cognition. A focus of his research has been to build recognition for, and better understanding of designerly ways of knowing and thinking. This work has been published in many journal articles, and in his books Analysing Design Activity (co-edited with Christiaans and Dorst; Wiley, 1996) and Designerly Ways of Knowing (Springer, 2006; paperback edition by Birkhäuser, 2007). Professor Cross is a long-time member of the academic staff of the UK’s pioneering, multi-media Open University, where he has been involved in a wide range of distance-education courses in design and technology.
website: http://design.open.ac.uk/cross