Chris Heape's PhD defence

This monday Chris Heape was defending his thesis "The Design Space the design process as the construction, exploration and expansion of a conceptual space". Chris gave a very interesting lecture on his research and answered the review committee's questions with style!

Download Chris' thesis

View pictures from the defence

An interactive airguitar shirt - an ideal christmas present

Our PhD student Willem just showed me this shirt with built in sensors so when you play airguitar (as everybody does) you will actually hear what you play. As they say on the web site: It's not rocket science - it's rockin' science! I want one for Christmas!

Athropology for dummies

Sebastian, one of our ITPD students, who has a background in anthropology and works for Innovationlab explains in this article from the Innovationlab website what anthropology is all about:


Antropologerne kommer

Different ways of seeing: Skilled practitioners.

Different ways of seeing: Skilled practitioners.

It has not been possible to identify the persons on these video clips, but apparently they have some sort of connection to ITPD...

A royal week comes to an end

So now the week is closing down - work wise anyway. The peak (for some) were the grand opening of our new campus, Alsion, this Tuesday, where the Queen visited and made the official opening even though we have been working here for 5 months by now. I guess it was put so late because it was actually postponed 3 times and the queen got so tired of being stood up, that she put in a 5 month buffer... After all it was fun to see the royal family and to hear the local symphony orchestra in the concert hall.

For fans of strange hats here is a couple of pictures from the visit:

Autumn at the office

Autumn at the office means a short more silent period after a hectic time with semester start and traveling in Slovenia and Italy with my job. Now there's time to catch up and start planning exams and the spring semester.

The new students seems to be on track with their studies and look very busy when I meet them. They have been working on different projects since they started here - one of them with Umeå Institute of Design in Sweden, where they spend almost two weeks working on the Games project, where the students have to make interviews with people in industry about difficulties in their work situation and then create a game that deals with these difficulties. The outcome was very exciting and entertained the ITPD staff for a couple of hours.

Props from a colleague in Scotland

Mike Anusas from Design, Manufacture & Engineering Management at University of Strathclyde mentions the IT Product Design master programme in his blog stone jackal - take a look at the whole blog when you are there anyway - it's worth a to spend a while there.

Innovation...

From www.wulffmorgenthaler.com

Amazing gel

Killing darlings - show down

Friday night the joint project "Killing darlings" peaked with a spectacular presentation and competition at the waterfront. All four groups had been working with a lot of different ideas and solutions and the results was... well, creative and fun.

Here is a few pics from the show down

Do we really need this?

I just had to share this; A German fashion company has presented a pair of lederhosen with a build in mp3 player and hands free head set for your mobile phone.
Check out this article and video

Joint project kick off

Today our new students was teamed up with the second year students for the joint project "Killing darlings". The task is in two days to design and build " a nature-inspired
‘Unparalleled-Floating-Object’ (UFO) that can be propelled into the Alsion waterfront." Tomorrow the ITPD students will be joined by the new students at the Interaktivt Design study programme and the project peaks tomorrow afternoon with a show down in Alssund (the sound that cuts through Sønderborg just in front of Alsion). I am in the evaluation committee and i am really looking forward to see what the students are able to create in such a short time.
Here is a few pictures from the project kick off this morning:


Oli told about his family and professional career. He really knows how to handle sudden changes...
Concentrated listeners.

Most of the new class.

Emanuela from Italy (or Esbjerg).

Finally

Today I met our new students for the first time. It was really nice to see people in real life after months of emailing and talking in telephone. I think we have a really good team of real nice people - I'm looking forward to the next two years!

Back again

Back from holiday. Things are real busy around the office in order to get things ready for our new students that are joining us a week from now. I am really looking forward to meeting the new class with people coming from as different places as Iceland, China, Singapore and Ålborg. The different backgrounds and languages are always very exciting and interesting and this year's mix will hopefully be as good as the last years'.

Holiday at last

In a couple of hours I'm off on holiday in Italy and France for the next three weeks so I just want to wish everybody a nice summer.
I am really looking forward to get away for a while to gather energy for the new semester, where I finally am going to meet the new students that are joining us from all over the world.

Weekend weaknes

The weekend is getting nearer and it seems to slow everything down. At Friday afternoon you really don't want to start any new tasks (and if you really try you won't be able to get in contact with any of the people you need to talk to, because they already left).

A thing to cheer me up this Friday, is that I still have two weeks of work before my holiday begins. When the weather is so horrible as it is now, it actually is nice to work in stead of spending your holiday with this kind of weather:
It seems like another week, where you want to stay inside with a roof above your head...

Graduation ceremony

This year's graduatione ceremony went on last Friday in the concert hall at Alsion. It was a very nice, but a little long ceremony, but it was great to see everybody happy and relieved.
Stephanie and Mark enjoyed a bit of extra attention since Stephanie got the highest grade point average at ITPD and Mark won the Wall of Fame-price for his master thesis, that he wrote in corporation with Focon. With the price, Mark got a check on 25.000 DKK for traveling and mark even got interviewed by the local newspaper - see the article here.

So here's a great CONGRATULATIONS to all our graduates and good luck from me

Click on the photo for more merry ITPD graduates

Housewarming at Alsion

Yesterday we threw a little housewarming party to celebrate our new surroundings at Alsion. Here's a few pictures:

Alumni, graduates, students, family and friends came by to take a peek.

Old friends met...

There was a lot of snacks and drinks

...which was very popular.

It was a nice afternoon and it was great to see some our friends before they run off on vacation to all over the world.

make.club

Jared and Marcelle have started a blog about their weekly experiments in the make.club.

See what they are up to.

Pictures from the new space at Alsion

Here is a few shots from our new pace at Alsion.

Right now Alssund is really loaded with all kinds of boats and it gives a good touch of both life and some nice relaxed, slow sailing atmosphere.
The view towards Als with the hospital and the military academy. Even though the weather is all grey, the view is beautiful.

The ITPD staff is already back to normal work level after the move. Marcelle and Ben look concentrated and busy...

Finally in place at Alsion

After a long time of moving preparations and the actual move last week we now are almost in place in our new office in Alsion. Besides from some minor (and major) problems due lack of coordination in the building process, it's a great place to be, and we are all really fond of the view. I guess I will bring my camera tomorrow to provide the blog with some nice shots of our new environment.

Today's catch trawling the net

Hmmm... I fell over some nice and strange things during today's rambling through the internet:

The open design club is a site, where designers can share their creations with everyone interested - there's a few nice things there.

Volkswagen has launched a new way of marketing their newest model, Tiguan. The Tiguan web page contains documentaries, interactive models and more fun - worth a look.

A new way of battling overweight is the Walk While Working-movement, which combines the best from the standing work table and a tread mill. I wonder how it smells in a open office with 20 overweight clerks just walking and sweating...
A British scientific magazine has published this article on the theme.

Inspiring meeting

Yesterday I went to Aabenraa together with Wendy, Marcelle and Mette to attend a lecture given by professor Steen Hildebrandt from Aarhus School of Business. Steen Hildebrandt spoke about the changes our society will be facing the following years and gave his view on, which skills and abilities the future organizations should have to be able to survive.

One of many points was that to share knowledge will be a way to survive in a world where hard manual labor can be done in Asia for the tenth of the salary of Denmark. By sharing knowledge and communicate with other people we can add value to our work and compete on knowledge in stead of prize of work. To be able to do this, Steen Hildebrandt said, organizations need shared values, dialog and a clear vision.

I think that many of his points showed that what we do here at ITPD is pointing in the right direction. We are trying to educate our students to be able to work across professional boundaries and communicate with people with other backgrounds than themselves. I believe that our students will be ready to new organizational forms and the ongoing changes they will bring. Where people with a more traditional single disciplinary education will have problems in adapting to network organizations, the ITPD students will be miles ahead trained to cope with changes as a daily challenge.

Check out Steen Hildebrandt's web page with lots of articles and reviews.

Nice free piece of software

Some people at MIT has developed this program called Schratch that they give away for free. Scratch apparently makes it easy to make small animations and games without having to deal with coding stuff.

See a promotion video here:


...and download it from the Scratch website

Mooger!

We just got the message that once again our move to our new buildning, Alsion, has been postponed. This is truly a mooger (a schottich word for a situation that is worse than a mess)! Half of our stuff is already packed in boxes since we thought we were going to move on monday morning.
I am especially feeling sorry for our students who really are stressed up with exams, presentations and packing stuff in boxes. Now we don't even have a new moving date - we only know that it is at some time after 4 June.

Ethnography exhibition

Yesterday I went to a exhibition made by five students at the Interaktivt Design study programme. They have been exploring different ethnographic work methods and tools and they showed it at this very nice exhibition. Below there's a few pictures from the presentation.

The relationship between design and ethnography

Sebastian sent me this link to a interesting article from AIGA.org on the relations between design and ethnography. Check it out here

User Sytem Design midcrit

Today the students had a session where they presented what they have done so far in the USD course. Here's a few pictures:

Jean at the session

Enthusiasm and concentration

Jacob and Max

Annika enjoyed the sunny weather

Mobile phone user studies

Jan Chipchase from Nokia research has made an interesting study of where people keep their mobile phones and what it means. See the article here.

User experience design gone bad

Redesign?

Alsion impressions

A few pictures of Olafur Eliassons sculptural wall at Alsion












It almost gives you vertigo...













Our secreatry Jette at her new desk.













The Research Studio where the staff will be placed is still not ready...













Cabels are hanging out of the walls...

Iceland

In March I went to iceland to promote the study programmes of Faculty of Engineering at University of Southern Denmark. It was an exciting trip where we vistited 14 Icelandic high schools mainly in the Reykjavik area.

Iceland is extremely fascinating with nature's raw power present in both sea, wind, snow, hot springs and vulcanos as you can get an impression of from the pictures here.

Open House at Alsion

University of Southern Denmark held an Open House arrangement the 3 March. Almost 1000 people showed up to hear about our study programmes. You can see a few pictures here.

Concentration at the ITPD office

People are working hard today

Handling applications

These days we are making telephone interviews with the applicants for the ITPD master programme. We are talking to people from all over the world and we are looking forward to seeing some of them here in Sønderborg this summer

Our move to our new campus, Alsion, has once again been postponed - this time until end of May. Anyway it seems that the work is in progress, just a little slower than expected and the building is really nice looking in the spring sun. See some pictures here:

User Centred Design exams

This week the 2. semester students have been taking their User Centred Design exams, and they have been excellent. Congratulations on the great results!

Spring in Sønderborg

Spring is about to get a hold on Sønderborg these days. The temperature is rising towards 20 degrees celcius. Sebastian has some nice pictures of early spring in Denmark at his blog.

The life and opinion of the Course Coordinator

This is my blog about my work at the IT product Design master programme and the life around here.
Check out the web site for more information on the programme.