IT Product Design - Rune's blog

Nice words from Dori Tunstall

2010-01-04T12:01:00.002+01:00

Dori Tunstall, Associate Professor of Design Anthropology at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia, visited us before Christmas to meet with researchers and students. She has put her thoughts on the visit on her blog

Thank you for the nice words, Dori.

Welcome to the new ITPD class

2009-08-31T13:26:00.002+02:00

So, today is the first real day at the university for the new class of ITPD students - a pack of curious people, hungry for knowledge! I really look forward to have them around here for the next two years.

Article on interaction design

2009-08-20T09:15:00.001+02:00

Stumbled upon this interesting article on the future of product design and interaction.

Closing down for the summer

2009-07-10T13:50:00.003+02:00

So this is my last day before my summer holiday and my desk are as clean as possible now, so I am ready for some serious relaxing before busy August. I wish everybody a nice summer!

Warm day at the office

2009-07-02T13:42:00.003+02:00

Whoa! It's another warm day in Denmark. At this time of day half of my desk is in the sun, which makes my right hand side hot as Georgia asphalt (Lula, Wild at Heart) and at the same time my left side is in the nicely tempered shade - horrible and nice at the same time. How is that possible?

I guess studies can be harmful in too large doses...

2009-06-30T11:30:00.002+02:00

Cradle to Cradle

2009-06-12T11:13:00.003+02:00

I have just been at this very inspiring and enlightening presentation that Michael Braungart just gave here at Alsion. He is one of the two founders of the Cradle to Cradle movement which is a slighty different way of thinking products and business, that makes you go "Yes!!!! Why haven't anyone thought iof this before?"

He said that in stead of aiming for zero co2 emission, why not get inspiret by the nature and go for setiing a positive footprint on the environment? Let's not be driven by guilt of being here, but in stead make it a positive fact that human beings live on the earth.

Sad day

2009-06-11T13:54:00.003+02:00

Today we are saying goodbye to Ellen, our dear colleague, who is feeling homesick and is going back to the dark northern Jutland. Hopefully we are getting someone that can replace her - it will not be easy, I know, but let's see what the future brings.

At least Ellen has brought some cake so today is not completely sad...

Ellen has been so great to work with and we will miss her and her always entertaining ways:
(For example when she tried to walk through the glass panel next to the door with her nose first - you can see the print of Ellen's nose in the middle of the picture)

Thesis exams

2009-05-28T12:44:00.003+02:00

In these days our master students are finishing their last exams and until now the results are impressive. Tomorrow we have the last thesis exams and on 26 June we have the graduation ceremony and again two years have passed...

Interesting article on collaborative work

2009-04-16T11:01:00.002+02:00

Cecila Weckström, Experience & Innovation Director at LEGO has written this interesting article on collaborative work

This is a good product!!!

2009-03-24T09:03:00.002+01:00

Visiting the University of Aarhus yesterday I was so lucky to try a Dyson Airblade. It sounds like some sort of skater equipment or a lethal weapon, but it is a new type of hand dryer, that actually work as opposed to the conventional kind, where you lose your glasses, whig and hat, but still have wet hands...
The Airblade (yes, I like the name) dry your hands in 5 seconds! Why haven't anyone thought of this before? Thumbs up for the designers at Dyson.

Garfield minus Garfield

2009-03-16T10:59:00.003+01:00

This page actually manages to make the cartoon Garfield funny - by removing the fat cat and leaving back the owner alone. You realize how lonely and miserable he is...

Short update

2009-02-24T11:07:00.002+01:00

I thought it was a long time since the blog had been updated, so here is in short what is happening around here right now. Application deadline for foreign students are approaching and applications start arriving - it is always exciting to get letters from people from all over the world!

Apart from reading application I spend time planning our Open House night on 12 March at SDU in Sønderborg and a promotion trip to Iceland next week.

...and outside little signs indicate that spring aren't that far away - the first little snowdrop flowers are appearing, the birds start singing when the sun shines and there is a bit of that special spring smell in the air...

Pictures from the Design Exhibition

2008-12-18T13:35:00.005+01:00

Jo is explaining his trust-device

Ellen had great talent for rowing

People was working out

...and talking to guests

Willem is fine tuning the equipment

Torben's ghost lamp

Torben and Kaare seem to trust each other

Ellen's Blog

2008-12-09T11:51:00.001+01:00

Check out our new professor, Ellen Christiansen' blog. She has some interesting views on things.

Portfolio exam

2008-12-08T08:38:00.002+01:00

Congratulations to the 1st year students who finished their exam last Friday with good results. I saw two of the exams and I am impressed with the level of reflection and the richness of ideas.

Here is a few pictures:

!st semester videos

2008-12-05T13:37:00.001+01:00

Our 1st semester students have made a lot of interesting videos and presentations during this fall. They are really interesting and worth a look!
You can see the videos here

Back again again

2008-12-02T11:12:00.006+01:00

Back from Greece I am busy scheduling exams for our students. (see pictures from Greece on Facebook)

First exam is on Friday, where the 1st semester students have their first exam. They are having a portfolio exam in the course Exploring Design, and they have to present and reflect on what they learned this fall.

I look forward to see what they are going to show us!

Hello and goodbye

2008-11-21T14:22:00.003+01:00

Now three months of paternity leave is over and I'm back in the office again.It has been some good months with my son Asbjørn, but I am glad to start again now and have someone else to change the diapers...
Next week I leave to Greece to visit Universities there and try to convince students from there to come to Denmark.

And totally unprovoked I will recommend everybody to get Google Maps for their mobile phone. It works real well and it's free. Get it at maps.google.com/gmm

SPIRE reseracher on local news

2008-07-28T10:42:00.002+02:00

Yesterday the local TV Syd sent this reportage about Trine, one of the researchers of SPIRE, who is pendling from Ærø to Als. The clip is in Danish, but here it is anyway:

TV Syd clip about Trine

Cleaning up

2008-07-24T15:10:00.003+02:00

Today I have been cleaning up in the 1st year studio together with Shiran and Mark. We found a lot of stuff (crap) for example a cd with some old pictures on:

I am not sure which project they are from, but they look interesting...

But anyway the 1st year studio is now more or less ready for the new batch, that we are looking forward to welcome in the end of August.

Nice and useful video

2008-07-17T11:02:00.003+02:00

This video seems to have some good points in relation to Design Reseach and ethnographic methods:

Getting People to Talk: An Ethnography & Interviewing Primer from Gabe & Kristy on Vimeo.

I found it on this blog

Reorganising the workspace

2008-07-16T14:07:00.002+02:00

During the summer we are starting reorganising our work space around here. Since we are empoying new people for SPIRE we are not able to be in the same office space anymore, so we are organizing in four groups according to the core research areas and create dynamic work groups with different themes. The idea is to let our 2nd year students sit and work with our researchers in order to create a close relation between students and researchers, teaching and research. I think it will be really good for both students and researchers to get closer to eachother in the future.

Summer + graduation

2008-07-01T08:48:00.004+02:00

So now I am back from my holiday and ready for the quiet summer here at the office. I will be working on arranging the introduction days for the new students and prepare materials for next semester.

Last Friday we had this year's graduation ceremony in the concert hall here at Alsion. It was so festive with all the happy graduates, the university choir and a great buffet.

Karsten, Max, Vigdis, Saravanan and Anda are waiting for their diplomas

Max, Vigdis and Saravanan

Mads from the university choir is hitting the high c

The band

New gear

2008-05-08T13:58:00.003+02:00

Today we got our new iMacs for the students. The iMacs are paid by the donation we got from BHJ Fonden, who gave us money for new equipment. We also bought new video cameras and a nice Nikon D80 camera.
We bought the iMacs with 23'' screen (yummi!) so they are perfect for video editing. Right now I am considering how I can swap one of the new iMacs with my old one without getting caught.

So much for being explorative and curious

2008-04-24T11:42:00.003+02:00

Yesterday Jared came in and looked like this:

On his way to work he had spotted a nice toolbox in the water and thought "it lies precisely an arm length out in the water so I can just lean out and take it". It turned out that the box was a little more than an arm length away...

The box by the way contained a few rusty fish hooks.

Focon workshop

2008-04-17T08:25:00.003+02:00

Three of our reserachers in the new SPIRE centre is doing a research project with a local company, Focon. Yesterday they all had a workshop together with people from the Dacapo Theatre and some of our students where they tried to map Focons network and value chain through different exercises facilitated by the actors. The outcome is going to support the participatory innovation process at Focon, as our researchers broaden out the concept of users and participants to include the whole value chain network.

Jacob Buur on Danish TV

2008-04-08T12:28:00.004+02:00

Three weeks ago Jacob Buur was interviewed for Danish television about the new Research center (SPIRE).

Watch the interview here

SIDeR '08

2008-04-01T13:05:00.003+02:00

Thursday and Friday last week ITPD hosted the SIDeR '08 conference (Student Interaction Design Research) and we had participants coming from all Scandinavia, Germany, USA, Romania and Holland. The conference went very good thanks to great effort from our students at ITPD who had arranged most of the activities. We thank all participants, writers and helpers for making SIDeR '08 a great succes.

Below there's a few pictures from the conference:

Long time no see

2008-02-14T14:50:00.002+01:00

So, back again after paternity leave, it has been quite busy around here. Now the exam are over and the new semester has started, things are cooling off and finally I have time to write on the blog.

Since I wrote the last time we got funding for a multidisciplinary research center for participatory innovation. The center is called SPIRE - Sønderborg Participatory Innovation REsearch centre and we got money for five years. The center just opened on 1 February and jacob is now hiring people and figuring out how to organise.

In the beginning of January Brendon defended his PhD thesis and it was accepted, so congratulations to Brendon.

Chris Heape's PhD defence

2007-11-30T11:26:00.001+01:00

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

2007-11-14T11:35:00.000+01:00

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

2007-11-14T09:14:00.000+01:00

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.

2007-11-08T14:31:00.000+01:00

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

2007-11-02T14:42:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-29T12:57:00.000+01:00

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

2007-10-03T12:56:00.000+02:00

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...

2007-09-26T15:23:00.001+02:00

From www.wulffmorgenthaler.com

Amazing gel

2007-09-19T11:55:00.000+02:00

This video shows clip from a hysteric Japanese tv-show. It is interesting though to see them drop an egg from the roof of a building to this anti shock gel, that prevents the egg from breaking.
Could this material be used for making clothes for clumsy people? Anyway it seems to be a material with a potential...

Killing darlings - show down

2007-09-11T08:49:00.000+02:00

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?

2007-09-06T10:48:00.000+02:00

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

2007-09-06T10:19:00.000+02:00

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

2007-08-30T15:00:00.000+02:00

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

2007-08-23T14:43:00.000+02:00

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

2007-07-19T13:58:00.000+02:00

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

2007-07-06T14:19:00.000+02:00

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

2007-07-04T11:59:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-21T09:01:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-18T13:07:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-15T08:39:00.000+02:00

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

2007-06-12T15:09:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-25T14:35:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-23T08:49:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-16T13:50:00.000+02:00

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!

2007-05-15T10:03:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-11T10:03:00.000+02:00

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

2007-05-08T15:15:00.000+02:00

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

2007-04-27T14:35:00.000+02:00

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

2007-04-24T11:06:00.000+02:00

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

2007-04-20T12:49:00.000+02:00

Redesign?

2007-04-19T10:20:00.000+02:00

This is one of my favorite clips. I guess it could be an ITPD redesign project...

Alsion impressions

2007-04-18T13:09:00.000+02:00

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

2007-04-16T14:19:00.000+02:00

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

2007-04-16T14:07:00.000+02:00

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

2007-04-13T11:05:00.000+02:00

People are working hard today

Handling applications

2007-04-12T13:35:00.000+02:00

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

2007-04-11T14:54:00.000+02:00

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

2007-04-11T14:44:00.000+02:00

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

2007-04-11T14:42:00.000+02:00

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.