The IxD Fall Summit 2011 was held at Umeå Institute of Design November 12. The speakers were (in order of appearance): Matt Ward, Molly Steenson, Dave Vondle, and Russell M. Davies.

Umeå Institute of Design, located in the city of Umeå in Northern Sweden, hosts summits twice a year—in the Spring and in the Fall—and invites leading thinkers and doers in the interaction design field.

http://uid.umu.se/fallsummit2011

Bonus time-lapse of the event.

A recent video in English about Umeå University, with many familiar faces!!!

[via umu.se]

The blog first started in November 2006 with a blog post by Jorge Furuya titled Egocentric interaction. Now a few years later, we just hit the 1000 posts mark.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the blog over the years with writing content, updating the theme, commenting or just reading it. We now average ~150 visits per day, and about 6000 pageviews per month.

IxD Bauhaus Poster

…So its official now. If you’re in Seattle on that date – be sure to register - http://ixdbauhaus.eventbrite.com/

Hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it!

(Felt bad missing out on all the fun learning up in Umeå, so thank you UID-ers for the inspiration)

Relax. Take a deep breath. Spread your wings and fly like a bird. How quickly you can reach the goal?

You stand in the reception hall in Skellefteå Airport, in front of an 82 inch touch screen with an ultra-modern 3D camera that lets you control characters called Wood Bots.

A breathtaking game experience in which your body’s movements are used to navigate the gaming environment, but its more than a pastime for those who are waiting for departure or arrival. Much more.

The installation of Skellefteå Airport is the result of a research project that ties together a number of industries and businesses in the Skellefteå innovation-driven region.

We welcome you to the inauguration of Woodbot Pilots, an experience born out of pure northern creativity!

The inauguration will take place at Skellefteå, Monday December 13 at 11:00 in Collaboration with North Kingdom, Skellefteå Kraft and Adopticum

Woodbot Pilots

Woodbot Pilots

Woodbot Installation

Woodbot start racing

Woodbot Landscape

Our classmate and dear friend Jannes Peters has released his own WP7 app which is available for free download. It looks really cool !

Img is a visual news reader. Add your blogs or any other news source, and it will extract all images. Img is great for browsing design, architecture, art and photography blogs.
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More here.

Enjoy the final videos and preliminary exercises on the project page.

Check out all the other videos.

/Camille

Starting Fall 2011 – non-EU students would have to start paying 270,000 SEK (approx $40,000) per 60 credits, inorder to study in Sweden. (This excludes living costs in Sweden.)

At the risk of sounding pessimistic – I believe that if this law is passed, the best and brightest talent from outside the EU, will think twice before considering Sweden as an option to study in. And the decision will be sadly, based on numbers.

I’m trying to understand the short and long term implications of this rather bold decision. I’m trying to compare it with loftier Swedish political thoughts that I’m well aware of – about immigration and other drains on the economy. I’m trying desperately to sympathize with a larger reasoning behind the decision, from a political viewpoint – and a LOT of it makes sense. A lot many people come to Sweden to take advantage of the ‘free education’ system, piggy-back on it and then leave when they’re done. On the flip-side, hard-working Swedes who are paying taxes to let us have our free education are not allowed the same privileges when they’re studying in most non-EU/EU countries. Understood. This is not a fair situation. But is charging fees the solution? Or does it aggravate the problem?

I’d like to take a selfish UID/IxD perspective in this discussion, because that’s what I care most about. Like most of us presently studying or recently graduated from UID, I missed the chance to say something about the ‘Artistic Campus thingie’ while it was being cooked in concealed kitchens behind closed doors in Umeå. I hope this discussion ignites something early with this issue with the hope that it will give the powers-that-be some precious time to understand the Storm that’s coming their way; not just to Umeå and UID, but perhaps to Sweden in general.

I’ve been a Swedish tax-payer now for over a year. I’m happy that I got an opportunity to do an MA (yes, for free!) in Sweden. I’m even happier that I’m being able to repay the debt that I owe to a progressive nation like Sweden that allowed such a thing to happen. I LOVE being in Sweden! But hey, I had it good! I dont have a 540,000 SEK debt to repay. If I did, I probably would be way more demanding and result-oriented.

More importantly, the fact that we didnt have to pay fees made me overlook a lot of flaws and loopholes in the education system. It made me value the importance of being small groups of deserving students, tightly-connected and embedded in the midst of a peer group of equals, each of whom had the same expectations and played by the same rules (more or less).

When I was accepted at UID, I had to choose between Art Center (Pasadena) and Parsons School of Design (NYC), but chose UID instead. The decision was dead easy back then. I’ll be honest, a huge part of the reason was the numb€r$. A lot many significant reasons were to do with Scandinavia, exotic locales, European culture and design sensibilities. These were however slightly secondary.

The passing of this new law (the details of which I cannot find yet) changes things drastically. I’m not sure if EU students have to pay at all, or pay a smaller fee. I believe UID is going to find itself cornered as a result of this decision. It will struggle hard to stay afloat in a competitive World, given the current limitations and threats it has allowed itself to be surrounded by and overlooked for the past 20 years.

With the passing of the law – one thing becomes clear. UID and ALL other Swedish universities have put themselves at the same level now as RCA, Art Center, Parsons, NYU Tisch, RISD and a bunch of other international programs that have enormous resources, locational advantages and infrastructure to pull the best students from across the World to it. Is Umeå up for the challenge ?

Location: – Would I want to pay $40,000 a year (plus living expenses) to be in Umeå??? Even if it was Cultural capital for the next 10 years, I dont think so. Not unless I had some serious scholarships and teaching assistant programs that allowed me lessen the blow. Otherwise, I’d happily make such a heavy investment to study in another place where numbers and probability offered better odds. I’m thinking cities like New York, London, Copenhagen, San Francisco, Chicago, Providence, Boston where there’s a lot more going on. The romance of being in Umeå to study just vanished for me with a figure like 540,000 SEK. And it would take more than just scholarships to bring it back for me. It would need a big enough job market in the region to ease the risk on such an investment, for starters.

Infrastructure: Learning from classmates ?? – Hannes Seeberg (APD 2007) brought up an interesting point made by Pete Avondiglio in his farewell speech to the 2009 batch. With such a law being passed and half the students paying fees while others dont – you can forget about learning from peers. You can forget about goodwill, family and all other feelings of shared learning. A system of fees will give rise to grading, competitiveness and expectation. It will put extremely high demands on infrastructure, facilities, staff and curriculum. Students that are going to pay 270,000 SEK per 60 credits will expect appropriate return on investment – and it had better be a lot more than your classmates as teachers. I know this sounds harsh, but that’s the reality that will now need to be dealt with. Charging fees opens the floodgates and the Swedish education system has some serious soul-searching to do. Charging fees throws the ball back in the court of the Umeå University administration – and a sluggish response will damage the situation beyond repair.

Compare some numbers with colleges elsewhere:

• Art Center College for Design = $50,000 per year, excluding Pasadena living costs.
• Parson’s NYC = $37,000 per year, excluding NYC living costs.
• Rhode Island School for Design (RISD) = $38,000 per year, excluding living costs.
• Royal College of Art (fees for non EU) – $40,000 per year, excluding London living costs.
• NYU Tisch School of the Arts – $39,000 per year, excluding NYC living costs.
• IIT Chicago – $32,000 per year.
• Umeå Institute of Design – $40,000 per 60 credits, excluding living costs.

Seriously?

Think of the sheer numbers of gifted students from Canada, U.S.A, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Brazil, China, Japan, India, Pakistan, Mexico and other ‘non-EU’ countries that have all spent years learning at UID, and other institutes in Sweden. Would you all have paid the same fees to study in Umeå?

With the intention of being very pessimistic early on, I’d like to say that I believe the Swedish education system has just shot itself in the foot, in the interest of tax-payer’s preservation. It is a fair decision on paper if you think of profit-loss in a myopic way, but its repercussions are going to be big. And they will not be rosy.

I understand that there are far bigger concerns than UID or a bunch of complaining designers. Just like the Artistic Campus is soooo much bigger than UID. But that’s really not the point.

The point is –
The Swedish Education System now needs to make rapid leaps if it needs to compete internationally, or perish to being mediocre and incestuous in its breeding of talent and skill. No longer will we be able to hide behind the same old excuses, that were generously overlooked in previous years. It’s money talking now, and fikas wont be so sweet anymore like they used to.

Aah, dont even remind of the winter…

Seminars

28 september 2010 kl. 13:15
New noise: Digital mobilization from popular culture to politics
Simon Lindgren, Sociology, Umeå University

6 oktober 2010 kl. 15:00
Branded Experiences in Digital Channels: Looking back and Looking Forward
David Eriksson, VD North Kingdom, Skellefteå

7 oktober 2010 kl. 13:15
Doing Global Network Studies
Benjamin Peters, Columbia University and Hebrew University

12 oktober 2010 kl. 13:15
Digital Modernism: Making it New in New Media
Jessica Pressman, Yale University

21 oktober 2010 kl. 13:15
The Culture of Online Art Production and Presentation
Charlotte Frost, Ph.D. Birkbeck College, University of London

26 oktober 2010 kl. 13:15
Animate Objects – Exploring Design with Dynamic Materials and Technologies to Engender Emotional Relations
Tara Mullaney, Umeå Institute of Design

Short courses (free for Umeå University students and staff)

Check their website for all the details (description and registration). Here are a few interesting ones, with many offered in English:

20 september 2010 kl. 09:00
Creating a Life in Second Life

7 oktober 2010 kl. 09:00
Förproduktion av film med FrameForge

14 oktober 2010 kl. 09:00
Mindmapping with MindView

28 oktober 2010 kl. 09:00
Using new new media in the classroom – tips for using web 2.0 in teaching

4 november 2010 kl. 13:00
World of webcomics

18 november 2010 kl. 13:00
The Art and Practice of Machinima: Filmmaking with Graphics Rendering Engines

See the complete list of courses.

First, I just came back from the UK with two iPads. They have been available in Europe for a long time, but not in Sweden. I couldn’t figure out a sensible reason, other than major lobbying from the swedish network providers. Anyway, we have two 16GB wifi-only units in the lab for your iPadding pleasure (see how happy the girl is on the product shot!).

Second, a HP Touchsmart 600 PC has been purchased for making multi-touch work more accessible and easy-going. The all-in-one solution computer provides multi-touch capabilities without the typical hardware setup: aligning camera, starting 3 applications to mashup everything, and fiddling with video filters. It’s not the best MT platform out there, but it was cheap.

Finally, we have received the Roland MDX-40A, a new small CNC machine/robot to take over the atom-world. The motivation for getting this type of machine is to experiment, play and push the boundaries of computer-controlled activities. How do you mix and blur the line between computation and the real material world: drilling 500 holes in a particular pattern, making PCBs without chemicals, engrave your portrait in a piece of wood, make a custom case for your next project, etc. It will take a few more weeks before it is fully operational, but the machine is finally here. Yeapi.

The 3-day event combined a mixture of keynote speakers, student research presentations, workshops, interactive sessions and social events.

We had the pleasure to have Heather Martin, Zachary Lieberman and Erik Stolterman as keynote speakers for the event. The videos of these presentations are now available online for you viewing pleasure.

Visit the Ingredients In Gradients website for the full proceedings and some pictures of the event.

Sponsors

2 PhD positions in Industrial Design

2 PhD positions in Industrial Design with an orientation towards mobile interaction design

The four new positions are inline with the Institute’s new strategic investment in basic research and post-graduate studies in design. With already two active PhD students and two recently accepted, these new developments show that the institution is committed to support and develop a nationally and internationally leading research environment.

More on UID website

See all the details at www.ingredientsingradients.com

However it still is fun to know that people are interested in our rants, raves and musings.

via YABA’s website.

We received news that 3rd place doesnt get us any money or medals.
There would be free glory in the form of free beers, but both Lena and I are a bit tied up with work so wont be attending.

On a more reflective note: I think the occassion begs a discussion on what we’re hoping to do more/less of with the blog.

I do believe that recent posts and discussions by Mikko, Camille, Roberto are exactly the kinds of voices we need to be through the blog.

Personally I’d hope to see more personal projects, ideas, reflections (rants of course!) and discussions materialize through the blog.

Would be nice to hear what others feel?