PIT talk by Professor in informatics Mikael Wiberg on the Materiality of Interaction

Info about event

Time

Thursday 6 September 2018,  at 11:15 - 13:00

Location

Building 5008-138. Helsingforsgade 8, Aarhus N

Smart watches, smart cars, the Internet of things, 3D printing: all signal a trend toward combining digital and analog materials in design. In this seminar Prof Mikael Wiberg takes this as a point of departure, and as an introduction to his new book "The Materiality of Interaction" (MITPress, 2018) to discuss a shift in interaction design toward material interactions. In this seminar Wiberg will argue that the "material turn" in human-computer interaction has moved beyond a representation-driven paradigm, and he will propose "material-centered interaction design" as a new approach to interaction design and its materials. He calls for interaction design to abandon its narrow focus on what the computer can do and embrace a broader view of interaction design as a practice of imagining and designing interaction through material manifestations. In this seminar Wiberg looks at the history of material configurations in computing and he traces the shift from metaphors in the design of graphical user interfaces to materiality in tangible user interfaces. In this seminar he will also examine interaction through a material lens and he will argue that the focus on materiality transcends any distinction between the physical and digital.

Mikael Wiberg, is a full professor in informatics at Umeå university, Sweden. Prior to this position he has held positions as Research Director for Umea Institute of Design and Chaired Professor in Human-Computer Interaction at Uppsala university, Sweden. He is editor for the Architecture & Interaction forum for ACM Interactions, and his research interests includes a focus on interaction design at the scale of architecture, an interest in the materiality of interaction, and an interest in concept-driven design methods. His most recently published book is "The Materiality of Interaction" (MIT Press, 2018).