Education

In my teaching I try to combine the newest things we learned from our research to useful things that design students should be able to use in their practice. The theory and practice of design are not moving any slower than those in other fields. I believe this coupling of research and teaching is necessary to keep research relevant to the field, and teaching up-to-date to the newest developments.

As coordinator of the Master programme Design for Interaction, I chair the workgroup that organizes and teaches this new(est) of IDE Master programmes. Design for Interaction is a new international Master programme (started september 2003) in which the user-product interaction is placed in the center of attention. In this master programme, the central problem of design is taken as this interaction: how people use, understand, and experience products. It is closely tied to Delft’s internationally recognized research strengths in the field of user-product interaction, user experience and emotion, design methodology, and integral development of interactive products.

In id4216 Context and Conceptualization, a theoretical foundation is laid for analysing user contexts within a diversity of scientific frameworks, communicating these aspects in multidisciplinary teams, and conceptualizing new products and services. This course, which I teach together with dr. ir. Remko van der Lugt, prof. dr. Paul Hekkert, and ir. Froukje Sleeswijk Visser, provides a theoretical basis for designers’ insight in the contexts surrounding user-product interaction. Prominent elements in this course are Contextmapping, Visualisation and Communication, Vision in Product Design (VIP), and Scenario development.