Three weeks ago I went to Umeå to present two papers to the Sider Congres. Sider is a student Interaction Design conference that happens once a year in the nordic countries and around.
The experience was quite nice. We flew to Umeå and even if it was already the end of March, there wasn’t any trace of spring around. Sweden is a large country and even if I complain about Malmö¡s weather, it is nothing compared with that. I had never seen so much snow before.

The conference was quite interesting… (or should I say “inspiring”?. When I was in the “engineering” world things were interesting or not. Now everyone talked about inspiring stuff) The keynotes were great. Heather Martin is the Interaction Design Director of Smart Design in Barcelona. She talked about service design as the design of a full experience for the user. She pointed a quite a lot interesting inspiring thoughts about the transition from products to services and about qualities that the good design should have. We had a presentation after her keynote so I was a bit nervous and not 100 % focus on her talk but among the examples that she showed this one really got me. Continue Reading »

Before coming here I didn’t know anything about sustainable design, and I never thought that this was related with interaction design. But, to be honest, is great to have studied this. I feel better thinking in solutions for a better world than thinking only in cool interfaces.

At the beginning we learned that we live like we had three planets Earth. I mean, “we” the occidentals. There are some calculations about what the earth can produce and what everyone consumes. If we divide the amount of space in the earth between the inhabitants. And we relate this two measures, is possible to know approximately how much “space” do we have for everyone: what is called the ecological footprint
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