Tallinn Summer and Winter School

Winter Course in Experimental Interaction Design

This is a two-week extensive hands-on course in interaction design. The main goal of the course is to empower people to shape their digital environment thus providing a new level of digital literacy.

The course introduces core design and interaction design topics in a provocative stance, inviting participants to reflect upon ongoing shifts, connections, and re-framings in just about every area of interaction design, and inciting a rebellion against passivity. This is complemented by the development of skills in systematic evaluation of usability and user experience of interaction designs. The expectation is to see participants take ownership of the interaction design process.

The course consists of two weeks. During the first week, the students will work in groups on the design of low-fidelity prototypes for wearable devices that could be used for health and well-being improvement.

In the second week, students move to the hardware lab, where under the guidance of tutors they will implement their projects in the form of high-fidelity prototypes using Arduino-based controllers Adafruit Flora, Gemma, different sensors, and actuators. The goal of the course is to create fully working wearable prototypes that can be used for evaluation.

During the course, the students will be supported by experts in Interaction Design, Physiology, Physiological Computing, Smart Textile, and Arduino programming engineers.

Why this course?

• Upon completion of the course, students will have an understanding of what interaction design is and will grasp the full cycle of the design process including the stages of discovering, defining, developing and delivering concepts targeting areas of their interest.
• Students will also develop skills to design, deploy and evaluate prototypes of digital artefacts ranging from simple web-based services and small applications to wearable or physiological computing solutions, and installations.