Daichi Yamamoto. Dégorgement. BA (Hons) User Experience Design. 2016. London College of Communication. UAL.
Written by Rosie Allen, Jodie Newsom, Tom CesaroPublished date 28 July 2018 Share story
Rosie, Jodie and Tommaso studied Interaction Design Arts. They give us the lowdown on this emerging creative field and how it opens the doors to all sorts of different opportunities in the art and design world.
With all the various skills that an interaction designer has, one skill that we all have in common is the power of storytelling. We have a whole array of people who specialise in practices such as, curation, programming, videography, sound design, 3d design and art. Although we also have people who don’t specialise in one particular practice, we’re all able to communicate with our audience by forming a narrative within our projects.
Interaction Design Arts offers plenty of experience of presenting to external clients- two of the best we’ve worked with are Science Museum Lates and Côte du Rhône. It pushes students outside of their comfort zone, and nurtures students into becoming confident practitioners.
Projects are formulated with the intention of entertaining the user, whilst also making them think about what the design or artwork it’s trying to say.
—
The importance of iterative design – testing and prototyping ideas – is a key component, and failure is encouraged to provoke unconventional design solutions and learning. A project is never entirely finished; often displaying to the public is a way of seeing how people react and what needs to be improved.
All these kinds of skills and experiences are incredibly valuable once you’ve graduated. Here are some of our alumni (graduates) to illustrate the range of artists and designers who work in the field of interaction design and arts.
Daichi Yamamoto: Sound and music
Dégorgment
Video: Daichi Yamamoto
Daichi Yamamoto is a sound artist and rapper. He is currently working on his solo performance career while producing his own music and music videos. As well as this, he creates interactive sound installations that play with the notion of performance, incorporating the public into part of his performance. Since studying interaction design Daichi has found that he can draw connections between the music industry and the art of sound installation through his work. This video introduces you to how Daichi made his piece for client Côte du Rhône, titled Dégorgement (2016).
Josh Wilde is a toy inventor and interactive artist based in London. His work incorporates repurposed games, objects found in skips and electricity. Currently working at the toy design company Fuse, Josh also runs workshops and exhibits his solo game installations.
Maisie Bowes: Social design / human centred design
Photograph: Maisie Bowes
Maisie Bowes is a freelance designer. She explores how design and technology can improve our streets and public spaces, transport systems and communities. This type of work can be called service design, participatory design or open research depending on the brief. She works on a range of projects for local authorities (councils) and uses behavioural science and design to devise ideas that will encourage people to be more active when they travel and take more care with their own health. This gif introduces the ‘Pedestrian Crossing Hack’ project.
Parrr Geng is an artist currently living in Berlin. She has taken part in exhibitions at Tate Liverpool, Science Museum (London), Southbank Centre (London), and Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin. Her work explores themes of bodies and spaces in our everyday digital world, inspired by eight years of studying biological sciences and research on the human body. Parrr’s artwork spans interactive installation, performance, moving image, painting and illustration. The video shows Parrr’s response to the Côte du Rhône brief, titled Intangible Touch (2016).
Alexandra Sokolova came from a photography background but studying interaction design and arts encouraged and inspired her to experiment with a range of materials and move away from two-dimensional mediums. Since graduating she has been working as a videographer, photographer and illustrator, and is excited to get involved in the interaction design field. The video introduces ‘Conductive Scalextics’, made for the Science Museum Lates (January 2017). The game explores conductive properties of the human body. Players are invited to hold hands in order to complete the circuit and have a car race.
Carlotta Solari: Multidisciplinary art and design
Photograph: Carlotta Solari
Carlotta Solari is a multidisciplinary designer and artist- meaning she gives herself the freedom to make work across a range of different mediums. Most of her work is driven by a desire to understand people and herself better: the way we interact with space, institutions, objects and not to mention with each other.
Michel Erler: Speculative design- technology and the future
Platform Cities
Video: Michel Erler
Michel Erler is a designer and researcher exploring the potentials and challenges of emerging technologies and systems. His field of work is called speculative design. He creates stories – fictions – that talk about how we live today and what our live might look and feel like in the future. Michel’s ‘Texting Tate’ project, an experiment to see if a machine can learn to describe artworks as well as humans, was shortlisted for the Tate IK Prize for bringing artificial intelligence and the fine arts together. In this video he introduces Över, a fictional alternative to companies like Uber. In our digital world will we continue to trade our private data for comfort?
Interested in 3D and interaction design? Insights editor Emme picks out some inventive designers who find solutions by re-purposing objects they already have.
Antione Hacheme. Fear Immersion. BA (Hons) User Experience Design. 2018. London College of Communication. UAL.
London College of Communication tutor Oliver introduces you to the field of user experience design through graduating student projects from this innovative subject area.
Neklesa. Material Alchemy featuring LIVING COTTON. Photograph: Neklesa.
