Physical Fidelity in Design: A Shared Exploration

Physical Fidelity in Design is a 2-day collaborative learning ‘hands-on’ event, which aims to explore the level of fidelity of model required in design, in order to get appropriate information without expending too much time and/or money. Often the pressure to deliver to very tight deadlines and within tight profit margins implies that physical prototypes are frequently not produced or are produced with limited functionality. Although our focus is on information appliances, from mobile phones to washing machines, we will also investigate fidelity across different kinds of design domains, from urban architecture to street wear.

 

This learning event will include invited talks, introductions to design space exploration and prototyping technology, hands-on group design sessions and focussed discussions. 

 

This event will be of interest to people from industry and academia, from product designers, interaction designers, researchers in ubiquitous computing, tangible interface and cognitive, social and philosophical fields, and indeed all excited by this topic.

 

Day 1: will start with an introduction to physicality and fidelity followed by tutorial sessions on rapid interactive prototyping techniques and idea generation. Participants will put these techniques into practice through the design and production of some interactive prototypes.

Day 2: the resulting prototypes will be showcased on and we will conclude by discussing the issues that emerged from the design sessions and the prospects of applying these techniques across a broader area. 

We will also hold a poster session during the event and would thus encourage participants to bring along a poster to exhibit their work.  

Places are limited, so we invite prospective participants to send us:

Submissions and enquiries should be sent to Devina by: 6^th June 2008.

 

This learning event is sponsored by DEPtH: Designing for Physicality, an AHRC/EPSRC funded research project as part of the Designing for the 21st century Initiative.