Interaction Design Institute Ivrea

Last updated
Interaction Design Institute Ivrea
Interaction Design Institute Ivrea Logomark with type.jpeg
TypePrivate
Active2001 (2001)–2006 (2006)
Founding Director Gillian Crampton Smith
Students56
Location
Ivrea
,
Piedmont
,
Italy

45°27′30″N7°52′30″E / 45.45820292694756°N 7.875056813430575°E / 45.45820292694756; 7.875056813430575
CampusUrban
Website interactionivrea.org/en/index.asp
Interaction Design Institute Ivrea building (2001-2005) Interaction Design Institute Ivrea Building (2001-2005).jpg
Interaction Design Institute Ivrea building (2001-2005)

Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (also known as Interaction Ivrea or IDII) was a two-year graduate program in the field of Interaction Design operating in the town of Ivrea, in Northern Italy.

Contents

The institute was based in the former Olivetti Study and Research Centre, sometimes referred to as Casa Blu, designed by Eduardo Vittorio in 1955 and restored by Sottsass Associati. [1] [2] [3]

History

The Interaction Design Institute Ivrea Association was founded on 16 June 2000 by Telecom Italia and Olivetti, with its headquarters in Ivrea, with the first class of students arriving in 2001. The founding director of the school was Gillian Crampton Smith [4] until 2005. The school's mission was described in Blueprint [5] as:

"Ivrea will explore business in addition to design and technology. Crampton Smith believes that today there is an 'art' in imagining new business models, and is also aware that, partly because of their broad education, design graduates often move into strategic roles in companies and need to be equipped to learn for themselves."

Among the academic advisors of Interaction Ivrea were leading practitioners and theorists like John Maeda, Ranjit Makkuni, Joy Mountford, John Thackara, Bill Verplank, Nathan Shedroff, [6] Bill Moggridge (co-founder of IDEO) and David Liddle (co-founder of Interval Research).

While the institute also did a measure of outside consulting work and hosted visiting researchers, its main activity was the Interaction Design Master course, a 2-year unaccredited course which graduated 56 students. [7]

Closure

The school operated between 2001 [8] and 2006 [9] after its initial 5-year endowment from Telecom Italia ended and was not renewed. Gillian Crampton-Smith resigned as Director a result of the announcement, and Neil Churcher and Heather Martin became co-directors during the final academic year when the institute was moved to Milan to be in the same building as Domus Academy, another Telecom Italia investment. The curriculum was subsequently merged with Domus's Interaction Design course and IDII's operation ceased in 2007. Its exhibition design unit (E1) was spun off to form an independent company, Interaction Design Lab, [10] currently operating in Milan. The original program website was archived. [11]

Notable works

The institute was the birthplace of products like the electronics prototyping boards Wiring and Arduino, [12] the graphics software prototyping environment Processing (started at the MIT Media Lab)[ citation needed ], the CICCIO inflatable environment, [13] and the connected product Good Night Lamp, [14] which is included in the permanent collection of the London Design Museum. Interaction Ivrea student work was exhibited at the Victoria and Albert's museum in London [15] and at Salone del Mobile in Milan. Publications include the Interaction Design Primer design manual. [16] It was also part of the Convivio [17] Network of Excellence European research project.

Legacy

Despite its brief lifespan and limited overall number of students and researchers, the institute had an outsize impact on the field of interaction design. [18]

Alumni and ex-faculty have worked in places like Uber, Microsoft, Apple, IDEO, and frog design, or continued to teach in institutions like NABA, Domus Academy, Università Iuav di Venezia, [19] VCU, the Delft University of Technology, the Centro Metropolitano de Diseño of the City of Buenos Aires, [20] and the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. [21] Some started their own company like CuteCircuit. Additionally, graduates have expanded beyond traditional interaction design and user experience roles in their careers, including adapting core human-centered design principles to pioneer innovative practices in futurism and other adjacent fields. [22]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivrea</span> Town and comune of the Metropolitan City of Turin in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy

Ivrea is a town and comune of the Metropolitan City of Turin in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy. Situated on the road leading to the Aosta Valley, it straddles the Dora Baltea and is regarded as the centre of the Canavese area. Ivrea lies in a basin that in prehistoric times formed a large lake. Today, five smaller lakes—Sirio, San Michele, Pistono, Nero and Campagna—are found in the area around the town.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ettore Sottsass</span> Italian architect (1917–2007)

Ettore Sottsass was a 20th-century Italian architect, noted for also designing furniture, jewellery, glass, lighting, home and office wares, as well as numerous buildings and interiors — often defined by bold colours.

Interaction design, often abbreviated as IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." While interaction design has an interest in form, its main area of focus rests on behavior. Rather than analyzing how things are, interaction design synthesizes and imagines things as they could be. This element of interaction design is what characterizes IxD as a design field, as opposed to a science or engineering field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Olivetti</span> Italian manufacturer

Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been part of the Telecom Italia Group since 2003.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mario Bellini</span> Italian architect and designer

Mario Bellini is an Italian architect and designer. After graduating from the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1959, Bellini pursued a career as an architect, exhibition designer, product designer, and furniture designer during the Italian economic boom of the late 20th century. Bellini has received several accolades in a variety of design fields, including eight Compasso d'Oro awards and the Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Triennale di Milano. In 2019, the Italian President of the Chamber of Deputies, Roberto Fico, awarded Bellini a career medal in recognition of his contributions to Italian architecture and design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Università Iuav di Venezia</span> Architecture school in Venice, Italy

Iuav University of Venice is a university in Venice, Italy. It was founded in 1926 as the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia as one of the first architecture schools in Italy. The university offers several undergraduate, graduate and higher education courses in architecture, urban planning, fashion, arts, and design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vodafone Italy</span> Italian telecommunications company

Vodafone Italy is the Italian subsidiary of the UK-based telecommunications company Vodafone Group. The company's headquarters are in Ivrea (TO) and Milan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arduino</span> Italian open-source hardware and software company

Arduino is an Italian open-source hardware and software company, project, and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices. Its hardware products are licensed under a CC BY-SA license, while the software is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) or the GNU General Public License (GPL), permitting the manufacture of Arduino boards and software distribution by anyone. Arduino boards are available commercially from the official website or through authorized distributors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ignazio Gardella</span> Italian architect and designer

Ignazio Gardella was an Italian architect and designer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Irvine (designer)</span> British Designer (1958–2013)

James Irvine was a British industrial designer who created furniture and product designs for many well known companies and brands such as Artemide, B&B Italia, Cappellini, Foscarini, Ikea, Magis, Muji, Thonet, and WMF. He once described the product designer's job as “the work of an unknown hero.”

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Verplank</span>

William "Bill" Lawrence Verplank is a designer and researcher who focuses on interactions between humans and computers. He is one of the pioneers of interaction design, a field of design that focuses on users and technology, and a term he helped coin in the 1980s. He was previously a visiting scholar at Stanford University's CCRMA and was involved in Stanford's d.school. He also teaches and lectures internationally on interaction design.

Alberto Meda is an Italian engineer and designer. His work is held in museums around the world. He works and lives in Milan.

Clino Trini Castelli is an Italian industrial designer and artist. He has used the concept of "noform" through his work in environmental and industrial design, developed through the application of tools such as Design Primario and CMF design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franca Helg</span> Italian designer and architect (1920 - 1989)

Franca Helg was an Italian designer and architect. She also had a career teaching at Istituto Universitario Architettura Venezia and Polytechnic of Milan. She collaborated with Franco Albini from 1945 through 1977.

Renato Zveteremich was an Italian advertising director and publicist. He is known for heading the Sales Development and Advertising Dept. of the Olivetti company in the 1930s.

Heather Martin is a British designer, especially recognized for her work in interaction design. She is Head of Interaction Design at Fjord in London.

Michele de Lucchi is an Italian architect and designer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Haiyan Zhang</span> Designer and engineer

Haiyan Zhang is a designer and engineer. She is Director of Innovation at Microsoft Research and Technical Advisor to Lab Director, Christopher Bishop. She appeared on the BBC show "Big Life Fix".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gillian Crampton Smith</span> British interaction designer

Gillian Crampton Smith is a British educator, interaction designer, and a pioneer of computer desktop publishing. Since the early 1980s she has developed several academic graduate programs focused on digital graphic design, typesetting and human-computer interaction, notably at Saint Martin's School of Art, the Royal College of Art (1992-2000), Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (2000-2005) and Iuav University of Venice (2006–2014). She is an Honorary Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, and an advisor at the MIT Senseable City Lab.

Hernando Barragán is a Colombian interdisciplinary artist, designer, and academic known for creating the Wiring development platform as his 2003 Master’s thesis project at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII) in Italy. The Arduino project is based on Wiring. He is currently an educator at the University of the Andes.

References

  1. ↑ "Olivetti Study and Research Centre". Ivrea. Retrieved 2021-09-13.
  2. ↑ "Casa Blu". Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. 2019-12-28. Retrieved 2021-09-13.
  3. ↑ "The Incredible Story of the School in Ivrea Educating Today's Leaders in Silicon Valley". ELLE Decor (in Italian). 2021-07-15. Retrieved 2024-02-11.
  4. ↑ interaction-venice.com
  5. ↑ Macdonald, Nico (2005-04-18). "Action, Interaction, Reaction". Blueprint. p. 6. Archived from the original on 2003-08-10. Retrieved 2008-09-23.
  6. ↑ "Nathan Shedroff" . Retrieved 2009-10-04.
  7. ↑
  8. ↑ Scalise, Irene Maria (2001-10-03). "arrivano i designer interattivi" (in Italian). Repubblica. Retrieved 2008-09-23.
  9. ↑ "Interaction Design Institute, fuga a Milano". La Sentinella del Canavese (in Italian). 2005-04-18. p. 2. Retrieved 2008-09-23.
  10. ↑ "Interaction Design Lab" . Retrieved 2009-10-04.
  11. ↑ http://interactionivrea.org/en/index.asp
  12. ↑ "The Untold History of Arduino" . Retrieved 2023-12-17.
  13. ↑ "CICCIO Project" . Retrieved 2012-10-14.
  14. ↑ "Good Night Lamp – designswarm" . Retrieved 2021-12-13.
  15. ↑ "Touch Me". Victoria and Albert's Museum. 2005-06-16. Retrieved 2008-09-23.
  16. ↑ "Interaction Design Primer". Postmedia Books. 2005-01-01. Archived from the original on 2008-09-22. Retrieved 2008-10-28.
  17. ↑ "Convivio". European Union. 2003-01-01. Archived from the original on 2006-07-24. Retrieved 2008-09-23.
  18. ↑ Conti, Elisabetta Donati De (2021-07-15). "The Incredible Story of the School in Ivrea Educating Today's Leaders in Silicon Valley". ELLE Decor (in Italian). Retrieved 2022-01-13.
  19. ↑ "Università IUAV di Venezia". IUAV. 2003-01-01. Retrieved 2008-10-28.
  20. ↑ https://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/cmd
  21. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20160227031853/http://www.fh-potsdam.de/studieren/design/studiengaenge/interfacedesign/
  22. ↑ Pescovitz, David (February 21, 2007). "Jason Tester: Case for Human-Future Interaction". BoingBoing.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.