hslu

Hello Dave. I’d like to interview you.

by Andy Polaine on October 19, 2010

in General

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Hi folks – can you help me find some interviewees?

I’m working on some initial research into Ambient Assisted Living with the iHome Lab here in Luzern. The project is about bringing a human-centred design approach to an area that, despite it’s name, is heavily driven by technological development rather than people’s actual needs. (The project is called Human Centred Design for Ambient Assisted Living or HAAL, hence the image above).

To get some initial insights, I want to do some qualitative research interviews with people aged between 55 – 75 (plus or minus a couple of years) to ask them about their current technology usage in the home as well as some thoughts about their plans for their older years.

While the majority of people I want to interview will be fairly average users of home technology, I am also after a few people at the extreme ends. So, people who hate in-home technology and battle with it or people who are totally kitted out with home automation. In those extreme cases, the age range is less relevant because they’ll all be old one day like the rest of us.

If possible, the interviews would be in their homes so they can show me the things they love and hate, but there is some flexibility there (I’m interested in people’s workspaces too).

Some people near me in Germany or in Luzern, Zurich, Bern or Basel in Switzerland would be ideal. Friends, relatives or friends of friends work well because they tend to open up more if there is a link to someone they know.

If anyone has any suggestions for interviewees, please get in touch.

(Image stolen from mediaunbound.com, in turn stolen from ??)

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It seems it’s conference season. My colleague, Dagmar Steffen, is organising the DeSForM 2010, the 6th International Workshop on Design Semantics of Form and Movement held here in Luzern in November. Registrations are still open and it would greatly help the planning if they were not all last minute! (I know I’m a terrible last minute attendee to these things).

Luzern is a lovely city to visit and the program has some great highlights. Here is the info:

We invite you to DeSForM 2010, the 6th International Workshop on Design Semantics of Form and Movement.

The event takes place November, 3-5 at the Lucerne School of Art and Design, Switzerland.

The program includes keynotes by:

Excursions include visiting the Net’n'Nest Office at Vitra, Weil am Rhein, and the Designers’ Saturday in Langenthal.

Further information on the DeSForM site and you can register online here.

We look forward to welcoming you in Lucerne!

Come and Study in Luzern, Switzerland!

April 14, 2010

If you are interested in studying service design or product design, textiles or animage and living amongst some of the freshest air around, we’re currently taking applications for the Master of Arts in Design at the Hochschule Luzern. The Masters is built out of two branches, Animage (animation, illustration, image) and Product Design Management, which [...]

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Teaching Service Design at Lucerne School of Art and Design

October 8, 2009

Regular readers of Playpen may have notice things have been somewhat quiet around here recently. There are two reasons for this. One is that Twitter has made an unexpected impact on my blogging. I was quite surprised by this, because it is somewhat of a symbiotic relationship, especially as my tweets are over there in [...]

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