Teaching at CIID Summer Course 2013: Exploring Biomimetic Interfaces

I just returned from teaching a 2 week summer session course at CIID

It is an amazing place. And it was an intense and fantastic 2 weeks. It was a mix of Human – Based Design Thinking, Biomimetic practices, Programming, creative ideas, interactivity, and stacks of Arduinos. To see some of the course work see this site.

 

 

We arrived the first day:  and went to the school.

We explored the lab and the equipment. They have a VERSA laser cutter, 3d printer, electronics bench, a woodshop, and a lot of spare materials.

From there we head to the apartment and wandered the stairs until we were able to find the right apartment

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We got our bikes!
And the course began

 

The first day of class:
Design Challenge: raft lanterns

Design Thinking Crash Course : redesign the playground

 

 
Day 2: Arduino Intro and lab #1. hardcore hands on.

 

And assignment #1: Design solution from the perspective of a non human user
  

By day 3 already, we were planning for the final project and doing some analog user testing:

and analog fabrication, building, designing, planting, creating, conceiving, etc

 

 

mid term presentations:
 

AND A LOT OF WORK, late night wine, and planning:

and some picnics and some drinks: 
  

and fun in chrisitiania
 

some citi swimming:

Finally the weekend came. We biked to Louisiana to see Tara Donovan.
    

  

 

 

 

Then the work resumed, as the week started back up. 

And the arduino stacks grew:
 

lots of late night work [it only doesn’t look dark because it got dark aroundplay 10:30 because of the long days]:
  

 

 

and a computer disaster disconnecting Genevieve from the rest of the world:
 

and a field trip to labitat:

And a long week later:
projects and presentations

METADATA : Exemplifying that unwillingly, we are all contributing to Metadata’s collection, but that can either be percieved positive or negative
THE ANTS PROJECT : encouraging recycling based on a point system modeled after ant behaviour
BIIKE – a gps tracker and data logging system to encourage biking in cities
ANTHILL – bringing sharing to mainstream with intelligent share stations setup in local supermarkets
SYMBO – a biomimetic flying trash collecting drone 
CITY PULSE – Urban Data and energy contributing both to information aggregation as well as public art and compelling visualisations

 

And the presentations:

And FINALLY after an intense and sleepless week, the barbeque of celebration.