User System Interaction (USI) Program is recruiting people to start in October!

My program is looking for highly motivated people interested to apply to it. In different post that I have published here you could see some of the projects I have been working on during last year and where I am working now. If you haven’t had the opportunity to have a look, have it now. I strongly suggest you to consider USI program if you are working in HCI and user-centered design domains or if you are interested to move to that field. I will let you with some general information about my program. If you have any question, please do not hesitate to contact me. 😉

The User System Interaction (USI) Programme was founded by the Stan Ackermans Institute in the Technical University of Eindhoven (TU/e), the Netherlands. It is a two-year post-graduate programme leading to the degree of `Professional Doctorate in Engineering` (PDeng). The User System Interaction post-graduate programme requires an internationally recognized master degree. The content of the curriculum is regulated by staff of the university from different faculties working in the field of USI and HCI and is carried out by nationally and internationally wellknown experts from university and industry.

The USI design program is characterized by its:
Focus on design – Students are positioned as designers throughout the program, that is, as intermediate between market demand and technical possibilities, between user needs and product satisfaction.
Practical training – Students work in their second year on a project in industry or government supervised by university staff and the host organization.
Focus on applicability – Students work on assignments and case studies throughout the program.
Teamwork – Students with backgrounds in the engineering, behavioral and physical sciences work in small interdisciplinary teams.
Cross-cultural and international orientation – Students with different national and cultural backgrounds work together.

A very important part of the USI program is the nine-month industrial assignment, which is carried out in the second year of the curriculum. The general requirements for this assignment are, amongst others, a conceptually challenging problem, participation in a multidisciplinary team, and a strong design and evaluation orientation.

If you need more information you can find it in USI program website.

A glimpse ahead

Microsoft Office Labs launched a set of videos about how they see the future. The project called Envisioning brings videos of possible future scenarios in areas as health care, retail, banking, manufacturing, among others.

Regardless whether and when we will face this future, these videos give us some inspiration about the work of a interaction designer. Ubiquitous computing seems to be the nickname of the future. Information, interaction, and technology will be everywhere. However challenges, problems and frustration will be also part of our forecast.

Here you can watch to a short video with parts of the others videos.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about "Future Vision Montage", posted with vodpod

Don Norman – UX Week 2008

Peter Merholz had an interesting chat with Don Norman during UX Week 2008. It’s a very relaxed chat, but very deep if you think about the topics Norman tapped, such as: ROI, how to convince your boss of your relevance to your company’s business, etc.

video

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about "IA TV: Don Norman – UX Week 2008", posted with vodpod

If you liked this video, you can watch to many more on UX week website.

Application for USI Program is open!

Some people are very curious about my current position. So this post is to those people but also for those of you whom might be interested to apply for a position at USI Program. USI Program stands for The User System Interaction (USI) Program. It was founded 10 years ago by the Stan Ackermans Institute in the Technical University of Eindhoven (TU/e), the Netherlands. It is a two-year post-master program leading to the degree of `Professional Doctorate in Engineering` (PDeng). USI Program is one of the few programs in the world which put in practice the multidisciplinary approach so widely advertised by usability professionals. At USI Program will find an environment formed by people from diverse background, such as: psychology, design (product, graphical, etc.), computer science, electrical engineering, among others. Apart from that, USI is also a multicultural environment. Currently we have people from: Brazil, China, Italy, Netherlands, Canada, Spain and others! It is definitely the richest environment I could ever imagine find in my life! 🙂

It is also worthy saying that in USI Program there is a strong focus on hand-on modules and a 9-month internship in the end of the program. If we are working on HCI field or something related to ICT in general, for sure you should consider USI Program! Applications are already available for a starting date around the beginning of October. For more information, check out this website. I will try to publish more posts about USI soon.

How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer

One of the blogs I have in my netvibes page is Open Peer-to-peer Design – Design for complexity, by Massimo Menichinelli. It was a surprise for me to read a recent post of Menichinelli in his blog about Network Science and Complexity. Ok, it was a surprise for me because from my list of RSS I am not excepting much more than discussions about design, usability, etc. But Menichinelli’s post was a great surprise. His post made me remind my Master thesis (unfortunately only in Portuguese L) and my studies a couple of years ago about social networks, social interaction and how people interact in a virtual environment. During my Master course, I studied social interaction in Orkut and proposed a new way to represent those interaction through a visual representation which takes into account the semantic content of messages exchanged by users in virtual environment.

Menichinelli refers to a documentary about Complex Networks and Network Theory which has the participation of the most important researchers in that field. As Menichinelli, I knew Steven Strogatz, Duncan J. Watts and Albert-László Barabási from their books and papers. It is very cool to know them in person now. J

If you have already read about Network Theory, I am sure you are going to enjoy this video. If this is the first time you heard about it, this video is a must! ABC Televison was very successful in the way they made the video. Very clear, very interesting!

According to ABC, “How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer brings us a new view of the world, as we unfold the science behind the popular trivia game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’. Based on the idea that anyone on the planet can be connected in just a few steps of association, ‘six-degrees of separation’ was supposedly an urban myth. Through this documentary we discover it’s at the heart of a major scientific breakthrough.”

Here you can see the 3 videos, but if you want you can download the whole file (300 MB). Regarding this theme, I would like to recommend 2 books. The first is Linked: The New Science of Networks, by Albert-László Barabási, and the second one is Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, by Duncan J. Watts. Two great books with dozen of very interesting stories about how network science can provide us a richer view about daily life phenomena.

How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer – Part 1 from gephi on Vimeo.

How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer – Part 2 from gephi on Vimeo.

How Kevin Bacon Cured Cancer – Part 3 from gephi on Vimeo.