design researcher and experience designer

I am a PhD candidate in Interaction Design at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. I bring in my fabrication skills as an industrial designer to drive my research, where I explore how interactive technologies can be designed as a catalyst for social interaction between people in public spaces.

While technology is largely to blame for the decline of face-to-face interaction in public spaces, I imagine how technology can be re-designed to facilitate new forms of social interaction instead. I do this by working with interactive materials, such as electronic textiles, biosensors, and microcontrollers, that can be subtly integrated into everyday objects in the environment that act as a playful excuse for people to get in contact, explore, and make sense of these Odd Invitations.

Since the public space is my research environment, I like to move the design process from the studio to the streets through guerrilla prototyping: portable low-fidelity prototypes that can be quickly deployed in real-world contexts to test ideas, draw inspiration from the environment, and create spontaneous encounters with the people who stumble upon them. Opposed to testing in a controlled environment, I find that this approach puts me in direct contact with people in a more genuine way, which has led to surprising and meaningful moments of connection with people outside of my bubble.

⅓ of Somersault