Closing Keynote (Gillian Crampton Smith)
Closing Keynote
Gillian Crampton Smith, Iuav University of Venice
We love our mobile devices - they allow us to do so many things wherever we want, whenever we want.
And with the development of new mobile devices, from watches to clothes to medical sensors—and
objects in the environment that can talk to our them—our capacity for new activities will increase
even further. But there is a cost to this mobile technical world we increasingly inhabit. I will
explore the benefits and costs and suggest how, as designers, we might tip the balance towards
the benefits.
Gillian Crampton Smith started her interaction design career in the 1980s
designing and programming an application for magazine layout; this experience made her realize
the importance of graphic and product design skills and knowledge for the design of the digital.
She was Professor at the Royal College of Art, the UK’s graduate school of Art and Design, where
she founded the teaching and research studios in interaction design. She spent her summers in
Silicon Valley where her collaborations included Apple Computer, Interval Research and IDEO.
In 2000, invited to Italy by Telecom Italia and Olivetti, she set up the research and teaching
institution Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. In 2006, with the architect Philip Tabor, she
started an Interaction Design programme at Iuav University of Venice. Together they have run
studio courses in innovation and design in the mobile sphere. She is on the advisory board
of MIT's Senseable City Lab.
Crampton Smith's career has concentrated on encouraging design students to think imaginatively
about the potential, both human and technical, of digital technologies, and persuading companies
that successful products and systems need human as well as technical problem-solving. She believes
that business and academia, in collaboration, have much to learn from each other.
