Eilidh Dickson: Interaction Designer

Hello.......
Welcome to the online Portfolio of Eilidh Dickson
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Eilidh Dickson is an energetic Interaction Designer, whos passion lies in the design of services both for the public and private sector. She uses her knowledge in strategic thinking, her practical skills of hands on prototyping and her love for people centred design processes to create the best possible solutions for the specific users and industries she is working with.

Eilidh recently graduated from Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) and is looking for a full time internship or job opportunity in the face paced, cross discipline and multi cultural environment she has grown to love. This Website shows a selection of projects from her time at CIID and from previous studies and work.

As well as this website Eilidh has a blog which she has been keeping since September 2008. It was used to record her everyday work and inspiration at CIID, a way of documenting her process and development throughout the projects she worked on and for reflecting on her learning.

News...

For a small update on what i have been doing for the last couple of months! After graduating from CIID i was asked to work on a consultancy project with CIID. I can't say too much about it apart from its for a diabetes health care company and i had the incredible experience of going to India for part of the project. It sounds very cliche but it really did change my perspectives on life and got me thinking about how we can use design to help people who it can really benefit, and more importantly how can be use design to create platforms for those people to help themselves. It goes back to the same story...give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a life time.

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SKILLS DIAGRAM
6th November 2009

i have beein meaning to put this skills diagram online for ages. It was designed by Ana Amorim whilst she worked at IDEO. When she was teaching us at CIID she let us use it! So this is how i look now, a little different to a year ago i think!

0=No experience
1=Played around with this but not on a project
2=Some experience, but need mentoring/advice
3= Comfortable with this skill
4=Very comfortable, able to mentor others
5= Expert, recognized leader in this area

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NEW PROJECT ONLINE!
14th October 2009

I just found out that Novo Nordisk have allowed us to show other people the projects we did for them . Although we fully developed and executed the idea, it now belongs to Novo so they can develop further :) See the project here.

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Some of the highlights from the pilot year graduation ceremony!

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INTERACTION DESIGN PROGRAM KICK OFF
30th September 2009

The new Interaction Design program at CIID is well underway, now in their third week. This week they are doing an introduction to the core principles of Interaction Design with Matt Cottam. There is one catch though, the whole week is computer free, so far they have been designing analogue switches, pixel icons made from pos-its! and hand drawn data vizualizations. Prior to this week they had an intoduction to all the DKDS workshops and a one week team building course with Karen Ward. The video below shows a few moments fromt the new students first week!

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The past two days for me have been incredible!...I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to present my final project from CIID to DesignIt, in Copenhagen and in Arhus at one of their internal "Get Inspired Sessions" It was a priviledge for me to present to them, to gain their feedback on my idea and process and generally to talk to all the lovely people that work there!

I first came across DesignIt about 5 months ago while studying at CIID. They are a strategic design consultancy that has a studio in Copenhagen, Arhus as well as other parts of Europe and Asia. When I came across the company I was super excited and inspired by the diversity of work they cover, the industries they work in and their approaches and methodologies towards the projects they work on. So as you can imagine my eyes lit up when I found out that Mikal Hallstrup, the Chief Visionary Ofiicer and Co-Founder of the company was going to be one of our external examiers for our final project exam at CIID! Meeting Mikal and the rest of the team was a great opportunity to learn more about what the company does and see how elements of our thinking and practice at CIID overlap with the processes they use at DesignIt.

......they also have a great blog and monthly news post called thinkaboutit, which I highly recommend you subscribe to!

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NOVO NORDISK PROJECT
16th September 2009

Around 3 months ago at CIID half the class were lucky enough to take part in an 2 week industry project for Novonordisk (the other half worked with Nokia) In pairs we worked on different design challenges defined by Novo, and rapidly generated and developed socially relevant concepts in an area they are currently persuing. At the end of two weeks myself and Erlend presented a solution that was communicated through a high resolution video scenario. Unfortunately I cannot disclose anymore information as the project was done under an NDA....but I am super happy to say that out of the four groups that presented to Novo, our project was one of two that they have decided to keep hold of and develop in the future!

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Bill Moggridge giving a speech at our graduation

Monday was the first day of the offical "Interaction Design Program" The pilot year has finished and its time for some fresh energy and new talent at CIID! However before the Pilot Year ended I was lucky enough to get to write a sum up of our exams and graduation for the CIID Website. This is what I wrote.......

The interaction Design Pilot Year aimed to be a fast paced, collaborative, experimental and energetic year, and the last three months have been no exception to this! Since June, the pilot year students have been working on their final year projects, a chance for them to go solo, put all they have learnt into practice and further develop who they are as individual designers.

This all came to a climax on the 24th, 25th and 26th of August when they presented their final projects to a board of external examiners including Bill Moggridge (IDEO) Gillian Crampton Smith (IUAV) and Mikal Hallstrup (Designit) Over the three days each student took it in turn to step up onto the podium and present their project process, from initial explorations, to iterative prototypes to the final designs. The diversity in project themes ranged from sustainable service solutions to products that have personalities to new cameras for children. It was amazing to see the individual styles of each student really shining through, each project was unique in their very own way, and showed a different approach towards interaction design.

After presenting their projects the students received comments and critique from the examiners. The feedback proved to be very thoughtful and constructive, and provoked interesting discussions on how the projects could be developed further. All in all an amazing experience for the students to present to such down to earth yet highly experienced design professionals.

When all the exams were finished on the final day, there was just enough time for a quick change of clothes before the graduation ceremony! The ceremony began with a round of inspirational speeches from Professor John Heskett, our external examiners and Simona Maschi (Head of Program) The students then took to the stage once again and were presented with their certificates and a crown of leaves, in fitting with our "From Adam to Yves" exhibition! It was a very symbolic moment!

After multiply rounds of (emotional, yet happy) photographs, and trying to re-create the group photo we took on the first day of the pilot year, we sat down to a hygge dinner to celebrated the brilliant success of the year and toasted to the future of the Interaction Design program.

Check out the video!

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Echo, is my final year project at CIID. I have now updated my portfolio and you can see my final designs, videos and get an insight into my process for my final project. A massive thank you to everyone that helped me along the way, especially to my advisor Heather Martin. It was a great 3 months!

View Project

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A little video that Ujjval and I put together with the help from our lovely CIID classmates to say thank you to al the CIID and visiting faculty members

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The CIID/DKDS pilot year has been fast paced, experimental and a lot of fun, and the last 3 months have been no exception to this! Last week at CIID we completed our final year solo projects and presented them to a board of examiners including Gillian Crampton Smith (IUAV) Bill Moggridge (IDEO) and Mikal Hallstrup (Designit) It was a truely brilliant experience. After the three days of presentation exams, we attended our graduation ceremony and dinner, where we celebrated the brilliant success of the year and toasted to the future! Now that the exams are over, the results are out and the exhibition has started, i have had time to update my CV and porfolio website with my final year project!

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A few months ago I came across a project done by Roberta Tassi during her graduation thesis at Politecnico di Milano The project is called Service Design Tools and is a website that has collected all the relevant tools for service design processes and and put them in once place. Service Design Tools not only provides all the tools but she gives real examples for each one from a variety of projects. It is an amazing resource and the website has been designed beautifully, not only visually but the functionality and UI of it. It was also great to see that she had used some of the projects I had worked on CIID as examples, including happy mail (GUI design for the elderly) and Travel Global | Read Local (Service design for the Danish libraries) Its a great resourse to bookmark!

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21 interaction design students explore the relationship between people, society and technology

The Danish Design School and Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design will celebrate and showcase the work of Pilot Year students that came from ten different countries to study on the collaborative and intensive interaction design programme. The students have come up with an array of projects that demonstrate the multidisciplinary and questioning nature of Interaction Design and Service Design. Through a people-centred approach and taking cues from social and environmental sustainability, audio, information visualisation, and the influence of technology - the twenty-one students have devised visionary working prototypes and produced video scenarios as their final projects. From systems for the integration of climate refugees, to specially designed windows that question the notion of curiosity; from wearable technology, to a series of devices that can enable new interactions with light & sound - these projects consider new technology, concepts and working prototypes that address social, cultural and business issues.

Save a date: Opening: 27th August 3-6pm (Then from Friday 28th August - Sunday 6th September, open from 11:30am-5pm)

Venue: Kunstindustrimuseet (The Danish Museum of Art & Design) Bredgade 68 / 1260 København K

More detailed information on the final projects can be found here: http://dkds.ciid.dk/

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Yesterday we got the fantastic news that CIID/DKDS have securred the funding to continue the interaction design program next year. On the 14th of September, students from 12 different countries will be arriving at Denmarks designskole to start the interaction design program.

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CIID@REBOOT 11
5th July 2009

On the 25th and 26th of June the CIID/DKDS Pilot year students were at the Reboot 11 conference in Copenhagen. The Interaction Design Pilot Year hosted an open lab for the
2-day Reboot conference. The idea was for the students to act as consultants/designers/ prototyping gurus for any ideas that the conference participants wanted to share. Any ideas that were produced are open source and were displayed on a big wall at the venue and published in the Reboot book and on the website.

This was the first time Reboot tried this open lab approach. It was an experiment but almost immediately a good synergy was struck and a dialogue between the conference participants and the students evolved naturally. The lab was located smack-bang in the middle of the venue, so in line with the theme for this years conference – it was action stations from the word go!

Below is the full documentation of what we got up to at the Open Lab and a video that Adam put together too!

Final Reboot Documentation by Alie, Ujjval and Eilidh

Reboot Video by Adam Little

View Reboot photographs here.

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FINAL PROJECT REVIEW
23rd June 2009

Yesterday at CIID we started our midway reviews for our final projects. Instead of having open presentations, we are having 2 hour working sessions with our adviser and an external faculty member. The first 20 minutes was spent presenting our research, design challenge and concepts so far and the rest of the time was to discuss next steps and iterations. The presentation below shows what i presented along with a scenario for my concept.

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BACK TO THESIS
9th June 2009

For the last two weeks we have been working on our final industry project at CIID, but now it is back to thesis work! For the last few days i have been collating all my insights from my research and trying to make sense of it all! My aim for this weekend is to:

1. Select the most intriguing/inspiring and surprising quotes from each respondant that i did not anticipate.

2. Identify underlying themes - when more than one person is saying similar things.

3. Try to formulate 'how might we' questions based on this themes and see if they are interesting enough challenges for design.

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DESIGN FOR SERVICE
6th May 2009

During the Easter holidays Interaction Designer Jeff Howard interviewed me on our past Service Design course at CIID, taught by Simona Maschi and Brian Rink. For me this was really exciting as the Design for Service website that Jeff writes for has been a great reference to me while i have been exploring the world of service design! The interview got published here today.

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POST NEXT No.6 EXCITMENT
23rd April 2009

Now we are back at CIID after the easter holidays things have started to calm down a little. Before the Easter break some of us from CIID were exhibiting our TUI projects at the NEXT conference in Arhus organised by the Innovation Lab. Mimi has put together a great video of the weeked. Thanks Mimi, great job!

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EILIDH@JOHNNY HOLLAND
19th April 2009

I am very happy to say that i have just had my first article published on the online magazine ‘johnny holland’. Johnny Holland is an open collective exploring the interactions of experience design. The first article i wrote was on the emerging field of personal informatics. You can check it out here.

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'GODMORGEN DENMARK' VIDEO
1st April 2009

......and here is the video from meet the food you eat on Good Morning Denmark.

'MEET THE FOOD YOU EAT' ON 'GODMORGEN DENMARK'
30th March 2009

Tomorrow morning Sid, Adam and myself will be embarking on an adventure to the TV2 studio in Copenhagen. Innovation Lab’s Founder, Preben Mejer, will be on “God Morgen Danmark” discussing the NEXT conference and exhibition where four of the Pilot Year projects will be shown. Meet the Food you Eat will be featured on the show which will air between 6.30-9.00 on TV2. So right now we are finishing last minute calibration and wiring changes. Wish us luck!!

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CIID@NEXT No. 6 EXHIBITION
2nd April 2009

"NEXT no. 6 is held in Århus on April 2+3+4+5 2009 as part conference, part exhibition. A dozen of the most daunting international minds on business, technology and invention will take the conference stage. And 100 of the most perspectivating, forward facing and unexpected uses of new technology is drawn from research labs, startups, and R&D facilities from around the globe, to be showcased, tried, discussed and probably fixed a few times during the four day exhibition".....Innovation Lab.dk

Four Interaction Design Pilot Year projects will be shown in the exhibition: BunnyBot, Calen3dar, Compound Eye and our very own Meet the Food you Eat!

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MEET THE FOOD YOU EAT ON TREE HUGGER
16th February

Today Adam, Sid and i were super excited to see that our Project had been featured on Treehugger This was really great for us as throughout the project we had used this website as one of our keys sources of information, data and inspiration. Since the end of our TUI project we have been overwhelmed by the support and feedback we have been given with regards to our idea. It’s really great to see people getting excited about sustainability, and really caring about how their actions are having an affect on society.

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Eilidh Dickson Interaction Designer