The next nordic conference on human-computer interaction, NordiCHI’16 will take place in Gothenburg, October 2016. The theme of the conference is Game-Changing Design.

Several members of IDAC are in involved in the organization and IDAC founder Eva Eriksson is one of the general chairs.
For more information check out the web site www.nordichi2016.org.

More places are needed where children can meet, create and share their experiences. Twenty-five years ago, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child. To mark the anniversary, SI is producing Children MAKE, which is both a method and a set of practical activities highlighting children’s right to culture and participation.

In Children MAKE we let the children themselves control the process. We create a place and supply them with tools for their work – in what is known as a makerspace. The concept is based on the ‘maker culture’, a global movement that has grown steadily in recent years. It’s just what it sounds like: a culture where making or creating is the core pursuit and which brings together people with different skills and backgrounds. Arts and crafts and other types of handiwork are combined with modern technology such as 3D printers, robotics and computer programming. Making things together, co-creating, is a time-honoured practice but the emergence of community interaction and both physical and digital places in which to share knowledge and tools is a comparatively new phenomenon. The catchwords in the maker culture are interdisciplinary, knowledge transfer and openness.

Funktek is a co-creative design project targeting museums and people with special needs, funded by The Swedish Inheritance Fund Commission. The aim of the project is to design and develop new forms of experiences for specific target groups through a user centered design process. Through this work the project wants to enable more people to take part in the museum activities and exhibitions.

The project asks how technology in museums can be used to enhance participation and democracy, how can people with special needs experience museum exhibitions and work on equal terms, and how this form of work can lead to sustainable urban development and more democratic urban environments. Together with a broad group of young people with different special needs the project wants to anwer the questions. On a practial level the project will explore, design and develop new technologies that will work in a museum context, and that can be spread nationally and internationally.

IDAC is part of the project  MOSAIC: Teaching the understanding of, respect towards, and empathy for other people, which has received funding from VINNOVA. The project will develop apps aimed at  training understanding and empathy for others using a user-centred approach together with schools.