Co-design – interdisciplinary team work for usable design solutions

Speaker(s): Marie Bodén, The University of Queensland

Description: Good design solutions most often come from teams that have diverse perspectives and skill sets. Though working in interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary teams is not always easy and requires patience and great communication. While every discipline have their perspective on what is most important in a collaborative process, it is easy to lose track of what the actual users may need or even what the end goal is. From my perspective as an Interaction Designer I present some reflections from my own work, co-designing with educators, students, engineers, psychologists, linguists and more. This talk will discuss how teams can collaborate to find good solutions, manage obstacles in the process and the importance of considering collaborating.

Bio of Speaker: Marie is an Interaction Design researcher in the School of IT & Electrical Engineering at The University of Queensland. Her research interest is in social robotics and design of technology to support teaeching and learning. With over 10 years of expertise on design of technology for teaching and learning, Marie collaborates closely with users in co-design and participatory design projects, which means she involve the actual users in an iterative design process. A result of this research methods are that the design will impact the users positively and for the long-term. Further, Marie works with external engagement and organise outreach programs to engage highs school students in tertiary studies. Marie is involved in organising RoboCup Junior, Young ICT Explorer's competition and GovHack. Marie has been recognised for her work with a Rising Star award (2011) from Women in Technology and an Australian Computer Society Digital Disrupter award in 2017 for her work on The Humanoid-robot project and its impact in education.