Having studied philosophy and history of art at Cambridge University, Gillian Crampton Smith spent the 1970s as a designer - first in book publishing, then on the Sunday Times and Times Literary Supplement.
In 1981, she designed and implemented a page layout program to help her with magazine design - an early desktop publishing application. This experience convinced her that artists and designers have an important role to play in creating information technologies.
Eight years later, in 1989, she joined the Royal College of Art (the UK's only purely graduate school of art and design) where she established the Computer Related Design Department, educating artists and designers to apply their traditional skills to interactive products and systems. Under her guidance, the CRD Research Studio achieved an international reputation as a leading centre for interaction design, supported by a wide range of industrial and government sponsors.
She moved to Italy in 2001 to set up the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, a graduate school and research institution sponsored by Telecom Italia and Olivetti which gained wide recognition as a leading centre for interaction design research and education.
After five years in Ivrea she moved to IUAV University in Venice where with Philip Tabor she is developing a graduate programme of interaction design in the faculty of design.
She has collaborated in the development of teaching and research programmes with organisations in various countries, served on the English National Arts and Humanities Board, assessing research funding proposals, and for seven years spent her summers in Silicon Valley working first for Apple Computer and then Interval Research.
Schedule information:
Saturday, 31. March 2007
11:40 CET
Programme Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign
