Feedback from the Shanghaï session

frederic — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 13:34:20 +0000

The Cumulus Digital Culture session in Shanghaï, September 7th 2010, has been a fruitful and friendly event. The working groups were organised at the Shanghaï Concert Hall, a XIXth century neo-classical building bringing an ideal contrast to the XXIst century concerns we were discussing. Despite a fuzzy organisation from Tongji that brought a little mess and improvisation (no room available for the first two hours but free coffee), the program of the session has proved to be worth the effort, thanks to our smart speakers and participants.

A vision of the Chinese digital market by design practitionners

The first part of the session was focused on a vision of the Chinese use of digital technology through two complementary speeches.
First presentation was made by Itamar Medeiros, User Experience Manager at Autodesk Shanghaï and coordinator for the Shanghaï group of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) . He brought us a documented vision of the actual digital market in China, with numerous facts and figures. Itamar posted the presentation and an excellent post about the session on his own blog.

Here is the presentation on Slide Share : Digital Culture in China: OPPORTUNITIES FOR INTERACTION DESIGN

Second presentation was made by Lynnette Chan, former Lead of Creative Studio at Asentio and industrial designer at IDEO, now freelancer at Rénnovate . She introduced the results of a huge survey and ethnographic study conducted in several urban areas of China about the actual use of digital vs printed magazines. It was a well-illustrated grassroots approach to daily life, a good addendum to Itamar’s “Big picture” approach.

Opening up to Cumulus members

Second part of the session was meant to open a discussion with the participants cheap inflatable water slidesand getting to know each other better. On the “eat your own dog’s food” principle, my good friend and colleague Grégoire Cliquet made a presentation of the new experimental research lab READI we’re setting up in Nantes at L’École de design Nantes Atlantique late 2010.

Presentation on Slideshare : Readi – L’École de design Nantes Atlantique

The pace and content of the session seemed quite good and will probably be the model for next sessions in Paris, Denver and so on : one or two local speakers from the industry + a longer session for informalkids water slides projects and activities presentations from the Cumulus members. It has been a pleasure to meet old and new friends (hello Peter !), and also to meet up with Itamar and Lynnette, with an interesting possible following with IxDA. Call for participation is open for next session in Paris, May 19th !

F. Degouzon
Head of Strategy, L’École de design Nantes Atlantique

Cumulus Digital Culture » autodesk

Feedback from the Shanghaï session

A vision of the Chinese digital market by design practitionners

Opening up to Cumulus members