Design Student of the Month - Nima Motamedi

Attention please! I'm very excited to launch the first edition of Design Student of the Month on CanUX. There are a lot of creative students in Canada who are doing innovative work to improve people's life through interactive, visual, informational, and other aspects of User Experience Design. I invited them to introduce who they are and share their work with you. To nominate a Design Student of the Month, email us.

Who’s Nima?

I am a designer completing my Masters degree in Interaction Design at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Prior, I studied Industrial Design at OCAD in Toronto.

Since my background is in both industrial and interaction design, I have a strong expertise in tactile and tangible interfaces, haptics, embedded computing, tabletop computing, and gesture interfaces. At the same time however, I don’t consider design to encompass physical artefacts alone. I believe that true design is the social, cultural, and individual experiences that artefacts support, cultivate, and nurture. This is evident in my current research where I probe and create interactive technology through the lens aesthetics, emotion, and affect.

What cool stuff is Nima doing?

My graduate research explores the aesthetics of experience design with a specific focus on tactile, haptic and touch interfaces. From a theoretical perspective, I am interested in creating a framework, or a ‘language of touch’, so we can better discuss, design, and evaluate this emerging class of interaction style. At the same time, I am developing the technology required to adequately capture, and process touch, gesture, and object data to make sketching and prototyping of these systems more accessible and affordable for designers.

Included is a video collection of my notable and published work (in chronological order). The first clip documents my current work in coupling HD-LCD display technology with touch and object sensing capabilities. The future goal of this project is to incorporate haptic feedback, continue building new tactile and haptic interfaces for communication, intimacy, and affect. Other notable works include “Keep in Touch” which is a networked tactile interface that allows people in two separate locations to communicate via touch, gesture, and body language. Also, “Under-Control” which is the first prototype of a touchpad located on the rear side small mobile screens featured in the book Sketching User Experience by Bill Buxton.

What are Nima’s plans after graduation?

After graduating I would like to continue my work with either a design firm or a company that has a strong interest in user experience design. Anyone interested in discussing opportunities may e-mail me at nimam@sfu.ca

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