Lecturer in design
E-mail: niklas.andersson@umu.se
Phone: + 46 90 768 70 34
Background
I am a seasoned designer with specialization in
Interaction Design, with a rather diverse background from
business-to-business marketing. Between 1984-1994, I worked as
graphic designer, art director and illustrator with clients such as
Disney, LKAB, Mitsubishi, AGA, World Equestrian
Games, and Adidas. The first time I came in contact with UID was in
1992 when I gave a one hour lecture on presentation techniques for
the first batch of Industrial Design students at UID. After that,
the snowball was set in motion and one year later, in 1993, I found
myself as a regular part-time guest lecturer at the school,
involved in teaching subjects such as; sketching techniques,
perspective drawing, construction drawing and photography.
Coming from the two-dimensional world of form-giving
in illustration, photography and graphics, I was intrigued by the
challenges the design process of three-dimensional products gave
me. Ultimately, in 1994, I fell for the temptation, applied to UID
- and got accepted. During the first years of my education, I got
more and more intrigued by the possibilities of the emerging
digitalization of everyday products, and in 1996, I had the
opportunity to switch to the new master's programme in Interaction
Design. From this moment, the development of the discipline of
Interaction Design have been my design interest. Two of the
teachers who influenced me the most were Professor Ivan Peciva
(Form Studies) and Professor Mike Stott (Interaction Design).
After graduation in 1999, I became an applied design
researcher at UID, working with Nokia and Volvo Trucks on wearable
technology. In 2001, I started to teach more regurarely in the
Interaction Design MFA program, and between 2009 and 2015 I was
director of the same program. In parallel with my time at UID, I
have also been consulting as an industrial designer within the
telecom and IT industry since the 1990s.
What I do at UID
As a design teacher, I am interested in the
experiential side of design. Specializing in the aesthetics of
interaction design, interaction design practice, semiotics and
design ethnography, I have become interested in the role and
significance of time, complexity and systems thinking in connection
to aesthetics in contemporary design practice.
Talk to me about:
Interaction design
Creative methods
Idea communication
Design visualization
Aesthetics of interaction
Systems thinking
Visual semiotics
Graphic design
Intellectual property rights
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