Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

Web Directions South 2011, Sydney, October 14th.

• Audio recording of session
• Presentation slides
• IXD Bauhaus article
• Session description
• About Rahul Sen

Presentation slides

Session description

With the release of the Windows Phone, Windows 8, Google+ and a host of other interfaces – a call for revolution is becoming more absolute. There seems to be a clear opposition to skeumorphism in graphical user interfaces (skeumorphic UI were made popular by Apple for the past half a decade). There is a clear call for fierce reduction of chrome in favor of content.

History seldom repeats itself, but every now and then, it rhymes. My session focuses on what I call — ‘The Interaction Design Bauhaus’. It discusses this growing minimalist, ‘form follows data’ trend in UX and compares it to historical phenomenon that occurred in the early 1900’s in the form of the industrial design Bauhaus movement. This session draws comparisons and lessons from history, and attempts to focus on the new material we deal with in Interaction Design and how we deal with old human feelings like Envy.

About Rahul Sen

Rahul is an interaction designer with a background in architecture and theatre. He has a MA in Interaction Design from the renowned Umeå Institute of Design in Sweden. Prior to his work at Ergonomidesign, where Rahul currently works, he has worked at Teague (Seattle) and Atlas Copco (Örebro).

In all these places he has worked on a wide range of cross-disciplinary projects with people from different backgrounds. His work has made him work with global brands like Microsoft Surface, Windows Phone, Zune, Hewlett-Packard, Roche, Proctor and Gamble, Pepsico, Spotify, Maquet, Nokia, and several others. Rahul uses his diverse history to probe and create interesting intersections between people, pixels and our physical World.

In addition to his role as a visual interaction designer, Rahul is a keen thinker about future design scenarios and design-fiction. He writes and speaks about this within the design community as often as possible. He has experienced life and work in India, France, Berlin, USA and Sweden where he currently lives.

Follow Rahul on Twitter: @rahulsen79