Rome, Sweet Rome: Ancient Lessons in Design

Presented by Jennifer Fraser

Date: Tuesday February 26, 2008
Time: 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Location: Corel NOTE LOCATION!

Abstract

Vitruvius, the first Roman Architect to write about architecture, asserted that any well-designed building must exhibit the three qualities of “firmitas, utilitas, venustas” or be durable, useful and beautiful. Can these same three tenets be applied today to help us design better interactions in a digital environment?

This presentation will first touch on the similarities between designing buildings and designing digital interactions. Then, there will be an introduction to Vitruvius and his book, De Architectura. In his book Vitruvius writes about this notion of a well-designed building being durable, useful and beautiful. Those three qualities will first be looked at in their historical context, but then will be examined to see how they translate into the contemporary context of interaction design.

Bio

Jennifer Fraser is a Lead User Experience Designer at Corel and during her ten years with them she has worked on a wide variety of products. She has both a Bachelor and Master of Architecture from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. During the last year of her undergraduate degree she learned how to sew and poured concrete into spandex formwork. Several years and many architectural exams later she did research in the areas of information visualization and the oral tradition for her Master’s thesis, “Visualizing a Hypertext Narrative”.

Jennifer is a past speaker at DUX ‘05, SXSW Interactive 2007 and will be presenting this “Rome, sweet Rome” talk in March at SXSW Interactive 2008. She was recently featured in a FastCompany.com “Innovation Wednesday” column and authored a case study for Dan Saffer’s recent book, designing for interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices.

Where and When?

This event will take place on Tuesday, February 26, 2008, 7-9 PM at Corel (http://www.corel.com/), located at 1600 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, ON K1Z 8R7 Canada. NOTE LOCATION!

  • Free parking available on site after 6:30 PM.To access the parking lot, you will need to turn south onto Churchill from Carling. The access to the parking lot from the east bound lanes of Carling is for pass holders only.If the attendant is still there, please take a ticket from the machine, but you must return it to a Corel UED Team member when you sign in.

Note: The doors to the building will be locked so please arrive early to be signed-in and escorted to the room by Corel UED Team members waiting at the entrance. A phone is available inside the vestibule to call the room if you arrive later than 7:15.

The meeting fee is $5 for non-members and free for CapCHI members ($20/year). Membership is for the session period (September 2007-August 2008) - anyone can join!