After two and a half amazing years away from home, I am in the middle of completing my Interaction Design Thesis project.

The working title is: Cultural Integration through Language Learning. During this project I will look at how the process of language learning happens for people who have to move to a different country in order to study or work.
This is a situation that affects more around 3% of the global population.

My thesis project tries to help with the process of acculturation and social integration into a new environment by means of teaching relevant, useful and local language to new migrants.

Follow my process blog at:

Cultural Integration through Language Learning Tumblr

I'm finally back in school after a fantastic year of internships and language learning in China and Germany. I proudly go back to the Umeå Institute of Design filled more experience and excitement of things to come.

This year's classmates are talented on the full spectrum of Interaction Design skills. I look forward to designing great interactions with them.
In January, I start my degree project. I don't have a clear cut topic yet. This will become clear in time, else it will have to.

After exciting times in China working with Harman, I was invited to work at Designit Munich.

Designit works with various clients around the world and is itself a very global company.
I will be working here in Munich, Germany for 3 and a half months as interaction designer intern. Design challenges await me and I can't wait to meet them head on!

I'm going to be in China for until February. I will be working at Harman International in Shenzhen.

I'm not allowed to talk about what I do within the confines of the office, but I'll be glad to share photos of China the splendid and Hong Kong.

It's been almost three weeks since I've released the IKSU Mobile app for Android. I'm already releasing an update.
Of course there will be more to come. For now, this is a small update pushing the functionality and usefulness of the app.I must say that I am also quite pleased with the installation numbers I have so far.

Version 1.1 adds a few things:

• Filter out activities you don't want to see.
• German translation
• App2SD for Android 2.2+
• Interface tweaks

I've spoken to a few users about what they think about the app and taken a few pointers. The booking feature is in high demand as it seems.

I'm still working hard on being able to book and unbook. I'm about 30% there so hang tight and it should come before the summer does.

I recently wrote a paper which was submitted and accepted for the SIDeR conference in Copenhagen. It is about how Interaction Designers should pay more attention to the tools they use when making software and hardware sketches.

Here it is if you so care to read it.

Today we worked with the guys from Floda 31 at making movie posters with only one graphic element and the film title. I chose the movie Moon. This is the result.

Where to start. No really I'm not sure. The whole gang woke up and we proceeded to dragging ourselves to the Elephant block to present our work to Pekka. The presentation went very well and he mentioned that some of the ideas we had had also been mentioned by previous design consultancy hires. I took this in the good way: the ideas we had over the course of 3 work days were of professional calibre. After a few comments, thank yous and a gift of gloves and cognac, we headed back to the hotel to take a nap. We packed our things, cooked up all the food we had left for breakfast and went to the post office and the flagship Nokia store. At 1620ish we took the bus to Helsinki-Vantaa airport without knowing where Jingjing, Jabi or Titti were. Got the the airport, met everyone. Flew out. Good week.

With only one day left to complete all of the design concepts and prepare a presentation, we all met up fairly early at the Elephant block and proceeded to working. We started by dividing the tasks up. As I'm still developing my sketching and InDesign skills, I felt that I should try to be an efficient idea-person. For each of the concepts and slides, I tried to help the people working on these by finding complementary ideas so that the ideas that were to be presented would make sense. I also pushed Pawar so he would drop his perfectionist habits. Over lunch, I went to Kamppi to meet with Kaisa at BBQ House; great food and what I think is the most unambiguous of restaurant names. After lunch, the group met back at Stockmanns for a marker and pen extravaganza. The 500 € that were given to us were to be put to use. Went to Alko with Benjamin and Pawar to get some proper Finnish vodka. It would be blasphemous to leave the country without some. The work group got moved a floor below where we had been working in the morning. We effectively worked from 1430 until 2230 and completed the presentation slides which were to be shown the next morning at 0800. We were intent on skipping dinner in order to get this completed. The WDC Helsinki 2012 staff had just finished a board meeting and had too many gourmet sandwiches on their hands, as well as some fresh fruit and juice. Just out lucky day as it seems! After a short break, we resumed working. At the end of it all, we all agreed that a stiff drink was exactly what we needed. We headed out to Uudenmaankatu. Long name, I know. This is one of the two very happening streets in Helsinki. Sadly, when we got there it was completely deserted, save one guys crossing the street. So upon Pawar's decision, we went to Aussie Bar : a pub entirely owned and staffed by Australians. We met a group of girls who were having a bachelorette party that evening and decided to head out to Molly Malone's once the Aussie Bar died down. The rest is history.