Interaction Design Thesis

This blog is about the wonderful hybrid world of design and technology that brings us some amazing interactive experiences. Having backgrounds in both design and computer science, I find myself delighted by how the marriage of both disciplines makes the future ahead of us very promising.

My name is Melissa Quintanilha. I hold a BS degree in Computer Science and MFA degree in Design. The focus of my master thesis was to explore new ways of interacting with computers that go beyond the current paradigm of mouse, keyboard and screen. I pursued the idea of augmenting everyday places and objects with information processing capabilities, thus bringing technology towards us, instead of the other way around. My idea was to move towards a more fluid and natural interaction. As part of my thesis research I developed the BuddyWall, a tangible user interface for social networking that brings presence awareness and more emotion to computer-mediated relationships. This project was presented at SIDeR 08 in Denmark, CHI 08 in Italy and Design&Emotion 08 in Hong Kong.

I am now working as a User Experience Designer at Microsoft.