Dorothé Smit
Assistant Professor
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Dorothé Smit (she/her) is an assistant professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Creative Technology programme. She holds a PhD degree from the University of Salzburg.
Her research explores the intersection of the physical and the digital in the hybrid, and how the resulting new materialities and interaction modalities shape the way we understand the world, technology, and eachother. She approaches her work in the fields of Design Research and Human-Computer Interaction through a feminist phenomenological lens.
Projects
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Hybrid Design Tools for Participatory, Embodied Sensemaking
In the world of design, we often come across complicated problems that require a participatory, embodied sensemaking to solve. To help us with this, there are various design tools available, both physical and digital. Digital tools have become more popular in recent years because they are easy to get hold of, more flexible, and can…
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Making a Difference: Engaging Women* In Technological Making
In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about the “maker movement” – a trend of people using technology to create things. This isn’t a new idea, but it has become more popular due to the availability of digital tools. Different groups of makers have formed their own spaces where they can work…
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Unusual Perspectives
MacroScope: First-Person Perspective in Physical Scale Models Traditionally, architects and designers have used scale models to explore, communicate, and evaluate concepts and ideas in large-scale, spatial projects. These scale models offer the user a bird’s eye perspective and often tangible ways of interacting with the model. Nevertheless, they lack a realistic, first-person view on the…
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Embodied Ideation Toolkit
Continuing the work in the Ideating in Skills project, I developed the Embodied Ideation Toolkit (EIT) towards a market ready proposal during my Master graduation project at Industrial Design in Eindhoven. During this project, I spent half of my time at Interactive Institute in Sweden, and half of my time in Eindhoven. During this project,…
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The Cave Studio
The Cave Studio (previously Blue Room) is an ongoing project in the creative hub Sliperiet in Umeå, Sweden by Intereactive Institute Swedish ICT. Together with Philémonne Jaasma, a PhD student from the TU/e, we designed a creative ideation space based on the principles of embodied co-design. . After numerous user explorations in the Blue Room –…
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Ideating in Skills
The above picture shows part of the Ideating in Skills set, that was created during a two week project at the Technical University of Eindhoven. The aim of this set was to stimulate designers during their ideation process by providing them with objects that could be applied to the situation they are exploring. The set…
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Catad’Or
Special diets are on the rise – and not just in terms of superfoods and raw diets. Every year, more people are diagnosed with food allergies or intolerances, and no matter how careful you are, when you’re not preparing your own food, you’re always at risk of an allergic reaction. Catad’Or was designed to…
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TableTalk
The TableTalk was developed for the project Delighting the Mind at the Technical University of Eindhoven, which aimed at relieving the pain of dementia for patients and their family and friends. Through the use of RFID tags, the TableTalk triggers old and new memories by showing relevant pictures, videos and music clips to the…