Left: screen of Shepard’s Serendipitor mobile app; right: screen of Crowley’s foursquare mobile app

Dennis Crowley and Mark Shepard inhabit practices verging interaction design.

Dennis Crowley is the co-founder of foursquare, a service that combines social networks, location awareness and game mechanics to encourage people to explore the world around them. Shepard is an architect investigating the implications of mobile, communication and information technologies for architecture and urbanism. In 2009, he curated Toward the Sentient City, an exhibition that critically explored the evolving relationship between ubiquitous computing and the city.

Crowley and Shepard convene to discuss how the built environment affects the development of “situated” technologies and conversely, how technology is increasingly shaping our physical surroundings.

On the Verge is a series of moderated conversations-between-pairs presented during the Spring 2012 semester. Pairs inhabit practices verging interaction design (architecture, data visualization, entrepreneurism et al.). Conversations are meant to explore the seams and intersections between practices through exchange, inquiry and the emergence of innovative ideas.

February 9, 2012

6–8 PM (6–7 conversation, 7–8 refreshments, 8– dinner with the chair and invited guests)

On the Verge Format

As a department, we continually work to evolve interaction design and inform others about its role and importance. Recently, disciplines previously understood as running on parallel vectors, such as architecture and data visualization, now run oblique and are fast approaching interaction design. On the Verge is meant to explore the many seams and intersections between disciplines through conversation.