Vision & mission

The ISIM_garage (Multimodal Interactive Interfaces and Systems) is a laboratory - associated to the Iad school and located in the Physics Department of the Tor Vergata University of Rome - which mission is the R&D2 (Research & Design-Development) for the complex and holistic domain  of the DESIGN FOR THE EXPERIENCE

To the complexity of the ORGANIC ERA OF THE INTERACTION (*) the ISIM_garage responds with a design vision - 'person in place centered' - that assumes as foci: a) the centrality of the person and her/his experiences (in all its dimensions); b) the specificity of the 'place' where the traces of lived experiences stratify to produce our cultural DNA.

The unpredictability of the trajectory of usage of services, artifacts, etc.., typical of the organic era of interaction requires the development of a new design approach able to foresee a 'multiverse' fruition of the artifacts that, unavoidably should have an open character. It follows the need to define new and more flexible design processes, such as the ORGANIC PROCESS, inspired by living organisms, based on three parallel functional layers: i) 'learning' (exploration and continuous monitoring of the environment); ii) 'design' (creative and finalized elaboration of the collected); iii) 'communicate' (carry out on the environment).

o-> Services offered

(*) Characteristic features of the 'organic era of interaction'

(exerpt from the background of DULP 2010)

A rapid evolution of the technologies, which allows:
- the development of the knowledge society which has marked the transition into the post-industrial era where the primary good is the immaterial knowledge that, thanks to the complexity and robustness of the net of distribution and to the simplicity to reproduce intangible assets, overrides the boundaries of law, becomes liquid, magma, 'open', 'in progress';
- the consequent emergence of new lifestyles, construction and use of knowledge, so that the condition of the subject under training is also 'in progress'; in the liquid modernity s/he has to learn to walk on quicksand and to forge her/his own fate;
- the reshaping of the physical environment: the pervasive 'machine', more and more hidden in spaces and artefacts, 'dissolves' itself in the everyday life leaving over as unique trace the 'computability'; at the same time the development of infrastructures and of wireless communication is completely reshaping the approach to the nets, so that people are increasingly transforming into active net terminals with which they will constantly connected, independently from the physical place in which they operate during their nomadic travelling.

The integration of the above phenomena brings to inevitably foresee scenarios in which the training processes' actors will nomadically populate more and more sensitive and responsive physical spaces through which they will interact with socially dense virtual environments. The disappearance of machine within the everyday life's objects and spaces will enable individuals to interact with the latter ones in an extremely natural way using gestures, words and emotions. A more natural interaction will then bring individuals to give less importance to functional aspects and more to the so called 'use qualities' that will contribute to define the one's personal EXPERIENCE. Environments will become able to perceive individual's conditions and to co-evolve in order to respond to each one's personal needs. They will be populated by social relations, increasingly simple to start up and at the same time increasingly complex to be managed: they will become what we defined 'LIQUID PLACES'.