Deputy Director of Umarts and Professor at Umeå Insitute of Design.
Also part-time Associate Professor in Interaction Design at KTH in Stockholm.
Since February 2024 deputy director of and professor at Umeå Institute of Design. Before this associate professor in interaction design at KTH since 2010, where I am still working at 30%.
Leader of the Art & AI focus area at TAIGA.
My research explores how interactive technologies become meaningful through design. Working at the intersection of industrial design, interaction design, and human-computer interaction, I investigate how materials, artefacts, and technological systems shape the ways we perceive, interpret, and engage with the world.
A central concern throughout my work is the relationship between design, technology, and culture. Rather than treating technologies as isolated innovations, I examine them as part of longer historical trajectories, material practices, and cultural imaginaries. This perspective has informed research on tangible and embodied interaction, craft and making, robotic technologies, artificial intelligence, sustainability, and the aesthetic dimensions of interactive systems.
My work is particularly interested in how design can challenge dominant assumptions about technological progress. Through both theoretical inquiry and practice-based research, I explore alternative ways of understanding and designing technologies, drawing inspiration from historical artefacts, everyday materials, craft traditions, and contemporary design culture. This includes investigations into post-industrial aesthetics, questions of finitude and sustainability, and the role of design in imagining technological futures beyond narrow narratives of optimisation and growth.
Play has been another recurring theme in my research. From children's programming environments and robotic toys to speculative and critical design practices, I have explored how playful engagement can reveal alternative relationships between people and technology. Play offers a unique lens through which assumptions about agency, intelligence, and interaction can be questioned and reconfigured.
A further strand of my work examines the intersections between design, art, and technology. Through collaborations with artists, craftspeople, and cultural institutions, I investigate how exhibitions, material experiments, and design artefacts can function as sites of inquiry and public reflection. Here, design is approached not only as a means of solving problems, but as a way of opening questions and creating new perspectives on contemporary technological life.
My current work explores the cultural and design imaginaries that shape emerging technologies, particularly AI and robotics. I am interested in why certain visions of technology become dominant, how they draw upon historical ideas of intelligence, agency, and human likeness, and what alternatives remain unexplored. Across these investigations, my broader aim is to understand how design can help societies navigate technological change while remaining attentive to questions of sustainability, materiality, play, and cultural meaning.
Teaching topics include methods and theory related to interaction design and product design, but also supervision of projects at master- doctoral- and postdoctoral level.