No other object of the last decades has changed our habits as much as the smartphone. The conversation around this total object has shifted from an early enthusiasm for endless possibilities to one of dependency, demanding monitoring of screen-time, and even digital detox. A corpus of projects around this device has been developed at ECAL by students, researchers and teachers. An interesting journey that took the form of an exhibition “Fantastic Smartphones”, initially presented during the Milan Design Week in 2021 and which has been traveling since. A way to open a platform for discussion and reflection around this topic, for the interaction designer community but also for society in general. Questioning our way of designing as well as our way of teaching.
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Alain Bellet
Associate Professor, Media & Interaction Design Program, ECAL
Alain Bellet is a Designer and an Associate Professor in the Media & Interaction Design Program at University of Art and Design ECAL in Lausanne, Switzerland. He led this program from 2006 to 2015. Through his teaching and research practice, he focuses on the relationship we have with technologies and the ways we interact with them. His approach encourages a critical viewpoint but also tinged with humour and poetry. He splits his time between Lausanne and Zurich, where he lives and works on his own practice.