CID-KTH, Center for User Oriented IT Design, Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm

web site: http://cid.nada.kth.se

CID, the Centre for user-oriented IT Design, is hosted by NADA, the Department for Numerical Analysis and Computer Science at KTH, which is the technical university of Stockholm, Sweden. NADA employs about 250 faculty, doctoral students and staff.

CID was established in 1995 as a Competence Centre financed to equal thirds by external Swedish partners, by the governmental Research and Development agency Vonniva and by KTH. The overall aim of CID is to develop and maintain a competence profile within user oriented design and human-computer interaction. CID is an interdisciplinary environment with researchers and developers from technology, human sciences, design and art, striving to integrate usability aspects, technical aspects and aesthetic aspects when designing IT systems for a large spectrum of user groups.

At present CID employs 14 seniors and 16 research students from disciplines such as Human-Computer interaction, Computer Science, Psychology, Pedagogy, Sociology, Cinema Studies, Media and Communication, Music, Industrial Design and Graphic Design.

CID's research programme focuses on interaction design, software tools, usability and user studies in the project areas Digital Worlds, Interactive Learning Environments and New Forms of Communication and Interaction. CID has 19 industrial and user organisartion partners: Ericsson, Telia, Saab, Swedepower, Teracom, TietoEnator, Icon Medialab, Datadoktorn AB, Ergolab, Lentus, Lernia, National Educational Radio, Swedish Handicap institute, LO, TCO, RSV, Skolverket, SIH, Sverige Direkt. All partners are involved in at least one project area.

CID, through its director, Yngve Sundblad, and staff has coordinated 5 EU financed research projects, starting with the ESPRIT Long-term Research Schema INSCAPE, accepted for research programme definition (Inhabited Information Spaces in the i3 initiative) in 1996 and currently the Disappearing Computer project InterLiving (Intergenerational interfaces for living together).

Through the EU projects CID has established cooperation with universities of Paris Sud, Nottingham, Lancaster and Geneva, ZKM in Karlsruhe, EPF in Lausanne, the research institutes SICS, INRIA and GMD and the companies Illuminations and British Telecom. Other international cooperations include universities of Aarhus, Loughborough, Maryland and Washington (Seattle), MIT Medialab, MIT

Eurolab and Philips Design. Specifically in "universal design" (or "DfA") CID works in close cooperation with the partners HI (Swedish Handicap Institute) and SIH (Swedish Institute for help to school children with disabilities) with cooperative design and studies of artefacts and environments for commmunication for all. CID also works with HSO (the organisation for cooperation between handicap organisations in Sweden) and some small industrial partners in an accepted EU Equal project "An accessible society" and with HO (Handikappombudsmannen) on "Accessibility centers", which is an experience that will be brought into that workpackage. Located at a technical university and with strong interdisciplinary connections to design, arts and humanities through part-time employees also at their "home" institutions, CID has good experience and capabilities to develop curricula and courses.