I recently stumbled across some information about an interesting-looking project, Communicating with Emotions, conducted by Bilgi Karan, a student at the Institute of Design here in Umea. In this project, Bilgi explores notions such as presence, engagement and emotionality and uses his findings to suggest a design for a new mobile communications medium. To give one example of a neat feature, this device incorporates the IM function to indicate availability.

I find it extremely inspiring to see the development from idea to final product in an area of research which is quite closely related to mine! The final overview of the project shows that it lasted only 23 weeks, which makes the results seem even more impressive.

Dina Mehta links to an amazing collection of links for “Everything Web 2.0″. I certainly have some catching up to do! One way to start would be by signing up for this HUMlab course on the topic, taking place later on this month…

Update: Hmmm. Apparently I’m not the only one in need of some Web 2.0 advice… The course is already fully booked, and so I’m on the list of reserves. Maybe I’ll just have to get my overview by working my way through the list of links instead – sounds like fun, but a bit time consuming.