Today, at the H-Farm site in Cà Tron, just outside Venice, the graduation theses of the best new graduates from the 2009 Interaction Design course at Design and Arts College of IUAV will be presented.

This event seals an important deal between H-Farm and Gillian Crampton Smith and Philip Tabor, the directors of Interaction Design at IUAV, whose aim is to create an operative synergy between the University and the world of business where, on one hand, students are given the chance to get to know and get involved in a cutting-edge working environment in line with their studies, and, on the other, business has the chance to draw on new ideas and, especially, on highly-qualified resources to introduce into their companies.

This agreement was already informally put into practice last year when the best course graduates presented their theses and projects to the directors of the companies born in H-Farm: from this encounter various working collaborations came about, among which an incubation and transformation of one thesis into a business initiative resulted in the birth of a company based in the USA in May 2009. 
The Interaction Design course was founded and is now directed by Gillian Crampton Smith, and Philip Tabor. Gillian Crampton Smith is a philosophy graduate and pioneer in the field of interaction design, who has always been focused on projects regarding the interface between man and computer.  In 1990 founded the department of Computer Related Design at the prestigious Royal College of Art in London and 2000 she became the founding director of Interaction-Ivrea, an Institute for didactics and advanced research. In 2005 she founded the Interaction Design at the IUAV and has been its director ever since.
 

“Working with Gillian and Philip is an honour. In addition to developing with her through exchange on various subjects, we are able to take advantage of a group of students that has been exceptionally well-prepared, who come to us having already acquired real ideas about business,” says H-Farm founder Riccardo Donadon.
This fall, Gillian will be in charge of a series of workshops specifically focused on updating the H-Farm workforce with the latest in visual and digital communication.