Design Expo 2017: Royal College of Art

Each year, Microsoft Research sponsors a semester-long class at leading design schools. Students are asked to form interdisciplinary teams of two to four students to design a user experience prototype that solves a real-world problem. From these groups, a representative team from each school presents their work at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington USA.

Design Expo began as a partnership between Microsoft and Apple to integrate technology into the curriculum of design schools worldwide. The goal is to build long term relationship with the design schools and build community across schools.

For example, one of our success stories is when ESDI (Brazil_ and TU Eindhoven (Netherlands) started an exchange program after the professors met at Design Expo. Some Design Expo students also go on to do great start-ups, such as the founder of Foursquare, Dennis, who was a student at NYU in Design Expo’s first year.

To date, around 50 design schools have participated, such as: RISD, Stanford, USC, UCLA, Bezalel (Israel), IDC (Israel), IIT Mumbai (India), NID (India), Tsingua (China), Hong Kong Polytechnic, Delft, UMEA, Dundee (Scotland), TU Einhoven, Iberamericano (Mexico), Northumbria and many more.

2017 Judges: Tom Furness, Refik Anadol, and Andy Wilson

Date:
Speakers:
Kaylene Kau
Affiliation:
Royal College of Art