Author: Gillian Crampton Smith

Having studied philosophy and history of art at Cambridge University, Gillian Crampton Smith spent the 1970s as a designer - first in book publishing, then on the Sunday Times and Times Literary Supplement.

In 1981, she designed and implemented a page layout program to help her with magazine design - an early desktop publishing application. This experience convinced her that artists and designers have an important role to play in creating information technologies.

She joined St Martin\'s School of Art in 1983 where she set up a new postgraduate course in graphic design and computers for practising designers. In 1989 she moved to the Royal College of Art (the UK\'s only purely graduate school of art and design).

At the RCA, she established the Computer Related Design Department, where artists and designers apply their traditional skills to interactive products and systems. Under her guidance, the CRD Research Studio achieved an international reputation as a leading centre for interaction design, supported by a wide range of industrial and government sponsors. She has collaborated in the development of teaching and research programmes with organisations in various countries, and for seven years spent her summers in Silicon Valley working for Interval Research and Apple Computer.

In 2000 she was involved with a group of people setting up Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Northern Italy, a centre for graduate education and reserach entirely dedicated to inteaction design, sponsored by Olivetti and Telecom Italia. She became its first director in 2001. The Institute gained a worldwide reputation, drawing students, professors and visiting lecturers from all over the world.

In 2006 she moved to IUAV University of Venice where, with Philip Tabor, she set up a new programme in Interaction Design in the Faculty of Design and Arts.