Teaching
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2025 - 2026
Making with data (the class) - with Design (ENS) and Engineering student (IGD)
Physical representations of data predate the invention of written language. While the contemporary concept of data did not yet exist, early humans externalised their memory by encoding quantitative or qualitative values in physical objects. Over the following millennia, physical representations of data enabled humans to record, reflect, reason and make decisions about the world in new and profound ways. The creation of data objects is far from a lost art, and the explosion of new manufacturing technologies has also introduced an ever-wider range of physical tools to support thought and communication.
We are now in an era where data is an increasingly visible part of our daily existence, and a growing number of artists, designers, makers, and ordinary people are actively exploring the possibilities of making data physical.
This course will give students the opportunity to reflect on how data can be encoded and manipulated in physical objects. The course will begin with a brief historical introduction, followed by some insights into the practices used by contemporary designers and some considerations on design.
The main objective of the course will be to create a physical object to encode data during a collective action or to represent an existing data set. This course will be based on the recently published book ‘Making with Data’.
Design sprint - with ZJU university student (MSIE program) and Athens Network
Cartography of the futures - with ENS students and Telecom Paris Student
Contemporary projections on possible futures are paradoxical, on one side transhumanism, on the other side collapsology, between the two climate changes. On the one hand, there is an injunction to the energy transition, on the other hand, an injunction to the ecological transition, and between the two, a questioning of their compatibility. How can we study and graphically represent all the scenarios that make up our future projections?
This workshop is dedicated to this question and will take place in three parts: 1) theory of visual mapping, 2) conferences on futures, 3) design of a map of possible futures. The theoretical part will be composed of lectures on the principles of graphical data analysis, on temporal data visualization, and a quick overview of data visualization tools. This is followed by a series of lectures by researchers interested in prospecting, speculative design, and analysis of futuristic scenarios. Following these theoretical contributions, you will be led to collectively create a map of possible futures, based on your cultural or scientific references.
This workshop will allow participants to acquire a basic knowledge of graphic data representation methods, and will also provide a space to discuss different prospective scenarios and to design new graphic representations dedicated to this issue.
Critical User Experiences - (HSS_5ID30_TP)
Over the last century, engineers, researchers, and designers have worked to develop visions, products, and services that make digital technologies accessible to a broad public. We benefit from these decades of technological development in our everyday lives by using computational tools to think, communicate, exchange, and work in both private and public contexts. The process of centering design around the needs and experiences of individual and collective users has proven effective in producing usable and impactful digital systems.
However, we increasingly observe that many industrial actors design digital technologies not to prioritize the interests of their users, but rather those of other stakeholders. At the same time, the large-scale deployment of digital technologies has generated significant ethical, legal, moral, and societal challenges. While digital technologies have been among the most powerful accelerators of human connection and access to knowledge, they have also become major disruptors of contemporary societies.
These disruptions include the use of deceptive design practices and dark patterns; the manipulation of democratic processes through social networks; the proliferation and interdependence of digital services; the environmental impact of digital infrastructures; the transformation of labor (e.g., platform-based work, uberization, and microtasks); and the increasing surveillance by both public and private actors, alongside the large-scale capture of personal data.
The Critical User Experience course seeks to address and analyze these issues from multiple perspectives, including design, sociology, and ethnography. The course is structured as a series of lectures and invited talks focused on contemporary challenges in digital design.
Prior to each lecture, students are invited to identify issues and power imbalances in their own user experiences or in current media. During the lectures, they engage in discussions with invited speakers. Afterward, students are asked to generate and sketch provocative concepts (provotypes) or to explore potential solutions through prototyping. During the final two weeks of the course, students further develop one selected prototype or provotype in preparation for a public presentation and user testing. The course concludes with an exhibition showcasing the resulting prototypes and provotypes.