Dear all
The Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) seeks excellent and motivated candidates for a fully funded PhD position (salary conditions below), on the topic of Collaborative Creative Design Platforms.
The PhD research will be carried out as part of a European project called CONCEPT. This project aims to support professional designers in Small and Medium Enterprises during the early conceptual stages of a collaborative design. Distributed collaborative design is a complex process, and the lack of appropriate computer support tools makes it difficult for Small to Medium Enterprise businesses, to bring new products to market, on time, and survive market competition. CONCEPT will develop a semantically driven collaboration framework to be integrated into future synchronous/asynchronous collaborative design environments, targeting professional product designers at SME’s when distributed during the early stages of the design process.
A number of research and technological challenges will be addressed, including the semantic integration of collaborative tools and data, effective methods for communication and interaction among distributed teams, group awareness, and the use of metaphors for conceptual design, etc., which have unique considerations and applications during early-stage product design.
The PhD candidate will be expected contribute towards:
* Understanding the needs of designers collaborating in distributed teams, and working within SME’s
* Designing applications to support collaborative design practices for distributed teams and supporting awareness between team members.
* Linking to industrial software development teams who will develop related solutions.
* Evaluating the developed solutions.
* The PhD candidate will work in collaboration with a team of academic staff and under the supervision of prof. Panos Markopoulos.
Requirements
: Candidates for this position should have a Masters in an area related to the field of Human Computer Interaction, preferably with skills in software development/engineering. Interest and prior experience in the specific areas of creativity, design tools, computer supported cooperative work, are very much valued. Candidates should have the interest and motivation to conduct empirical evaluations of interactive groupware applications. We seek candidates with good writing skills, the ability to work in multi-disciplinary and international teams, with a sincere scientific curiosity for studying collaborative creative design processes.
Appointment and Salary
: The appointment is for 4 years, starting after November 1, 2013 (starting date is negotiable, but an early start is preferred). The research in this project must be concluded with writing a PhD thesis. TU/e offers excellent employment conditions including excellent sport facilities and child care. At a full time position a salary is offered starting at € 2,083 per month (gross) in the first year and increasing up to EUR 2,664 per month (gross) in the last (4th) year. Moreover 8% bonus share (holiday supplement) and 8.3% bonus share (end-of-the-year allowance) are provided annually. Assistance for finding accommodation can be provided.
Further Information
: Further information about the project, if necessary, can be obtained from:
Panos Markopoulos (P dot Markopoulos at tue dot nl)
For information about the labour conditions you may contact the Personnel Department of Industrial Design:
• Ms. Gaby Jansen, phone: +31 (0)40 247 5883, e-mail [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
• Ms. Karlijn Le Comte - de Vries, phone: +31 (0)40 247 5336, e-mail [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Deadline for applications:
Please, send u your application (CV, motivation letter and portfolio with relevant design work) by using the “apply now button” on top of this vacancy before October 20th, 2013 and include vacancy code V51.1849.
About Industrial Design at TU/e
: The Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e, www.tue.nl) is one of Europe's leading research universities. The Eindhoven area, in the southern part of the Netherlands, is one of Europe's top 'innovation ecosystems', with many high-tech companies and institutes. TU/e works closely with many of these companies and institutes, and research at TU/e is characterized by a combination of academic excellence and industrial relevance.
The Department of Industrial Design (ID) of the TU/e, founded in 2001, is a rapidly growing and dynamic department with over 600 students, both Bachelor and Master, and around 80 research staff members and about 70 lecturers and supportive staff. ID focuses on intelligent products, systems, and related services in a societal context. These a priori innovative systems enable people to interact with the environment in an optimal and flexible way.
The TU/e ID engineer, who has developed a wide range of competencies during his/her education, is capable of integrating technology, user aspects, design and business/marketing insights. While the BSc is very much practice oriented, capable to deal with and aware of relevant issues as formulated by the industry and the society at large, the MSc is closer related to ongoing research. Ambient intelligence, social computing and health care and well-being draw special attention within TU/e and ID in particular and are considered a strategic research field.
For more information, see http://www.tue.nl/universiteit/faculteiten/industrial-design/
This position is situated within the User Centered Engineering (UCE) group. The UCE group is focusing on 'designing for user experience', which capitalizes on the group’s strong belief that the value of interactive systems lies in their ability to support and mediate user experiences rather than in the underlying technology or the physical artifact as such. Designing for user experience requires an understanding of interactive systems at all levels: form (how the system looks and interacts) and function (what the system can do) should follow from insight (why the system can help people to satisfy their needs).
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