Chris Hand

Current

Lecturer in Design at Edinburgh Napier University
Freelance Interaction Designer at mungbean (Self-employed)

Past

Interaction Design Workshop Atelier Leader at University of Split, Croatia
Lecturer, Interactive Media Design at University of Dundee
Freelance Digital Media Designer/Producer and Consultant at mungbean media

Lecturer at FTMS-De Montfort University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Lecturer, Computer Science at Napier University
Senior Lecturer, Computer Science at De Montfort University
Software Design Engineer at Marconi Instruments Ltd

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4 more...

Education

Royal College of Art
Telford College, Edinburgh
The University of Manchester

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Recommended

2 people have recommended Chris

Connections

157 connections

Industry

Design

Websites

Chris Hand’s Summary

Technologist, educator and designer building on a broad multidisciplinary base of interaction design, prototyping, digital media, teaching and research.

Chris Hand’s Specialties:

Working in an interdisciplinary environment. Hacking. Open source hardware and software.

Technical: Interaction Design. Programming, Digital Electronics, Audio/music tech. Physical Computing, Sensor-based Systems. Web Tech.

Design: Concept development, scenario design & storyboarding, design as critique, forecasting/foresight. UI, web, information architecture.

Academic environment: Research, Authorship, Project Management. Teaching, Training, Workshops. Curriculum development.

Chris Hand’s Experience

Lecturer in Design

Edinburgh Napier University

(Educational Institution; Higher Education industry)

March 2008 — Present (1 year 5 months)

Lecturer in School of Arts and Creative Industries, teaching across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate Design courses.

Lead curriculum development and Programme Leader for new BDes (Hons) Interaction Design course launching in September 2009.
Freelance Interaction Designer
mungbean (Self-employed)

(Self-Employed; Myself Only; Design industry)

July 2007 — Present (2 years 1 month)

Specialising in the design and development of interactive products, services and systems, with particular emphasis on prototyping and physical computing.

Recent clients include Intel, Dunne & Raby and Michael Anastassiades. Visiting positions include Electronics Tutor at Royal College of Art, Lecturer at University of Edinburgh and Design Researcher at Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.
Interaction Design Workshop Atelier Leader

University of Split, Croatia

(Higher Education industry)

March 2009 — March 2009 (1 month)

Building on previous experience with the European Convivio network, and its own series of summer schools, the University of Split in Croatia hosted a week-long Interaction Design workshop for students from Rijeka, Split, Zadar and Zagreb.

Along with Interaction Designer Marc Owens from the UK I was one of 2 atelier leaders, facilitating a group of 13 students from varying backgrounds including Computer Science, Graphic Design and Anthroplogy. The week was spent working on a single design brief, moving through the entire project lifecycle from identifying themes and issues to concept generation, prototyping and final delivery of projects relating to students own experiences of - and hopes for - technology-enhanced learning.

http://www.umas.hr/dvk/interactions/workshop2009/
Lecturer, Interactive Media Design

University of Dundee

(Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Higher Education industry)

September 2003 — September 2005 (2 years 1 month)

Full-time lecturer and researcher. Member of small team led by Catriona Macaulay, developing and delivering a new 4-year BSc course in Interactive Media Design. Inter-disciplinary approach bringing together staff and modules from Design and Computing.

Developed and delivered studio-based design modules on physical computing and sensor-based interaction, using Max/MSP and Basic Stamp.
Freelance Digital Media Designer/Producer and Consultant

mungbean media

(Media Production industry)

August 2000 — August 2003 (3 years 1 month)

Various short-term contracts including digital media design and production, sound design, soundtrack composition, web design, design/programming of promotional CD-ROMs, video production & post-production, graphic design for print.

During this time also studied full-time: German in Berlin, and Art & Design Foundation in Edinburgh.
Lecturer

FTMS-De Montfort University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

(Higher Education industry)

2000 — 2002 (2 years)

Intensive delivery (12 units over 2 weeks) in Kuala Lumpur of final-year BSc Computing modules on Web Application Development and Multimedia Architectures. On 5 occasions, in English.

Topics included XML, XSLT, JSP and SQL. Revision classes conducted by ISDN video-conference from UK.
Lecturer, Computer Science

Napier University

(Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Higher Education industry)

July 1998 — August 2000 (2 years 2 months)

Full-time lecturer and researcher in HCI Group led by Prof David Benyon. Research and teaching centred on Virtual Environments, Digital Media Technology and Usability.
Senior Lecturer, Computer Science

De Montfort University

(Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Higher Education industry)

September 1990 — July 1998 (7 years 11 months)

Full-time lecturer and researcher in School of Computing Sciences. Promoted to Senior Lecturer in August 1993. Focussed on Multimedia, Hypermedia, Virtual Environments and 3D Interaction.

Set up the university's first Web server in Sept 1993, when there were only about 200 servers in the world. Departmental evangelist for the Web (and later Java) and ran a number of staff development/training courses on these.

Founder, with Mark Skipper, of the MOO Research group looking at social and software engineering issues within text-based multi-user virtual environments. Between the two of us we did all tech development and organising of the world's first virtual trade exhibition on the Internet, supported by IBM, in January 1995.

Member of Imaging and Displays Research Group, led by Ian Sexton. Co-founder of UK Virtual Reality Special Interest Group (UK VR-SIG) with Robin Hollands and Sean Clark in 1993.
Software Design Engineer

Marconi Instruments Ltd

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

July 1987 — August 1990 (3 years 2 months)

C/UNIX system software development for Automatic Test Equipment.

Lived and breathed C and UNIX (BSD) for 3 years, and learned more about programming than I ever did at university. I still use Emacs.

Chris Hand’s Education

Royal College of Art

MA Design Interactions , 2005 — 2007

2-year Master's course (formerly Interaction Design), using design to examine and comment on the relationships between people, technology and society.

Awarded Distinction for dissertation "Embodiment and the Everyday - Forces shaping the evolution of Ubiquitous Computing".
Telford College, Edinburgh

Advanced Certificate in Art & Design (Foundation) , 2001 — 2002
The University of Manchester

BSc (Hons) , Computer Engineering , 1984 — 1987

A mix of Electronic Engineering, Computer Science & Software Engineering. Final-year project was a real-time video processor implemented entirely in high-speed TTL logic (collaboration with Alister Jones).

Sponsored by Marconi Instruments Ltd in final year.

Additional Information

Chris Hand’s Websites:

Chris Hand’s Interests:

socially and culturally situated perspectives on technology, embodied interaction, physical computing, web2.0, social software, open source hardware, fair trade media, performance, musical composition, sound design, DJing, music technology, gigging, percussion, trombone.

Chris Hand’s Groups:

Design Research Society, British Computer Society (MBCS), Chartered Engineer - Engineering Council (CEng), BCS HCI Specialist Group (1996-2000), UK Virtual Reality Specialist Group (Co-founder, 1993-2000), ACM (student member).