Dr. ing. Rozendaal, M.C.

Marco Rozendaal is Associate Professor of Interaction Design at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering.

Academic Background

Marco Rozendaal is Associate Professor of Interaction Design at TU Delft’s Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, where he directs the Expressive Intelligence Lab. With a background in interactive media, design and engineering, his research straddles multiple disciplines and combines practical, critical and methodological perspectives. Marco’s current work explores the design of new interaction styles and paradigms engendered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). He investigates AI from a relational perspective. Understanding that intelligence is more than a sum of computational capacities, Marco explores the way intelligence is expressed through objects, as something to interact with, and something that gains meaning in wider ecologies of people and things.

In his research, Marco applies Research-through-Design (RtD) as a research methodology: creating design concepts and prototypes that embody particular research questions, and which then are tested out as interventions in real-world settings. Concrete learnings from RtD are abstracted and presented as design knowledge—making both practical and theoretical contributions in Design—but can also lead to knowledge in other disciplines that have informed the design (i.e., social sciences, engineering sciences, or philosophy of technology). Within RtD, he combines methods from Theatre, Design and Engineering to investigating AI from a relational perspective and he is strongly committed to bringing design research to a broader audience through exhibitions and events.

As an interaction design researcher, Marco is active in Design, the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and in the growing field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). He has successfully initiated and lead four-year research projects on assistive technologies in physical rehabilitation, social work and stress-management. Marco is working on advisory boards and panels in the Netherlands and abroad. Marco served as Chair for international conferences, as workshop Chair for the Designing Interactive Systems conference (2018) and as Exhibition Chair for the Research Through Design conference (2019). He is an active member of the Delft Vision Team Robotics, the AI & Design Vision Group of the 4TU-Design United organisation and of the AI for Retail Lab (AIRLab).

Marco is co-editor of the 2021 book “Designing Smart Objects in Everyday Life: Intelligences, Agencies, Ecologies” together with Betti Marenko (CSM) and William Odom (SFU). This volume brings together a plethora of perspectives and approaches on AI, which highlight various relational and critical ways of understanding ‘smartness’. It shows how we can imagine, think about, and prototype, artificially intelligent products and systems, through such a relational and critical lens.

Education

2006
PhD, Dept. of Industrial Design, Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology.
2001
Interaction Design (B.Sc.). Utrecht School of the Arts, Faculty of Art, Media and Technology.

Experience

2021 – present
Associate Professor, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft
2013 – 2021
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft
2007 – 2010
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology
2006 – 2007
Researcher Design Aesthetics, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft