MSc. Buso, A.

Alice Buso is a PhD candidate in Animated Textiles at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Her research investigates the experience of Animated Textiles, which are textiles with active and responsive capabilities by means of textiles' inherent properties or by embedding digital, physical and biological components. Alice is intrigued by potentially rich experiences elicited by animated textiles, particularly their action potential in the use time, i.e., their performativity. She explores how these performative experiences are designed by tuning the qualities of animated textiles at matter, form, composition, and computation levels toward meaningful and prolonged relationships with textile artefacts.

Alice follows a hands-on material-driven approach which combines intimate making and systematic exploration of textiles' performativity in laboratory and longitudinal user studies. Her work contributes to design and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) communities by providing a vocabulary, techniques, and unique research artefacts to inspire and help explore this exciting and complex design space of animated textiles.

Academic Background

Alice Buso obtained a Bachelor's in Product Design from Politecnico di Torino, Italy. In 2017 she moved to the Netherlands to pursue a Master's in Integrated Product Design at Delft University of Technology. In her MSc thesis, in collaboration with BMW, she designed a soft robotic sensing and actuating unit for autonomous vehicle seats to improve their comfort. After graduating in 2019, she further worked on the project as a researcher in the Department of Sustainable Design Engineering.

Alice currently works on her PhD research within the same department, in the Materials Experience Lab and the Emerging Materials Lab.

Education

• 2020 – present
  PhD candidate – Animated Textiles, Delft University of Technology
• 2017 – 2019
  MSc Integrated Product Design, Delft University of Technology
• 2013 – 2016
  BSc Design and Visual Communication, Product Design, Politecnico di Torino
• 2015
  Erasmus+ program, Elisava - Barcelona School of Design and Engineering

Experience

• 2019 – 2020
  Researcher, Delft University of Technology
  Research and development of soft robotic technology to improve seat comfort
• 2018 – 2019
  Graduate student, BMW
  Master's graduation project. Thesis title: "Improving comfort of autonomous vehicle seats with soft robotic technology"
• 2018
  Industrial Design Intern, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
  Embodiment design of the briefing concept "Blue Connect" for the renovation of KLM Crew Centre in Schipol Airport
• 2016
  Product Design intern at King Kong Design, Barcelona