The goal of the Microsoft Research Design Expo 2004 is to support open collaboration between the design and computer science academic communities, and Microsoft Research. The Design Expo is hosted by the Social Computing Group in Microsoft Research, and is an event within the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit.

This year, the expo topic was "People-to-people, from close friends to strangers." Invited schools held a semester long course which focused on a user centric design/rapid prototyping design process. A liaison from Microsoft gave feedback to each school over the course of the class. One student team per schools was selected by the university to present their project at Microsoft. Lili Cheng (Social Computing Group, Microsoft Research) and Joy Mountford (formerly of Interval Research/Apple Computer) organized the event. Rob Girling and David Gilmore from IDEO gave feedback to the students.

The links to projects sites and presentations at Microsoft are also linked below.

Design Expo participants are listed below. View overview/intro video View summary video

New York University (USA), Interactive Telecommunications (Chair Red Burns, Sergio Canetti, Dan O'Sullivan)
Student team: Dmitri Negroponte, Daniel Kantor, Anne Clark, Izabela Staicut
Project: Awaire - a peer to peer music network that uses you, your location, and your music library to connect you to other via your mobile device.
Microsoft liaisons: Sally Barton, Lili Cheng

Delft University (Holland), Industrial Design Engineering (Froukje Sleeswijk Visser, Daniel Saakes)
Student Team: Maarten Brinke, Carolien Postma, Caspar van Roosmalen, Chi Kwong Yeung, Marion de Groot
Project: Plus - social software for the elderly
MSFT liaison: Tjeerd Hoek

Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Design (Elainne Jobim, Director Rudolfo Capeto, Gabriel Patrocinio)
Student team: Joana Koiller, Isabel K. Alder, Yael Dickstein
Project: Xperience - creates and distributed layered multimedia messages to share personal experiences and emotions
Microsoft liaisons - Debbie Cargile, Andy Cargile
View ESDI/Xperience presentation

Bezalel (Israel), Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem (Head of Industrial Design- Ezri Tarazi)
Student team: Noa Sabar, Yuval Saar, Dvir Deitch, Iris Shoor, Shai Ben-Shoshan, Tamar Rappaport
Project: Memory Box - a new metaphor for a messaging system for creating, reading and searching your memories
Microsoft liaisons: Hillel Cooperman, Yarom Boss
View Bezalel/Memory Box presentation

Indian Institute of Technology (Bombay/Mumbai, India), Industrial Design Centre (Prof B.A. Ravi Poovaiah, Ajanta Sen)
Student team: Samraat Sardesai, Anchal Kumar, Peter Joseph
Project: Jello - physical computing device for children with Cerebral Palsy
Microsoft liaisons: Laurie Vertelney, P. Anandan, Susan Yee

University of Southern California (USA), Interactive Media (Dept Chair Scott Fischer, Perry Hoberman)Student team: William Carter, Todd Furmanski, Kurt MacDonald, Tripp Millican
Project: Patholog - fosters new relationships between communities of users and their environments via a path-based publishing system, based upon GPS tracking
Microsoft liaison: Curtis Wong, Steve Drucker

Microsoft Research Design Expo 2003:

The first Microsoft Research Design Expo was held by the Social Computing Group together with the University Relations Group. We have invited 4 schools to participate in the expo, each held a course in Spring of 2003, and one student team from each school was selected to show their project at Microsoft on the topic "Sharing Personal Media." Joy Mountford moderated the presentations and helped to coordinate the event.

Delft University (Holland), Industrial Design Engineering ( P.J Stappers, A. I Keller) Student Team: Dennis Luijer, Pieter Diepenmaat, Maarten Bekx, Wouter van der Hoog Project: Mama's Boys: Shared family memories -mothers and sons http://studiolab.io.tudelft.nl/msrde

Indian Institute of Technology, (Bombay, India) (Ravi Poovaiah, Ajanta Sen) Student team: Rambrijesh J, Rashmin Raj A, Anupama Kamat J Project: Jodo - dispersed families http://www.idc.iitb.ac.in/share/

New York University (USA), Interactive Telecommunications (Red Burns, Sergio Canetti, Dan OSullivan) Student team: Dennis Crowley, Alex Rainert, Ron Goldin, Giselle Leal Project: Modus: building a better jukebox - one that enables the sharing, discovery & distriubiton of music in public spaces http://www.itp.nyu.edu

Carnegie Mellon (USA), HCII and School of Design (Dan Boyarski, Jodi Forlazzi) Student team: Ian Hargraves, Ben Fineman, Bella Rockwell, Fleming Seay, Courtney Mongell, Anne Iasella Project: Hearty Breakfast a digital dive log and collective space http://www.goodgestreet.com/studio