EVENT
Overview
The OPEN X Design Lab is envisioned as a hub for interdisciplinary research, co-creation, design exploration, innovation, and collaboration. It aims to bridge creative disciplines and technologies, engaging faculty, students, and external partners in experimental and applied design research, advocating an overarching goal: “Crossing disciplines. Co-creating futures.”
Research Areas
- Co-creation / co-design / participatory design
- Inclusion / accessibility
- Design Thinking
- New roles of designers
- Digital narratives
The Lab hosts
- The SYN-CREATE research team: Tim Ward, Jennifer Nelson, Eirini Karamouzi, Metaxia Papageorgiou, Nassos Sopilis, Marina Emmanouil
- The IDEA (Immersive Design Experience for All) Hub faculty and researchers.
Mission
The OPEN X Design Lab cultivates an experimental and participatory environment that connects researchers / scholars / academics from an array of fields, technologists and the broader communities and public, to:
- Co-create new ideas through workshops, design sprints, hackathons, and collaborative prototyping.
- Foster participation and a culture of openness—where faculty, students, researchers, and community partners design with and not merely for others.
- Facilitate exchange between research and practice, bridging conceptual inquiry and tangible outcomes through storytelling, visualization, and interaction, and enabling iterative testing of ideas in immersive and participatory environments.
- Host the SYN-CREATE research team at RTIN (Research Technology and Innovation Network) and the IDEA Hub (Immersive Design Experience for All) at The American College of Greece, offering shared infrastructure for transdisciplinary research and creative experimentation. The IDEA Hub will serve as a critical bridge between research and extra-curricular teaching, supporting both exploratory prototyping and advanced digital fabrication.
- Support the upcoming MDes in UX/UI Digital Design by providing hands-on experience with immersive, user-centred, and experience-driven design methods in extra-curricular activities. The program will directly engage with the IDEA Hub, which is developing a shared equipment pool—including VR headsets, high-resolution projectors, and other immersive technologies—to enable experimental and practice-based learning.
Vision
To be a living laboratory where creativity, technology, and critical inquiry converge—an open arena for imagining, testing, and experiencing creative futures. The OPEN X Design Lab envisions a culture of co-creation that dissolves boundaries between art, design, research, and immersive technologies, inspiring the next generation of makers and thinkers in (digital) design and the creative arts.