DeepBlue had the privilege of working with Jared Donovan extensively on our massive Robotronica closing performance collaboration, as well as the Garden of Minuscule Delights project which premiered at CreateX.

Dr Jared Donovan is a Senior Lecturer in Interaction Design in the School of Design at the Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology. He has an educational background in Illustration and Information Technology. His main research interests are in the areas of Gestural and Embodied Interaction, Participatory Design, Design Robotics and Performance Robotics. The main aim of his research is to find better ways for people to be able to interact with new interactive technologies. He is also interested in finding better ways to involve people in the design process, such as by employing ‘provotypes’ (provocative prototypes) to spark discussion and debate.

Jared graduated from Griffith University, Queensland College of Art with a Bachelor of Visual Arts in Illustration in 1996. Jared furthered his studies with an honours degree in Information Technology from The University of Queensland in 2001. Following this, he worked as a research assistant and completed a PhD on gestural interactions at The University of Queensland in 2011.

From 2007-2011 Jared worked as a research fellow at the University of Southern Denmark, including for three years at the SPRIE Centre for Participatory Innovation, where he contributed user-centred design approaches to an inter-disciplinary research institute combining innovation management, interaction analysis, design anthropology, participatory design and theatre. During this time, Jared co-led an international PhD short course on Design Anthropology and also co-edited the book Design and Anthropology.

Jared has been working at QUT in the School of Design since 2011, where he teaches in the Interactive and Visual Design discipline and is co-lead of the Design Fabrication research platform at the Design Lab.

Jared has been involved as co-director in the production of a number of creative performances combining robotics, dance, music and interactive and visual design. In 2015, he was co-director of the closing performance for the Robotronica event, which involved 50 custom built robots, musicians and dancers in a 45-minute performance. In 2016, he was again co-director of a robotic performance for the CreateX event.

Jared has taught into numerous undergraduate and graduate level courses including Interaction Design, Introduction to Web Design, Programming for Visual Designers, User Experience Design, Critical Design, Embodied Interactions, Theories of Human Computer Interaction, Tangible Media. He was the academic lead of the QUT Ars Electronica Futurelab Academy 2013-2016.