How is Brussels? Well, it worths a city break for sure. The Grand Place, The Mannekin Pis, The Royal Palace, The European Commission, The Atomium, are interesting to see. This the only thing I saw in one day, with the mention that you can't climb the atomium after 5:30 pm :(. In the Grand Place you can participate at free guided tours, the one we took was about three hours walking and was pretty good. If I say two things I didn't like in Brussels would be that is not a clean city, and I do not feel safe alone on the streets after dark. Disclaimer: that is the first impression after one day of walking through the city and it could change in the future.

In Namur, I didn't have time to visit but of course I get 'lost' a bit and walked near the canal. It get me the impression of an rustic city.

Now, how was the conference? The main conferences were held in Theatre of  Namur, a fantastic building, where I spent the most of my time. 

The KIKK15 conference was an interesting event which somehow open up my mind to art. It’s more natural for me to think that design must be pragmatic, useful and goal oriented, but now I’ve seen that design can be related with fun and art. There were many studios or individuals who promoted their work, but I took it as a chance to expand my knowledge.

Yesterday I finished the first course "Introduction to multidisciplinary Interaction Design".  Three projects with two different teams in two months. Since at home this education system is not applied, I had to adapt quickly and it seems I did well. The first project aim was to learn how to do fieldwork, ethnographic research using different methods like: observations (different methods), interviews, questionnaires, in order to identify  a design problem and its design opportunities. The second was about video sketching and bodysorming, and how to use these methods to get creative when are you stuck, to analyze and understand better the interaction process behind an concept design. The last task focused on prototyping and how to validate a prototype. A protoype can be made of paper or other materials, a validation can be user testing or even better "fake it - Wizard of Oz".

During this course we had three tutoring sessions, after the projects presentation. It was a good idea, but personally I didn't find it very useful, because we talked mostly about my contribution to the group work. But each tutor has his own style, so this depends on people. 

After each project we had a wrap-up activity with another teacher where we discussed the group dynamics, how we worked as a process, which was our style, how we succeed to combine our varied work styles and personalities. This was one of the most useful and interesting activity which I loved at thos course. Maybe because the teacher was awesome too.

Regarding theory, the teachers gave us a few lectures in different steps of our projects for helping us move on with the projects when we were stuck. I may be tempted to say that their knowledge was presented to us too late, after we struggled with the projects or with our mistakes, and they could have helped us to avoid stress, conflicts, save time. But somehow I believed that we learn our lesson more quickly and profound by making the mistake first, and then having access to the right information.

All this time we had to read from all kind of sources and books, in order to understand deeply the design process. 

The books which were very useful for me were:

Designing for Interaction, Dan Saffer - for beginners, when you don't know how to start or to do in a design process

Sketching User Experiences, Bill Buxton - read together with the workbook

Also the Moggridge book "Designing Interactions" is a must, but mostly for understanding the evolution of Ixd and for inspiration, for learning from others people experiencess and success stories.