Sanna Klefbom: With an interest in the relationship between culture, technology and design
Sanna Klefbom is an interaction designer with a humanistic background in culture, aesthetics and media. She is currently studying Interaction Design at Malmö University. Her interests lays foremost in the relationship between technology and culture, with a passion for feminist HCI and co-design.
1. What do you find exciting about technology right now?
This is a hard question as I think there are so many exciting aspects of technology that are just opening up for me. But something that I find really interesting is the ethical aspects related to technology's effects on ways of living, thinking, and being. At the moment I found these aspects interesting in relation to the rapid implementation of covid-19 related technology - to see how quick-fix solutions are opening up new long-term ways of doing things, but also to think of how it might lead to long-term consequences as the pandemic crisis forces us to put new technology into use without time for critical considerations.
2. Why or how did you choose this path?
I was introduced to interaction design when I studied my bachelor's in media, aesthetics, and culture. In a collaboration with researchers from RISE Research Institute of Sweden we were introduced to the relationship between design, culture, and critical thinking, and I realized that interaction design was a field that suited me perfectly, without me knowing that it even existed. After I graduated, I found the interaction design master program at Malmö University which felt tailored for my interest - and luckily, it was open for applicants even with a humanist background.
3. What has been your biggest mistake over the past year and what did you learn from it?
Definitely that I have been doubting myself a lot. I think the combination of fearing that my bachelor studies wouldn't lead to my true interests, and not knowing how to proceed with my career, made me doubt my choices and competencies. Too much self-doubt was a mistake as lack of competence obviously wasn't true and just drained a lot of unnecessary energy. The year ended with me realizing that my study background was exactly what I needed for my next step in my career.
4.What do you feel the proudest of in your career?
As mistakes often are followed by success, one of the proudest moments in my career came just after my time of doubt - when I was accepted to the interaction design master at Malmö University. It was a proud moment for me as I thought my competencies wouldn't lead to an accepted application.
5. What has been your favorite project so far and why?
A project called Probing Presence that was carried out together with four colleagues in my class. In the project, we wanted to explore perspectives on the perception of mediated presence. We explored this by bringing together soma design methods, digital prototyping, and feminist HCI. This project is my personal favorite so far as it opened up new questions and perspectives about design methods, ethics, bodies, and the human relationship to technology, as well as to new areas of design I had never before worked with such as microelectronics and code.
6. What do you imagine will happen in technology over the next five years and the next decade?
Getting back to the discussion about covid-19 related technology, I believe that the pandemic crisis will lead to a more critical, humanistic, and "slow" tech field in the decade to come. In response to the fast-changing time of the pandemic with rapid implementations of new unconsidered technological solutions in quick design processes, I imagine that we will see a contrast in the tech field with slow design processes that consider holistic long-term consequences of design, based on more diverse ways of living and being than the western way.
Follow Sanna's work here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanna-klefbom-6494b2190
Greater Spaces is written by Majken Overgaard and Vanessa Julia Carpenter where we work to expand the narrative of what technology is and who creates it. We speak with Danish and international female role models within technology and between these interviews we share what is most interesting to us, with a focus on diversity.
