DAMIANO GUI
Interaction designer at Makr Shakr
www.makrshakr.com
BIOGRAPHY
Damiano took his first degree in Modern Literature, meanwhile teaching himself video-making and design skills. In 2010, he entered the Masters in Visual and Multimedia Communication Design at IUAV, focusing on interaction design. In 2012 he joined the MIT Senseable City Lab in Boston as a visiting student, working with data visualisation and interface design. His master graduation thesis on personalised and responsive maps was awarded by MIT Technology Review and the Lucky Strike Talented Designer Award. Since 2014 he is responsible for interaction design at Carlo Ratti Associati and Makr Shakr.
SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED - HOW TO INTERACT WITH ROBOTIC BARTENDERS
Robots are coming. We might eat them or wear them, they might take our jobs, replace us, or they might help us build a more efficient and comfortable world.
The key is if, and how, we will be able to interact with them.
Makr Shakr is not just a pair of smartphone-controlled, shaker-handed industrial robotic arms mounted on a fully-automated cocktail bar. It’s one of the first examples of a high-tech robot whose control has been simplified and made accessible to normal users outside of a factory.
During the talk, I will explore the difficulties, limits and opportunities of such new interactions, going through all the design phases that brought Makr Shakr from the concept of an MIT lab to the Google I/O party in 2013 and to the successful permanent installation on four different cruise ships and several events around the world.