The map in use: Students gather around the map to place markers beside their photographs and trace what happened where. Reflection moves from an open prompt to a specific point in the city.
Traces of interaction
Degree Project
2026
Traces of Interaction is an interaction design project that proposes three shifts in the discipline. The subject of design expands from two people in the same time and place to two students who will never meet, connected through a card one leaves for the other somewhere in the city. The role of the designer shifts from producing the final output to setting the conditions under which the participant produces it. And the material of design becomes everyday life itself, going for ice cream, picking up a child from school, visiting the library, the parts of living that goals and productivity overlook. These shifts take shape through the experience of adult migrants learning a second language in a new city, where the weight of an everyday interaction often has little to do with the language. The project proposes a teacher-operated activity cycle in which one student's trace, a photo and a clue left at a place in the city, becomes the next student's way in. Developed over four months with Taalarena in Genk, Belgium, and a network of teachers and coordinators in Umeå, Sweden.
UID26 | Lin Wang – Grad project presentation
Where the project began: A 134-person survey, six in-depth interviews, and a week of autoethnography surfaced the small moments where second-language interaction is hardest.
Returbutiken: Returbutiken, where migrants work and learn Swedish at the same time. The teacher had already built her own visual aids around the work: labels, price guides, ironing instructions.
Co-design workshop at Alidhem Språkcafé: The participants were not brought to a research site; the research was brought to a place they already came to every week. That shift carried the project from this point on.
Outputs from the Alidhem workshop: Migrants used photographs, clay, paper, and craft materials to build the places they knew and the small objects they would leave for the next person, turning their own experience into something a stranger could pick up.
Project identity: The visual language is built around paper, ink, stamps, and envelopes.
The teacher manual: A trifold brochure with the cycle diagram and a short introduction to each material.
Reflection markers: Eight small wooden tokens, placed beside a photograph on the map to mark what happened there.
The modular city map: Hexagonal cards with abstract symbols can be assembled into any place, indoor or outdoor. Students choose what each tile becomes at the start of every cycle.
The webpage: Students capture a trace as a stamp, search the global pool by mood rather than keywords, and travel to where each stamp was left to unlock its clue.
