Studio Director, Dr. Arch.
Ambra Trotto's fascinations lie in how to empower ethics, through design, using digital and non digital technologies as materials. Strongly believing in the power of Making, Ambra works with makers, builders, craftsmen, dancers and designers to shape societal transformation. Within her design research activity, she produces co-design methods to boost transdisciplinary design conversations.
A tortuous path brought her from a little town in the province of Bologna, Italy, up to Umeå. From architecture, studied at the University of Florence, she slowly but certainly drifted towards interaction design. She fell for it at the Eindhoven University of Technology, where she defended her PhD thesis in 2011. She currently leads the Umeå studio of RISE Interactive, where they design the Unexpected for their partners.
Ambra is also associate professor at the Umeå School of Architecture, where she chairs the research coucil and she is representative for equal opportunities. She closely collaborates with the Designing Quality in Interaction group of the Eindhoven University of Technology.
Marti, Patrizia and Peeters, Jeroen and Trotto, Ambra and Tittarelli, Michele and True, Nicholas and Papworth, Nigel and Hummels, Caroline (2015) Embodying Culture: Interactive Installation on Women's Rights. First Monday Journal, April 2015 .
Trotto, Ambra (2012) Civic Forges: co-design platforms based on people's skills. In: Trend book Dutch Design Week 2012. Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven. ISBN 978-94-90350-32 (In Press)
Höök, Kristina and Hummels, Caroline and Isbister, Katherine and Marti, Patrizia and Marques Segura, Elena and Jonsson, Martin and Mueller, Florian 'Floyd' and Sanches, Pedro and Schiphorst, Thecla and Ståhl, Anna and Svanaes, Dag and Trotto, Ambra and Graves Petersen, Marianne and Lim , Youn-kyung (2017) Soma-based Design Theory. In: CHI2017, 6-11 May, Denver, Colorado.
Peeters, Jeroen and Kuenen, Stoffel and Trotto, Ambra and Hummels, Caroline (2014) DiffractMe - Using A Skills-Based Approach in Design Practice. In: KEER 14 - Kansei Engineering & Emotion Research Conference, Linköping, Sweden.
Trotto, Ambra and Hummels, Caroline (2013) Designing in Skills - Nurturing Personal Engagement in Design. In: 5th International Congress of International Association of Societies of Design Research, 26 -30 August 2013, Tokyo, Japan. (In Press)
Trotto, Ambra and Hummels, Caroline (2013) Designing in Skills Nurturing Personal Engagement in Design. In: IASDR 2013, 26-30 August 2013, Tokyo, Japan.
Trotto, Ambra and Hummels, Caroline (2013) Engage me do. Engagement Catalysers to ignite a (Design) Conversation. In: DPPI 2013, the 6th international conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 3-5 September 2013, Newcastle, UK.
Hummels, C. C. M. and Trotto, Ambra (2013) Hephaestus and the senses. In: CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '13), Paris, France.
Marti, P. and Trotto, Ambra and Hummels, C. C. M. and Peeters, J. (2013) Instilling cultural values through bodily engagement with human rights. In: Proceedings of CHItaly, 16-19 September 2013, Trento, Italy.
Trotto, Ambra and Fallman, Daniel (2013) Shaping the Absence An Architectural Perspective for Interaction Design. In: ASDR 2013, The 5th World Conference on Design Research, 16-30 August 2013, Tokyo, Japan.
Trotto, Ambra and Tittarelli, Michele (2012) Musical Viruses for graceful seduction. In: NORDICHI, October 2012, Copenhagen.
