Five years' experience from CID: an interdisciplinary competence centre for design of usable interactive IT applications

The Centre for user oriented IT Design (CID) at the Royal Institute of Tech nology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden was established in 1995. CID brings toget her researchers and designers from computer science, arts, media and commun ication, and human sciences with industry and user organizations. The focus is on the design and study of usable, interactive IT applications, integra ting usability aspects, technical aspects and aesthetic aspects. The main t hemes of CID's activities are Connected communities, Interactive learning e nvironments, Forms of interaction and User orientation, the latter which is also a central aspect of the work in the other areas. In this paper, exper ience from the first 5 years of CID is described and discussed.