After 26 hours flight with stop in Abu Dhabi, I arrived safely in the city of Melbourne, Australia.
This is a picture taken from Albert Park, which is located opposite of my hotel:

 

I worked here as visiting Professor at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), the largest University in Melbourne with over 20.000 students. The following picture shows two of the many buildings, that belong to the RMIT University. RMIT is one of the largest owners of property in Melbourne city.

 

The following image shows the “Design-Hub”, which is the building I worked in. Everything is completely designed through and through. A lot of steel and glas. The circles repeat also inside the building (sometime making you dizzy when you look at some of the walls too much) and there are also invisible doors in the walls sometimes. I was really impressed.

 

At the RMIT I have been working together with Sven Krome and Steffen P. Walz and his colleagues on research projects in the area of vehicle entertainment and the driving experience. In this context I developed an iOS application that connects to an OBD-dongle attached to their Audi A8 and tracks speed and RPM while driving.

 

I also gave a lecture with the title: “Automotive App Design – Manufacturers Fears and Developers Hopes”.

 

I enjoyed the time in Melbourne very much. It was really great working here. Thanks very much to Steffen and his team who made this possible. Special thanks goes to Bianca Vallentine for organizing my schedule and the meetings with Martyn Hook (Dean of Media and Communication), Aleksandar Subic (Dean of Engineering), Larissa Hjorth (Deputy Dean Media and Communication) and last but not least Stefan Greuter (Director of the Center for Game Design Research). Thanks to all of them for their time and the very interesting conversations. I am looking forward to our ongoing and intensified collaboration with the RMIT University.