HyperStudio and HyperWerk: Two collaborating institutions

HyperStudio, an interactive media research and production center, has been existing since 1992 and is able to look back to an extensive work in domains as large as CD-ROMs, intranet, web sites, where its high quality design led it to win a number of internationally acclaimed media prizes. Since 3 years, HyperStudio domain of competence has concentrated in the design of innovative and user-friendly interfaces and in the production of convincing and attractive learning tools. HyperStudio's involvement in European and Swiss research projects along with the experiences gained from commercial media productions are decisive for the high standard of its accomplishments. The limited company HyperStudio is exclusively owned by the HyperForum foundation.

Both in 1998 and 1999 productions of HyperStudio were nominated for the EuroPrix Multimedia, and our productions have won many international design competitions. The last 2 years, reactions and inspirations have been fostered by a series of events called incubator, while the principle of researchers in residence helps to establish international contacts. HyperStudio is embedded with valuable partners from the media-business, such as a video production house and a radio station. All these partners share the same buildings and tools.

For the Basel Mission Picture Archive project, HyperStudio has set since 3 years an interdisciplinary team working together with the Mission 21 team. Together they faced and solved many exciting challenges.

HyperWerk is a department of the Basel University of Applied Science in Switzerland. HyperWerk confronts itself with the many challenges of knowledge acquisition, knowledge organization and knowledge retrieval. Since spring 1999 HyperWerk offers a three-year course of fulltime graduate studies with a special focus on the quality, the content, the structure, the design, the organization and the tools of teamwork. HyperWerk is organized similarly to a theatrical production; the fascinating idea behind HyperWerk is based on enactment, documentation, analysis and optimization of scenarios with and around the use of team tools. These are being developed and evaluated accordingly.
For HyperWerk we have established an interdisciplinary team of 75 students of utmost competence. The average age is around thirty, and everybody brings a lot of input in the form of professional experience and a great interest in innovative ways of learning. Within this team there are educators, engineers, graphic and set designers, software developers, managers and accountants. We have been involved and are presently participating in several national and European research projects (for instance since October 2001 IST: The Shop-Lab-Network for Test and Design of Hybrid Shop Environments based on multi-modal Interface Technology).

Contact

HYPERSTUDIO- HYPERWERK/ FHBB