Piotr Michura

Dr. Piotr Michura is an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Communication Design, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Previously, he has been appointed an Associate Professor at the Department of Design Fundamentals, Faculty of Industrial Design, Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland. He is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland (MFA in Visual Communication Design 2001, PhD in Design 2012) and the University of Alberta, Canada (MDes in Visual Communication Design 2008). In 2015 he received the Fulbright Senior Advanced Research Award to pursue research at the Institute of Design IIT Chicago.

Piotr has been involved in research projects at the Mount Royal University in Calgary (Canada), the Institute of Design IIT in Chicago, the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (USA), and Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS) in Porto Alegre, Brasil. Since 2006 he has been continuously cooperating in international research projects (NORA, MONK, INKE, PlotViz) working in the area of digital humanities as a visualization and interface designer.

Piotr’s PhD research was on experimental visualizations for interaction with electronic documents for humanities researchers. He further developed his research agenda and professional work in the areas of information design, interaction design, and text visualization design. One of the major themes was “conversation modeling,” which involved the design of interfaces (digital as well as tactile/3D) facilitating critical conversations people have. The analyses of conversational exchange have become a testbed for new insights into interaction design issues. Piotr’s current focus is on the intersection of systems theory, second-order cybernetics, and design.

Piotr engages in projects as a freelance design practitioner in exhibition design, book and interface design. He has been cooperating with several major cultural institutions in Poland, including the National Museum in Krakow, the Dr. Tytus Chalubinski Tatra Museum in Zakopane, and the Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum in Krakow.

He has been a world regional representative of the International Institute for Information Design (IIID) for Poland and a member of the Systemic Design Association (SDA). He is a co-founder and an editor of a Polish design journal Formy, www.formy.xyz.