Congratulations to our 2026 Graduates
With a transdisciplinary approach, our Postgraduate Programme in Design Research for Digital Innovation encourages students to reflect on emerging technologies to create sustainable impact. We are glad to celebrate Sofia Lelis, Zeynep Erol and Côme Brocas who have successfully graduated and obtained their Masters of Advanced Studies.
MountResilience by Côme Brocas
How can we facilitate dialogue, engagement, and decision-making in response to the challenges of water management and climate change in mountain regions? This replicable demonstrator from the European project MountResilience is the result of participatory and interdisciplinary research conducted in the heart of the Valais Alps. The web application brings together experts and the general public around three interconnected sections: relative indicators provide a shared overview of the situation in real time, participatory field observations foster engagement, and a catalog raises awareness of local solutions. The evaluative study of the tool identified several factors influencing engagement in the design of climate change adaptation solutions.
Sofra by Zeynep Erol
Sofra is a culturally adaptive conversational agent that supports dietary behaviour change by understanding how people relate to food. Developed within the European project SWITCH, it builds a personal food culture from pictures, mind maps, and voice notes that users provide to represent their everyday practices, motivations, and heritage. This profile shapes the agent’s tone and suggestions, moving guidance from generic to grounded in each person’s context. Developed through three user studies, the project shows how cultural resonance makes dietary support more relevant, respectful, and engaging. Combining interaction design and AI prompt engineering, it challenges universal approaches to health technology and advocates for systems that adapt to, rather than flatten, cultural differences.
Èvokâ II by Sofia Lelis
Èvokâ II is an interactive installation that invites visitors of the Cantonal and University Library of Fribourg to enter into dialogue with the archives. Through an AI-based conversational interface, a presence living within the collections gathers memories connected to the canton and, in return, reveals fragments, stories and traces of Fribourg’s heritage. This design research project explores how digital archives can become more accessible and resonant, questioning what connects us to a collective identity: places, emotions, stories and lived memories. Developed with the Swiss Data Science Center and supported by the Swiss National Library, Èvokâ II transforms archival consultation into an intimate experience, between personal memory and shared history.