About » who I am
Hi!
My name is Søren Madsen, and I'm a 31
year old web developer, communications designer
and musician from Århus, Denmark. In january
2003 I finished my diploma project at The
Aarhus School of architecture, so officially
my title is Cand. Arch. - but I'm not really
what one would normally expect from someone
who calls himself "architect".
To avoid confusion, I call myself "communications designer" nowadays. During my studies, I worked with everything from abstract , experimental (as well as conventional) building design and furniture design to conceptual human interface design, physical as well as virtual.
It took some nomadic years at the school,
to find out where to hang my coat - but
I finally settled at the Department of
Communications Design, where I spent
the last 2½ years
of my studies.
In an architectural environment,
terms such as "participatory design" and
"user centred design" were rarely heard,
and when I was introduced to these ways
of approaching design, a new world of methods
and tools opened to me.
The general consensus
at the department, was to avoid playing
the role as the almighty designer in
his ivory tower - but instead, through
patient analysis, iterative processes
(you do as good as you can - and then start
over) and participation of whoever you're
designing for, involve the end user in
the process. It's very simple actually
— the more light shed upon a given design
task, the more answers will reveal themselves
from the dark.
I've been introduced to, and worked
with, a wide array of tools and methods,
such as arranging workshops, video prototyping,
rapid prototyping, doing interviews,
conducting questionaires, video observation
and analysis, game based design etc.
— and I can proudly say that I understand
the terms above as more than the buzzwords
du jour.
I started working with Macromedia Flash in 1999,
and found it very useful for eg. fast interface
prototyping, and that became my introduction
to web design. I got an internship at Designit
A/S,
and here I got the chance to dig deeper into,
and further my experience with, web design
and development. I was immediatly hooked
on the more geeky sides of web development,
and learned myself ASP,
HTML and CSS. I've since refined my web design
skillset, with emphasis on accessible
XHTML/CSS based layouts.
I'm currently seeking employment or freelance
work — so please feel free to contact
me for further details, my resumé or
the dark secrets of yours truly.
And that is basically what I'm about these days. I'm not so serious and geeky all the time though - specifically not when I'm being a hopeful rockstar in spe, an avid foosball player and generally a lover of things done well.
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