Background and experience
Fredrik Matheson is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Design at AHO, where he teaches courses in interaction design and digital product development.
He has worked as a designer and product manager in renewable energy, finance, manufacturing, public transit, infrastructure, aviation, telecoms, publishing, logistics, and in the public sector. He spent 18 years at Bekk, a consultancy in Oslo, where he helped deliver more than 60 large business-critical software development projects, built and led in-house design teams for clients, served as Creative Director, and more.
Fredrik has long been an active contributor to Norway's digital milieu, organizing conferences, hosting panels, giving talks, working on policy briefs. At IxDA Oslo, he has produced more than 170 events, including the UXEDU conference on the future of design education, and the Design Systems Day conference series.
When not teaching at AHO or working with clients, Fredrik co-hosts Knepp, a podcast published by Kampanje on how design and digitalization shapes society.
Fredrik holds a Master's degree in design from AHO, studied strategic design and new media at Aalto University in Helsinki, and technology entrepreneurship at the University of Oslo and the National University of Singapore. For more details, see his LinkedIn.
Areas of responsibility
Course responsible for 70 155 Design specialization 1: Interaction & service design, with Claire Dennington
Teaching
Fredrik currently teaches two courses at the Institute of Design:
- Graduate: DES4016 Interaction Design 2: Design for Digital Products (24 ECTS)
- Undergraduate: 70 155 Design specialization 1: Interaction & service design (18 ECTS)
During his consulting career, Fredrik also taught the pre-diploma course, ran multiple iterations of the interaction design specialization, and brought real-world cases from his clients to AHO courses. Having served as a longtime observer on the UHR Strategic Unit for Design Education, he is familiar with many of the challenges that students face when training to become interaction and service designers, and brings this awareness to his teaching.
Previously, as practice lead and personnel manager, Fredrik coached highly skilled designers and product managers, and was trained in a supportive and strength-based approach to skill development. Students can expect a welcoming and academically challenging atmosphere where we think big and get the details right, too.
His lectures combine practical how-tos with deep dives on technology, methods, and theory. Coursework alternates between hands-on production, reflection, and discussion.
Design borrows heavily from other fields. Knowing exactly where our methods and ideas come from lets us go directly to the source when we need to know more. Therefore, Fredrik's courses also provide introductions to:
- How people think and act, via HCI, cognitive and behavioural psychology
- How things get built and paid for, with cases from software architecture, economics, marketing and branding
- How actions are enabled or constrained, via topics from anthropology, sociology, political science, and law
- How we judge what we make, via topics from moral philosophy, aesthetics, and philosophy of technology
Outside AHO, Fredrik teaches professional designers how to use agents effectively in their work, while also reflecting on how this latest technology wave once again re-shapes what designers do, and what design is about.
Interested in having Fredrik as your diploma advisor at AHO? Contact him via email.