Connecting curious minds — all around the world
Online — Sep 15th, 5pm CEST
CIID Connect is a monthly online event series bringing people together around ideas and conversations that shape the future of design for positive impact. Each session features designers, researchers, educators, technologists, artists and change-makers sharing their work, experiences and provocations.
This month we are opening the floor to our graduating students, who will share their Final Project work:
Hitesh Kukreja (India) — Story Bridge
Story Bridge is an immersive experience and service which reimagines the immigration bureaucracy encounter. It is built for foreign workers applying for residence permits in Bergamo and for the officials who review their cases and decide their document status.
Before applying in permit sanctioning offices like municipalities, the applicant shares her story with a mediator , in a calm space modeled on the work of existing unions and non-government organisations in Italy. That story transforms into an inspiring visual life-path, linked to her documents. At the municipal office, the visual appears in real time on the table at which conversations take place.
The visual becomes a catalyst for discussions about past, hopes for the future, challenges and dreams of immigrants. Without replacing any paperwork, Story Bridge turns a cold transaction into a moment of being seen as a person, not just a case file number.
Davide Airoldi (Italy) — ARS PRODIGII: The FitzRoy Machine
Inspired by Robert FitzRoy’s Storm Glass, this interactive installation explores climate change through wonder rather than conventional data visualisation. It reimagines a fictional 19th-century machine capable of revealing our planet’s climate across space and time.
Three rings enable you to select a Place, time, and sphere. Light, sound, and movement bring each combination to life, traveling from the Sahara to Antarctica, the Ice Age to the future, and from the atmosphere to the ocean. Designed for exhibitions and educational contexts, the machine uses curiosity as a starting point for learning.
Rather than simply giving answers, it creates questions: sparks that can ignite imagination, exploration and new ways of shaping the future. Because wonder is what drives us to discover what we once believed impossible.
Kabir Shrivastava (India) — Remora
Remora is a low-tech handheld device for noticing more, built on the provocation that serendipity grows out of curiosity and openness. It nudges you to see your surroundings differently using short, actionable prompts. Remora acts as a 'situationship' with your phone, a shark in the attention economy, provoking you to look up. It isn't a solution for distractions; it simply makes ignoring the world less automatic. Its focus is
to help you rediscover your surroundings.
It benefits those whose days feel repetitive or who struggle to act on their curiosity, granting permission to engage playfully in public.
The interaction is simple: shake it for a prompt. It works alone at a distance from your phone, training you to see from 'what is' to 'what could be'. It doesn't compete for your attention; it redirects it, growing more valuable as the community adds prompts.
Register for this and future CIID Connects via Eventbrite to join us online!
We look forward to seeing you there.
More dates for 2026
October 13
December 15
We're rotating the times to enable people from different parts of the world to attend so be sure to check which dates on Eventbrite fit your timezone best!
