A birdseye view of the Exposjoo 2024, a building filled with students, professionals and teachers — 📸 Merten Foto

Exposjoo 2025

Just like last academic year, we want to close this academic year with the Exposjoo: an evening in which we proudly present the student work of the Associate Degree Frontend Design and Development, the Master Digital Design and the Bachelor Communication and Multimedia Design.

In addition, our lecturers as well as the Centre for Applied Research (Faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industries) will give a number of short talks with updates from our field. We will also give our external industry partners the opportunity to get in touch with our students and teachers this evening. In this way, we bring education, research and business around digital design and development together in the Theo Thijssenhuis.

Communication and Multimedia Design

The digital world has a huge impact on everyone’s life. Booking holidays, ordering taxis and having festival tickets scanned at the entrance: we do almost all of it digitally. Digital products are interwoven with our everyday lives. That is why the world needs skilled and critical designers. Designers who keep asking questions, who dare to say no when necessary and who know how to realise their ideas. We train critical designers who determine and question our digital future. How we commemorate. How we become more sustainable. How we build communities. How we buy and how we eat.

Our students design digital, interactive products. These can include apps, websites, but also tangible installations, augmented and virtual reality applications. Topics such as user-friendliness, privacy, accessibility, inclusivity and sustainability play an important role in this.

CMD Amsterdam

Frontend Design and Development

At FDND, we are very proud of our student's work, over the last year they worked on long-term projects for real clients, such as Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Ziekenhuis, Amsterdam Vervoerregio and Buurtcampus Oost. They also made proof of concepts for various design agencies, such as iO Digital, Q42, Triple, The Valley and Future Ready Design.

Our students create robust websites and web applications based on the latest web technologies with a focus on accessibility and performance!

FDND

Two people looking proudly at student work — 📸 Merten Foto

Master Digital Design

The Master of Science programme in Digital Design is a one-year full-time programme divided into two specialist tracks: Interaction Design and Digital Fashion Technology.

It educates design professionals in tackling some of the world’s biggest challenges through a critical and ethical design approach with a focus on planet-centred and sustainable practices. From over-consumerism to energy transition. We empower students to challenge the status quo of tech promises, question the norm, and seek innovative perspectives beyond conventional design tools.

Master Digital Design

A man with a virtual reality headset moving his hands — 📸 Merten Foto

Centre for Applied Research

The Centre for Applied Research of Digital Media & Creative Industries (FDMCI) researches the societal impact of digital media, new technologies, and design. Our goal is to contribute to a sustainable, inclusive, and innovative society where digital technology and creativity converge to address societal challenges.

We support future creative professionals by equipping them with the knowledge, skills, and mindset to drive positive change. Our practice-oriented research focuses on the creative industries and the impact of (digital) media, technologies, and design on society. We embrace the university-wide themes of sustainability, diversity & inclusion, and digitalization as guiding principles. Our forward-looking approach, with a strong emphasis on ethical and ecological values, connects education, practice, and research.

Centre for Applied Research

Talks

The lecturers of the three programmes will give a number of short talks about topics from our field.

Creative Accessibility | Vasilis van Gemert

All digital products, from websites to apps, from chatbots to kiosks have to be accessible since June 28, 2025. Many organizations have just now started, like real last-minute students, but also like true bureaucrats, to tick off the boxes of the web content accessibility guidelines. Cynically hoping to receive a 5.5. We can do better, and it's not even that hard. And it's fun.

Vasilis van Gemert has been doing research into creative forms of digital accessibility for years now, together with his students. He has invited people with all kinds of disabilities to work with his students, with the goal to design and make tailor-made web applications. Applications that really solve an issue, and that truly work for their specific needs. Vasilis will explain, by showing examples from his students, from his own work, and from daily practice, the difference between technical accessibility and genuine usability.

Creativity & Immersive Environments | Bart-Jan Steerenberg

Bart-Jan is currently working as a learning experience designer (LED) and lecturer at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA) in the Communication & Multimedia Design (CMD) programme. At CMD, he has set up various courses in visual, audio and immersive design and has focused especially on creativity. Additionally, he has established the Immersive Lab and the Audio Lab on the HvA campus. Since 2019, he has been conducting research into creativity in education. As a learning experience designer of the minor Immersive Environments, he has directly applied insights from his research on creativity within this international minor. In 2021 he founded The Institute of Creativity (Tioc), an organization that aims to bring together knowledge about creativity and facilitate creative growth.

Technology is evolving so rapidly, so it's really a challenge to train designers. (Hypernovelty) In order to provide a future proof skillset, you should train designers to rehearse the future. Combining storytelling, design by doing, and speculative design using ai, sensors, and projection can help people to spark creative joy and grow in their understanding of human tech interactions. Bart-Jan shows a couple of examples of projects and shows how international students from all kinds of disciplines are being trained in the minor Immersive environments to become creative immersive experience designers.

FrictionGPT: Unlearning Frictionless Design Through AI Discomfort | Maaike van Cruchten & Frank Kloos

Technology makes our lives increasingly smoother, faster, and more frictionless. But when everything goes effortlessly, what happens to attention, wonder, and self-determination? In this research project, we investigate how friction — friction, inertia, resistance — can have a valuable place in technological interaction. Among other things, we look at the rise of generative AI chatbots that are increasingly taking over daily tasks. What does it do to us when technology constantly thinks, feels, and decides for us?

Together with students, we developed FrictionGPT, a chatbot that does not talk to you, but rather confronts, questions, and challenges you. No instant gratification, but space for reflection and deceleration. This idea does not stand alone. In her Friction Manifesto, designer Luna Maurer advocates designs that embrace friction, as a counterbalance to the constant pursuit of convenience. Platforms like Breeze put this into practice by designing social media that are not addictive, but stimulate peace and real connection. What do we want from technology as humans? And does it really make us happier?

Modern CSS | Cyd Stumpel

How can we craft delightful, fluid experiences using just CSS? What does the View Transitions API unlock for us? How can Scroll-Driven Animations change the way we think about storytelling and interactivity on the web? And how do these modern tools impact performance, accessibility, and user experience?

Cyd is a freelance creative developer and part time teacher at the Associate Degree Frontend Design and Development and the Minor Web Development. She creates accessible, award winning websites for everyone; from large organisations like WeTransfer and Amnesty International to creative agencies and freelancers. She’s got an eye for details and loves to turn flat designs into rich experiences.