Bachelor Media & Interaction Design

Presentation

Successfully bridging several disciplines around visual communication, this training is designed for students with a solid visual culture eager to find out more about advanced technology. Prospective, pragmatic and experimental, this Bachelor course is provided in the framework of the Visual Communication Department, which concurrently offers crossover courses and projects enabling students to acquire multidisciplinary skills (photography, graphic design, film).

Through courses and workshops provided by major actors on the international scene, the students become seasoned in the various fields of this discipline – art direction, interaction design, interactive applications (web and mobile), installations, motion design, as well as communication and digital identity. Involvement in exhibitions, publications or assignments commissioned by institutions provides an actual immersion into the labour world. The students also benefit from a wide range of theoretical courses and multidisciplinary conferences on the ECAL premises.

The skills and projects acquired throughout the curriculum serve to produce a portfolio in line with the highest standards. From website design to event management, via animation or modelling, this training offers a wide range of professional opportunities.

Language: French

Qualification issued: Bachelor of Arts HES-SO in Visual Communication, major in Media & Interaction Design

Yearly fees (materials included): Fees detail

Length: 6 semesters

Credits: 180 ECTS

Useful links: Admissions Contact

Equipments & infrastructures: Open space BA Visual Communication Technology Center BA Media & Interaction Design Room Virtual Reality Room

Learning objectives

First year

1/4

Learn about programming with a targeted approach to JavaScript and get familiar with the graphic visualisation of mathematical and algorithmic logic.
Tackle the aesthetic, logical and conceptual issues related to the design of graphic interfaces and implement a dynamic graphic visual identity.
Acquire the necessary tools to produce a three-dimensional world in Cinema 4D (modelling, lighting, texturing, motion graphics and sequencing).
Design interactive three-dimensional spaces using Unity.
Immerse yourself incross-disciplinary courses in Photography, Graphic Design, Media & Interaction Design (website), 3D Animation (Cinema 4D) and 2D Animation (After Effects, Premiere).
Enhance your theoretical knowledge via courses in theory (History of Art, Photography, Film, Digital Culture, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, Media Theory, Project Management, Contemporary Photography, Exhibitions and Publications).
Take part in weeks of workshops supervised by practitioners from all over the world with the aim of carrying out collective or personal projects.

Second year

1/3

Design media andgraphic content linked to a project developed for one or more digital media incollaboration with Graphic Design students.
Develop a multi-screen/multi-player game implementing real-time interconnection.
Become familiar with the notion of network communication and learn about the bi-directional real-time server-client communication protocol, while understanding the issues related to the specific properties of different devices allowing network connections (JavaScript, Firebase).
Develop the notion of interface, codes and associated practices (screen layout, navigation in a content, hierarchisation and analysis of the usual metaphors of graphic interfaces via dedicated software (AdobeXD, InVision, Figma, etc.).
Tackle electronics and programming principles, particularly through the Arduino platform.
Se confronter à l’électronique et au principes de programmation au travers notamment de la plateforme Arduino
Deepen notions of modelling and file creation for machining and 3D printing (Autodesk Fusion 360, Cura, PreForm, etc.).
Broaden your horizons through practical cross-disciplinary courses within a sequence (videoclip or VR) or editing project (of your choice) in collaboration with Graphic Design and Media & Interaction Design students.
Enhance your knowledge through theory courses (Information & Communication, Global Visions).
Take part in weeks of workshops supervised by practitioners from all over the world with the aim of carrying out collective or personal projects.

Third year

Jury de diplôme Media & Interaction Design 2022

1/4

Focus on contemporary technology (so-called “creative” machine learning) through targeted tools (ml5js, ml4a, JavaScript, possibly python, C++).
Widen your research and experimentation capacities by setting up a free project, in connection with the field, responding to a given subject.
Immerse yourself in cross-disciplinary courses to refine your collaborative skills in a transdisciplinary project (creation of a digital platform, including GraphicDesign, Media & Interaction Design and Photography).
Broaden your theoretical knowledge with courses in Copyright Law and preparation for writing a dissertation.
Take part in weeks of workshops supervised by practitioners from all over the world with the aim of carrying out collective or personal projects.
Write a dissertation based on the knowledge acquired during the course of study.
Put into practice the know-how acquired in a graduation work and a portfolio, which will serve as a business card to integrate into the labour market quickly or continue your studies on an MA course.

Projects

This section contains a selection of emblematic or recent projects related to the disciplines taught in the Bachelor's degree.

All Projects

All projects

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Dalia Spichtig – Breaking the Narrative

by Dalia Spichtig

Breaking the Narrative is an interactive educational web documentary exploring manosphere narratives. Structured in three parts, it examines the three media formats most used by these communities: video, text, and audio, to analyze their communication and dissemination strategies. Through playful interactions, the project raises awareness of the persuasive mechanisms used by the manosphere while exposing the systemic and ideological realities these narratives often conceal. Aimed primarily at young boys, as well as parents, guardians, and educators, Breaking the Narrative provides tools for understanding, critical analysis, and education around these contemporary issues.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Andreas Abbaszadeh – KIN

by Andreas Abbaszadeh

Streaming made music infinite and weightless: access to everything, ownership of nothing. This dynamic frayed the bond between artists and the people who listen to them. KIN rematerializes listening. It's a portable player that holds only a handful of tracks, like a mixtape. Its magnetic connectors let two devices touch to exchange their music, hand to hand: sharing becomes a gesture between two people again. Built around scarcity and ritual; custom electronics, a translucent body, physical controls, a screen that reflects light rather than emitting it, KIN slows the circulation of music to give back its value and its human weight.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Steve Bouillant – Re:soil

by Steve Bouillant

The smartphone has turned a trip to the mountains into an exercise in documentation. We take photos, tag our location, and post them: the natural world becomes content before it becomes a moment of reconnection. Re:soil offers a compact outdoor device whose sensors continuously measure humidity, light, and the transitions between environments. Its probe, planted in the ground, measures the earth's heat and compares it to that of the user's hand. Its microphone captures the soundscape of the location. Re:soil conveys these connections through vibration and light, without a screen, without performance, and without a phone. Upon the user's return, a linked app generates an ephemeral journal blending sensory interpretations, the geology of the site, and likely flora and fauna.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Nyria Graber – Haptobiosis

by Nyria Graber

Haptobiosis reveals the microbiome of our desk, the living, invisible world that our gestures shape. The installation is built around three hybrid objects: a keyboard, a mouse and its mat, reimagined somewhere between the technological and the organic. In a society that sterilises its spaces and fights off microorganisms, how can we reconnect with this imperceptible living world? By interacting with these objects, we uncover bacteria, their shapes, their presence, the silent life unfolding beneath our fingers, across our surfaces, evolving alongside us. Every gesture lets this microbiome grow behind the screen, the most sterile place of all, where no organism should exist. Touch becomes the medium of interaction between our gestures and this ecosystem.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Daniel Rocha – HOMAZON

by Daniel Rocha

In this video game, the user plays as a support agent at HOMAZON, whose mission is to ensure a family's comfort in their smart home. Every action is designed to make the family's daily life simpler, more convenient, and more comfortable. Throughout the game, the player performs actions that seem at first glance harmless. Yet they ultimately tell a different story. Behind these actions, the smart devices have in fact collected a wealth of data on the family's lifestyle. HOMAZON does not seek to reveal the existence of data collection, a reality already known to the general public, but aims to raise awareness among teenagers and young adults about what is really happening behind the use of smart devices, which appear harmless and convenient.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Laurine Gigandet – CLAWS

by Laurine Gigandet

CLAWS is a collection of interactive accessories designed for a connected community. Worn on the fingertips, these devices enable users to assert their presence and engage with their surroundings on their own terms. Blurring the line between prosthetics and augmented nail art, the project explores how bodily ornamentation can transform the body into an interface with the physical, digital, and social worlds. Each CLAW is customizable : textures, colors, and patterns become symbols of identity and belonging. Inspired by Afrofuturist visions, the project centers on the concept of "digital marronage" through fugitive, self-organizing technologies. CLAWS acts as a political and cultural extension that resists the standardization of mainstream contemporary technology.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Yann Müller – Trame Noire

by Yann Müller

As cities light up, the night fades from our sight. Trame Noire is a night-exploration mobile app designed to raise public awareness about the impacts of light pollution on the wildlife and flora that come alive at dusk. Combining immersive experience and citizen science, the project offers a new way to observe and understand our coexistence with the living world. Guided by the seasons and natural cycles, the app invites users to explore the urban environment and capture, from one location to the next, the unique light footprint of each space. Through these explorations, Trame Noire maps a sensitive geography of the dark, bringing to light how artificial illumination alters the behavior of nocturnal life.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Brikeld Hoxha – Compliant

by Brikeld Hoxha

Welcome to Compliant, the first social network built entirely around you. Not around what you want to show, but around who you really are. During the setup phase, we show you exactly what we collect about you. Your profile is generated automatically. Your first posts, your behaviors, and your interactions feed your content. Then, hour after hour, Compliant updates itself for you. Without you having to do a thing. Your place in the community will be established. Compare yourself to your peers and climb the rankings. For the first time, others see you as you truly are. You no longer need to search for what to say, we already know the answers.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Jonathan Vögele – Siphonophores

by Jonathan Vögele

Siphonophores is an immersive experience in which two participants learn to share a single virtual body. The siphonophore, this marine animal that seems to be but a single gelatinous creature, is in fact a colony of organisms. We too, who believe ourselves separate, are already multiplicities and together we form bodies vaster still. Linked by a device that captures and synchronizes their movements, the participants feel their gestures seek one another out, meet, and at times work against each other. An arm rises without our quite knowing who willed it. How far can we feel ourselves extended, displaced, shared?

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Shana Meinecke – She Kept Playing

by Shana Meinecke

While women make up half of all gamers in Europe, they account for only 7% of participants in esports competitions. The VR project "She Kept Playing" explores the causes of this disparity. Although esports is a relatively young sector, gender stereotypes and misogyny remain. By listening to short stories based on testimonials from professional female gamers, participants directly discover the systemic obstacles these women face. Carried by influential players like Kayane and Loupiote, they serve as powerful role models for the next generation, empowering female gamers to carve out a place in the field without having to worry about gender bias.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Charlotte Waridel – Bloom

by Charlotte Waridel

Bloom is an interactive installation that delves into the opaque reality of nickel mining, a cornerstone of the energy transition. In 1975, biologist Alan Baker discovered, in an open-pit mine, a plant whose leaves contain nickel concentrations a thousand times higher than normal, Noccaea caerulescens. He published his findings, which went unnoticed. Today, the mining industry has taken an interest in these hyperaccumulator plants and is developing phytomining as an alternative to conventional extraction methods. Bloom explores the duality between scientific reality and a pro-industry narrative that presents it as tomorrow's green solution, navigating between the extraordinary adaptation of these plants to their environment and the mechanisms of greenwashing.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Teo Grajqevci – reform

by Teo Grajqevci

reform responds to a context in which designers are gradually losing control over their tools: creative software is becoming more automated, closed and dependent on cloud-based services. Today, generative AI can produce 3D models with ease, but often at the cost of control, understanding and ownership of the creative process. reform offers another approach: making 3D modelling easier to access, in a field that is usually complex and difficult to learn. The project takes the form of free and open-source software, built around a simplified interface, intuitive interactions and guides that support the learning of these tools. Through demonstrations and didactic exercises, reform restores the designers' motivation and means to model 3D shapes themselves.

Workshops

All workshops

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Portfol.io

with David Liebermann, Maximilian Kiepe, Jana Reddemann

Hello World! Goodbye predictable, standardized and interchangeable web. Students questioned the conventions of the digital World, explored the Wide possibilities of the medium, and even invented new approaches to interact with the Web. And what better way to give web design meaning than through the students own portfolios, understood as expressions of attitude and personality. https://websites.ecal-mid.ch/

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

A Story for a Shape – Workshop avec Mélanie Courtinat

with Mélanie Courtinat

Ce workshop explore la paréidolie, notre capacité à projeter du sens et des émotions sur des formes abstraites. À partir d'une primitive géométrique (cube, sphère, cône...), matrice fondamentale de tout univers numérique, les étudiant·e·s en binômes doivent concevoir une expérience en réalité virtuelle. En s'appuyant sur une synchronisation précise entre l'espace physique et un environnement Unreal Engine, le projet transforme ces objets fixes en supports narratifs.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Reverse DIffusion – 2026

with Matthieu Minguet, Jamy Herrmann

This workshop explores the use of real-time video streams as a medium for transforming reality. Through live capture or interface-based processes, participants experiment with different ways of altering images using locally run diffusion models. The video stream is approached as raw material, opening up new perspectives on how reality can be perceived and transformed.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

PHOTOGRAPHY

ECAL Light House

with Jean-Vincent Simonet, Léonard Guyot, Florian Pittet (Sigmasix), Vincent Jacquier, Julien Gurtner

During a week of collaborative work, first-year students in the Visual Communication department at ECAL were given the ambitious task of creating a complete audiovisual experience, designing a light and sound architecture based solely on five original musical compositions. Using a central totem-like screen installation and projections on the surrounding walls, enhanced with lasers, they created a visual environment, broadcast in real time, which was presented as a performance to the public at the end of the week. The aim was to construct a universe capable of fully utilizing the space and the various stage elements, inviting the audience to move around and experience the live performance in its entirety. Five cross-functional creative groups, each with a different sound base, were supervised by Jean-Vincent Simonet and Léonard Guyot to produce images and test them throughout the week on the device, which was developed, set up and operated by a sixth group under the supervision of Florian Pittet, Matthieu Minguet and Achille Masson.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Enshittification - 2026

with Tibor Udvari

Many platforms degrade over time, shifting from useful tools into manipulative systems. In this workshop, we explore enshittification as a creative method by modifying existing websites or developing small web experiments that exaggerate friction, automation, overload, and disorientation in order to reveal the underlying logics.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Betaverse – 2026

with Mario Von Rickenbach

This project brings together a series of experiments created by students exploring the intersection between physical reality and immaterial imaginary worlds. Using a mixed reality headset, they transform their environment into experimental spaces where real elements become supports for digital creations.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Talk to me – 2026

with Alain Bellet

By combining code, electronics, and physical prototyping, first-year students design interactive objects that react, respond, and invite interaction, gathered under the title Talk To Me. Using dialogue as playground and inspired by conversational interfaces, the projects transform physical objects into new forms of interaction.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Beyond The Screen – 2025

with Angelo Benedetto

Beyond the screen - is a series of interactive machines developed by students in their first year of Bachelor Media & Interaction Design. These systems are inspired by the relationship between instructions and execution within a computer system. These machines create text through a modular typographic system.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

COUNTDOWN – 2025

with Mario Von Rickenbach

The students worked on an interactive countdown in a web environment. Each day, they were tasked with creating a new sketch, culminating in their own collection, which could also be combined with projects from the entire class.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Toggle - 2025

with Sébastien Matos

A collection of interface buttons designed and animated by first-year students of the Bachelor’s program in Media & Interaction Design. Each element includes a standard animation, an exaggerated animation, and an unexpected version. https://toggle.ecal-mid.ch/2025

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Digital Attention

with Irene Pereyra

Where does our attention go? In this workshop, first-year students become their own data researchers for 24 hours, observing when and why their phone draws focus. They track triggers, emotions, recovery time, control, context, apps used, duration, body language, energy, and inner dialogue. These everyday traces are then transformed into a one-page scrollytelling experience, a visual story of how attention moves through a day.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Audio Reactive Festival Poster Series

with Talia Cotton

First-year students designed a series of audioreactive posters for a music festival. They utilized dynamic tools and live data input to explore sound-responsive visuals within social media's digital format, creating a cohesive and recognizable festival identity.

Diploma projects

All diplomas

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Shana Meinecke – She Kept Playing

by Shana Meinecke

While women make up half of all gamers in Europe, they account for only 7% of participants in esports competitions. The VR project "She Kept Playing" explores the causes of this disparity. Although esports is a relatively young sector, gender stereotypes and misogyny remain. By listening to short stories based on testimonials from professional female gamers, participants directly discover the systemic obstacles these women face. Carried by influential players like Kayane and Loupiote, they serve as powerful role models for the next generation, empowering female gamers to carve out a place in the field without having to worry about gender bias.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Jonathan Vögele – Siphonophores

by Jonathan Vögele

Siphonophores is an immersive experience in which two participants learn to share a single virtual body. The siphonophore, this marine animal that seems to be but a single gelatinous creature, is in fact a colony of organisms. We too, who believe ourselves separate, are already multiplicities and together we form bodies vaster still. Linked by a device that captures and synchronizes their movements, the participants feel their gestures seek one another out, meet, and at times work against each other. An arm rises without our quite knowing who willed it. How far can we feel ourselves extended, displaced, shared?

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Nyria Graber – Haptobiosis

by Nyria Graber

Haptobiosis reveals the microbiome of our desk, the living, invisible world that our gestures shape. The installation is built around three hybrid objects: a keyboard, a mouse and its mat, reimagined somewhere between the technological and the organic. In a society that sterilises its spaces and fights off microorganisms, how can we reconnect with this imperceptible living world? By interacting with these objects, we uncover bacteria, their shapes, their presence, the silent life unfolding beneath our fingers, across our surfaces, evolving alongside us. Every gesture lets this microbiome grow behind the screen, the most sterile place of all, where no organism should exist. Touch becomes the medium of interaction between our gestures and this ecosystem.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Brikeld Hoxha – Compliant

by Brikeld Hoxha

Welcome to Compliant, the first social network built entirely around you. Not around what you want to show, but around who you really are. During the setup phase, we show you exactly what we collect about you. Your profile is generated automatically. Your first posts, your behaviors, and your interactions feed your content. Then, hour after hour, Compliant updates itself for you. Without you having to do a thing. Your place in the community will be established. Compare yourself to your peers and climb the rankings. For the first time, others see you as you truly are. You no longer need to search for what to say, we already know the answers.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN

Daniel Rocha – HOMAZON

by Daniel Rocha

In this video game, the user plays as a support agent at HOMAZON, whose mission is to ensure a family's comfort in their smart home. Every action is designed to make the family's daily life simpler, more convenient, and more comfortable. Throughout the game, the player performs actions that seem at first glance harmless. Yet they ultimately tell a different story. Behind these actions, the smart devices have in fact collected a wealth of data on the family's lifestyle. HOMAZON does not seek to reveal the existence of data collection, a reality already known to the general public, but aims to raise awareness among teenagers and young adults about what is really happening behind the use of smart devices, which appear harmless and convenient.

MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN