The MFA Interaction Design Department’s On the Verge lecture series, which pairs leading minds from across design disciplines, continues on Thursday, February 9 at 6pm. Dennis Crowley, co-founder of foursquare (a website that combines social networks, location awareness, and game mechanics to encourage people to explore the world around them via smartphone) and Mark Shepard, an architect whose work focuses on the implications of mobile communication and information technologies for architecture and urbanism, will convene to discuss how technology is increasingly shaping our physical surroundings.

  On Friday, March 23 at 7pm, Geoff Manaugh, a noted futurist, former senior editor at Dwell magazine, contributing editor at Wired UK and founder of the architecture blog BLDGBLOG, will go head-to-head with New York Times’ Data Artist-in-Residence Jer Thorp. And on Friday, April 6 at 6pm, Zach Frechette, founder of Quarterly Co., co-founder of GOOD magazine and an adviser to Collaborative Fund, sits down for a conversation with Molly Steenson, a digital strategist, design researcher and GirlWonder.com editor emeritus.

“As an interaction design program, we work to encourage broad explorations of design such that fields that seem peripheral take on possibility,” explains MFA Interaction Design Department Chair Liz Danzico. “It is in this way that everything becomes material for making, everything becomes a possibility for exploration. The On the Verge series intends to broaden the edges of our understanding such that the seams where disciplines converge and diverge become more visible.”

All lectures are free and open to the public, but registration is required. For more info and to register, visit interactiondesign.sva.edu/events.

Image: Screenshot of Crowley’s foursquare mobile app.