Astrid Bin

Designer

Astrid Bin

About Me

Astrid Bin is an artist and designer who specialises in making complex things useful, beautiful and understandable. Alongside her history of working as an announcer for international Lego robot competitions and explaining rocket science to children, she's also worked as a music technology researcher across academia and industry. Most recently she was the founding designer of Bela, and is currently working in e-textiles research for musical interacton and freelancing on interesting projects. She lives in Berlin.

Sessions

  • How I Learned to Love the Docs

    Documentation As Design Process for Music Tech Products
    00:00 - 00:00 UTC | Friday 31st October 2025 |
    Beginner
    Intermediate
    Advanced

    Product documentation is often seen as a "nice-to-have" that comes at the end of the design and implementation process, and something that few small teams have time for. But for audio products - notoriously complex, serving a multitude of styles and purposes, usually with a conceptual model that isn't obvious to newcomers - communicating what a product does and how it works is crucial. So what do you do if there's no one to produce documentation? I'm a music tech designer who has learned to love the docs. In this talk I'll share why I think documentation is so important […]

  • Our Ultra-Processed Interfaces

    What Music Technology Can Learn From Doritos
    10:00 - 10:50 UTC | Tuesday 12th November 2024 | Bristol 3
    Beginner
    Intermediate
    Advanced

    Many digital musical instruments, both commercial and otherwise, share similar interface design characteristics like rectangular rubber pads, piano interfaces, sliders, and grids of controls. These conventions are useful, but where do they come from, and why are they so ubiquitous? In this talk I dive deep into how the design conventions of music interfaces have evolved, and how traditionally they're deeply rooted in the culture in which they're created ... until recently. I discuss how this decoupling of musical interfaces from cultural context has developed alongside the larger contemporary trend of "ultra-processing", a way of creating consumable products, from food […]

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