Namahn lecture: Yvonne Rogers

Mwoehaha. Morgen is het weer van dattum: lezing! op! het! werk!

Het programma, zoals vorige keer en zoals alle vorige keren, vermoed ik, is: ‘s morgens privé-lecture voor ons allemaal bij Namahn, uitgebreid en met discussie, dan allemaal samen gaan eten, en dan ‘s namiddags lecture voor een geïnteresseerd publiek (vrienden, collega’s van andere bedrijven, medewerkers, klanten, …).

Yvonne Rogers, morgen dus. Strictly invitation-only, vrees ik, dat wel. Hierzie, even doen watertanden:

Beyond the desktop and the vision of calm computing: A critique of the emerging field of UbiComp

The paradigm of ubiquitous computing, captured by the slogan ‘beyond the desktop’, is coming of age. Inspired by Weiser’s vision of calm computing published in the mid 90s, subsequent research has been motivated to make our lives convenient, comfortable and informed. Three themes that have dominated are context awareness, ambient intelligence and monitoring/tracking. While these avenues of research have been fruitful, their accomplishments do not match up to anything like Weiser’s world. I discuss why this is so and argue that it is time for a change of direction in the field. I begin by outlining the history of the field and then propose an alternative agenda that focuses on engaging and provoking people rather than calming them. Humans are very resourceful at exploiting their environments and extending their capabilities using existing strategies and tools. Using examples from my research I describe how pervasive technologies can be added to the mix.

Yvonne Rogers

Yvonne Rogers has just returned to the UK to take up a chair in Human-Computer Interaction at the Open University. From 2003 to 2006, she was a professor of Informatics and Information Science at Indiana Univ. Before, she was a Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the former School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences at Sussex Univ., UK, where in 1997 she co-founded with the late Mike Scaife the Interact Lab, an interdisciplinary research center that was concerned with the possible interactions between people, technologies and representations. She has also worked as a senior researcher at Alcatel-Lucent and has been a visiting professor at Stanford Univ., Apple Computer, and the Univ. of Queensland.

Yvonne is internationally renowned for her work in human-computer interaction, interaction design, computer-supported cooperative work, UbiComp and interactive learning environments. Her research focuses on augmenting and extending everyday, learning and work activities with interactive technologies that move beyond the desktop. This i nvolves designing user experiences through appropriating and assembling a diversity of pervasive technologies. A main focus is not the technology per se but the design and integration of the digital representations that are presented via them to support social and cognitive activities in ways that extend our current capabilities.

Grinnik. En ‘s avonds naar Alex Agnew voor het andere werk. Het leven is hard, soms.