Keynotes
Yvonne Rogers
Keynote Topic: Mindful or Mindless Technology?
We are increasingly living in our digital bubbles. Even when physically together – as families and friends in our living rooms, outdoors and public places - we have our eyes glued to our own phones, tablets and laptops. The new generation of ‘all about me’ health and fitness gadgets, that is becoming more mainstream, is making it worse. Do we really need smart shoes that tell us when we are being lazy and glasses that tell us what we can and cannot eat? Is this what we want from technology – ever more forms of digital narcissism, virtual nagging and data addiction? In contrast, I argue for a radical rethink of our relationship with future digital technologies. One that inspires us, through shared devices, tools and data, to be more creative, playful and thoughtful of each other and our surrounding environments.
About Yvonne Rogers:
Yvonne Rogers is the director of the Interaction Centre at UCL and a professor of Interaction Design. She is internationally renowned for her work in HCI and ubiquitous computing. She has been awarded a prestigious EPSRC dream fellowship to rethink the relationship between ageing, computing and creativity. She is known for her visionary research agenda of user engagement in ubiquitous computing and has pioneered an approach to innovation and ubiquitous learning. Her current research focuses on behavioural change, through augmenting everyday, learning and collaborative work activities with interactive technologies. She has published over 200 articles, a new book on HCI Theory (2012) and is a co-author of the definitive textbook on Interaction Design and HCI now in its 3rd edition that has sold over 150,000 copies worldwide. She is also a Fellow of the British Computer Society and the ACM's CHI Academy.
Abigail Sellen
Keynote Topic: Designing Hybrid Input Paradigms
Visions of multimodal interaction with computers are as old as the field of HCI itself: by adding voice, gesture, gaze and other forms of input, the hope is that engaging with computers might be more efficient, expressive and natural. Yet it is only in the last decade that the dominance of multi-touch and the rise of gesture-based interaction are radically altering the ways we interact with computers. On the one hand these changes are inspirational and open up the design space; on the other hand, it has caused fractionation in interface design and added complexity for users. Many of these complexities are caused by layering new forms of input on top of existing systems and practices. I will discuss our own recent adventures in trying to design and implement these hybrid forms of input, and highlight the challenges and the opportunities for future input paradigms. In particular, I conclude that the acid test for any of these new techniques is testing in the wild. Only then can we really design for diversity of people and of experiences.
About Abigail Sellen:
Abigail Sellen is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge UK and co-manager of Socio-Digital Systems, an interdisciplinary group with a focus on the human perspective in computing. Originally graduating with a PhD in Cognitive Science, and a Master’s in Industrial Engineering, her career has spanned industrial research labs such as Apple Computer, Xerox’s Cambridge Research Centre and Hewlett Packard, Bristol. She has published widely in Human-Computer Interaction, including “The Myth of the Paperless Office” with co-author Richard Harper, which won an IEEE award. She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a Professor of Interaction at the University of Nottingham, a member of the ACM CHI Academy, and in 2011 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Johannes Cronje
Keynote Topic : Design 3.0
The Internet is in the process of entering its third generation - known as Web 3.0.Where the first web was static and the second interactive, the third is collaborative. But the collaboration is not just between people. It is between people and things. And things are getting smarter.
Which begs the question how does this affect the way we design?
This talk will consider the implications of Web 3.0 and the way in which we are beginning to work, and then ask what it does to our role as designers, but more specifically to our role as educators.
About Johannes Cronje:
Johannes Cronje is the Dean of the Faculty of Informatics and Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. He started his career as a schoolmaster at Pretoria boys High School, then became a lecturer in communication at Pretoria Technikon, and later a professor of Computers in Education at the University of Pretoria. He holds two masters degrees and a doctorate from the University of Pretoria, and was visiting professor at universities in Norway, Finland, Sudan and Ethiopia. He has supervised more than 70 Masters and 38 doctoral students and has published more than 40 academic articles and chapters in books. He is married to Franci and they have three children and a dog.
Here you can hear and see Johannes talking about the World Design Capitol 2014, Cape Town.
Susan Dray
Keynote Topic: What Africa can teach the rest of the world (and what it can learn)
As African companies become more and more engaged with human-centered design, it is important to remember that there is much that Africa can teach the world at the same time that there is much Africa can learn from the rest of the world. In this talk, I will focus on three lessons from Africa that I believe the rest of the world can and should learn. I will also discuss three things that I believe will be important for African companies to learn from the process of design from outside the continent.
About Susan Dray:
Susan Dray has worked to improve the fit between technology and people since 1979, initially as a member of a human factors research group at Honeywell, and later championing usability of corporate systems at American Express. Since founding her consulting firm, Dray & Associates, in 1993, she has helped clients create innovative products and services that are useful, usable, and desirable by providing user experience research for a wide range of products, systems, and applications. She has worked in many countries around the world, and is widely known for her expertise in international user studies.
Through her many professional activities, Susan has contributed to the development of the user experience, user centered design, and usability professions. She is a Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, recipient of the Lifetime Service Award from the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group in Computer Human Interaction (ACM-SIGCHI) and was named a Distinguished Engineer of ACM. She is currently the Director of Publications on the Board of Directors of the User Experience Professionals Association.