DGPis40 Abigail Sellen talk

This is the second talk that I attended at the DGPis40 reunion conference which was by Abigail Sellen, Senior Researcher and Microsoft Research Cambridge.

Abigail talked about her stints at DGP as a post-doc where in the early '80s and '90s, she worked on Bill Buxton's Ontario Telepresence project. She is now at Microsoft Research Cambridge in the UK working on socio-digital systems and her talk is "Being Human in the Digital Age". Her research deals with how to bring humans into the loop of computer technologies and assist the human, a human-centered approach to computing which I think is much needed in our industry. She has 23 patents and she says that we have to think and change our methodologies towards HCI. We need to put a humanistic agenda in research.

In the past, the origins of HCI was about thinking the brain as an information processing system and using cognitive psychology (in the '70s and '80s) and human factors engineering. Then in the early '80s, Don Norman talked about HCI and Card, Moran and Newell (1984) wrote a book called the Psychology of HCI. The idea here was to use cognitive psychological models to improve the use of computers. These led to the following contributions to HCI: User-centered design, user-testing and modelling.

Now, we are in the age of ubiquitous computing as visioned by the late Mark Weiser from PARC. An example of this is the Augmented Reality kitchen from the MIT Media Lab. The problem with HCI is that we need a view of the user and understand users as cognitive machines, therefore we need to have multi-disciplinary terms and design goals for rich evolving ecosystems and practices. As a result of this, Abigail and her colleagues created a Whereabouts clock which allows each member of the family to see where others are (either work, school, or out) based on their location. They conducted a user study that showed that family members got reassurance of where everyone was.



In their research, they have opened up the view of the user and thought of new information appliances that they would have not thought before if there was not any user testing. Opening up to the user can lead to invention. Another example that they created is the digital postcard where people can send SMS of pictures and text and it will show on the postcard.



Another example is the kitchen postcard which they created which becomes an ambient display and blog space. Think of it like a digital version of putting stuff on the fridge.



They also created a visual answering machine called Bubbleboard where the size of the bubbles indicates the length of the message.



According to Abigail, long term studies in real homes can give new insight into value of technologies for people. Abigail says that we need to redefine the H,C and I in HCI. Can technologies help us to switch off, forget, be isolated, be engaged (the opposite of what technologies do for us but thinking about what it means to be human). We are so increasingly connected, but sometimes we just need to unwind and not be connected, we need a break. So this raises new questions for research and development. Therefore, we need an HCI based on human values.

Abigail and a bunch of other researchers explore this reincarnation of HCI (in my opinion) with their published document from their workshop called Being Human:Human Computer Interaction in the Year 2020 which can be downloaded. I'll for sure be reading this because my research is very much into this area with social networks and how we can bring social networks to mobile and ubiquitous computing.

DGPis40 Bill Buxton talk

Here is a talk that I attended from the DGPis40 reunion conference for U of T's Dynamic Graphics Project, which turns 40 years old!

40 Years: Almost Enough Time to Make a Difference
Bill Buxton
Microsoft Research
www.billbuxton.com

Bill started his stints at DGP as a student but he was not a Computer Science student but a musician. Today, he probably would not be admitted as a Computer Science student. His talk today is based on whether Could DGP Happen Today? He is reviewing 40 years of DGP. A lot of the technologies of icons, Palm’s Graffiti, teletype, all came from beginnings of DGP. Also, Bill is mentioning that another icon is the Academy Award, which DGP has probably amassed more based on its alumni and the lab compared to other schools, which is strange he says because since DGP is in the Computer Science department.

What is the real accomplishment of the past 40 years? Bill worked on a computer that is now in the National Research Council (NRC) archives. NRC made a mouse in 1968, probably the second mouse based exactly from Doug Englebart who invented the mouse before PARC came up with the mouse in the 1970s. Bill worked as a musician and an artist, and started contacting Leslie Mezei at U of T (who is the founder of DGP). While working at DGP, he felt worthy of respect and became colleagues with others. If you wanted to do something, you could make it happen. Compared to other environments, you are dirt and you have to show respect to others until you have paid your dues. At DGP, people are challenged and are questioned and are proven to be wrong, because this means you will have learned something. DGP has published many papers at SIGCHI and SIGGRAPH more than any other academic and research lab during the first 20 years of its incarnation.

DGP was a self-organizing group because it was based on communal responsibility, he gives the analogy of filling concrete. Once students graduated, others came to fill the hole, so there was some kind of social contract. There are three generations of people in the CHI Academy, the only university to do so (Bill Buxton, Brad Myers, and Ron Baecker considered the grandfather in this lab). Bill is talking about The Long Tail a book by Chris Anderson, in the old economy you only had the beginning or head of the tail, whereas now in technology the most interesting opportunities happen in the long tail. A lot of work is done in the beginning of the tail in innovation and doing research. It takes 20 years from innovation to commercialization which is the exact number of years before a patent gets expired.

According to Bill, as academics, we are on a slippery slope and the slope is tilting. According to the New York Times in December 2007, corporate research labs are going away. There were few PhD students working in industry research than in 1980. There is no and will not be a Silicon Valley in Toronto or Canada. According to Bill, the DGP lab is absurd compared to other academic and corporate research labs. DGP represents integrity and values, productivity and influence around the world. Computers and technologies need to have as much engagement and review and criticism similarly to art and literary review. We need to think about culture and society within technology.

One question that was asked is how to bring the culture of DGP to corporate research labs like Microsoft Research that focuses on patents before publications. Bill answered that 80% of the work is on cultural change, the other 20% is the actual work. In his opinion, Microsoft Research has more academic freedom than any other university, which was an interesting comment in my opinion seeing that you would think Microsoft would absolutely tie all research back towards Microsoft products. Which is not to say that Microsoft doesn't do that of course, Microsoft Live Labs is exactly doing that, being a industrial lab to foster innovation within its MS products. What I got out of the talk is that there needs to be open Research, research with a capital R, not just some wishy washy research that is just for the benefit of the company and not the rest of the world. That is how you make a difference.