Keynote speakers

The symposium will consist of six sessions and each session will be anchored around a theme, with a keynote led by a distinguished speaker. Each speaker will reflect upon an influential piece of work in light of subsequent developments and present concerns.

Ubiquitous Computing

A keynote by Yvonne Roggers (UCL)
Moving on from Weiser’s Vision of Calm Computing: Engaging UbiComp Experiences

Yvonne Rogers is the director of the Interaction Centre at UCL (UCLIC), and a deputy head of the Computer Science department. She is interested in how technology transforms what it means to be human. Much of her work is situated in the wild - concerned with informing, building and evaluating novel user experiences through creating and assembling a diversity of technologies (e.g. tangibles, AR, IoT) that augment everyday, learning, community engagement and collaborative work activities. She has been instrumental in promulgating new theories (e.g., external cognition), alternative methodologies (e.g., in the wild studies) and far-reaching research agendas (e.g., “Being Human: HCI in 2020” manifesto), and has pioneered an approach to innovation and ubiquitous learning. She has also published over 300 articles, including two monographs “HCI Theory: Classical, Modern and Contemporary” and "Research in the Wild". She is a fellow of the ACM, BCS and the ACM CHI Academy.

Mixed Reality

A keynote by Steve Benford (University of Nottingham)
Orchestrating a Mixed Reality Performance

Steve Benford is a Professor in the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham where he leads the 'Smart Products' beacon and directs the Horizon ‘Creating Our Lives in Data' Centre for Doctoral Training. He previously held an EPSRC Dream Fellowship, has been a Visiting Professor at the BBC and was elected to the CHI Academy in 2012.

Lucy Suchman holds a Chair in the Anthropology of Science and Technology at Lancaster University in the UK. Before taking up her present post she was a Principal Scientist at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where she spent twenty years as a researcher. Suchman’s current research extends her longstanding engagement with the field of human-computer interaction to the domain of contemporary war fighting. She is focused more specifically on the knowledge that informs immersive military training simulations, and on problems of ‘situational awareness’ in remotely-controlled and automated weapon systems. She is the author of Human-Machine Reconfigurations (2007) and Plans and Situated Actions: the problem of human-machine communication (1987), both published by Cambridge University Press. In 2010 she received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award, and in 2014 the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Bernal Prize for Contributions to the Field.

Alex Taylor is a sociologist working in the Centre for Human Centred Design, at City, University of London. Showing a broad fasciation for the entanglements between social life and machines, his research ranges from empirical studies of technology in everyday life to speculative design interventions—both large and small. Across these realms, he draws on a feminist technoscience to ask questions about the co-constitutive roles human-machine composites play in forms of knowing and being, and how they might open up possibilities for fundamental transformations in society. Most recently, he’s begun to wonder about the abilities of humans and non-humans, together, and to speculate on hybrid compositions that enlarge capacity and offer the chance of something different-than, something more-than.

Arts & Design-led Approaches

A keynote by Bill Gaver (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Ambiguity as a Resource for Design

Bill Gaver is Professor of Design and co-director of the Interaction Research Studio at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research on design-led methodologies and innovative technologies for everyday life led him to develop an internationally recognised studio bringing the skills of designers together with expertise in ubiquitous computing and sociology.

Christian Heath is Professor of Work and Organisation at King’s College London. He specialises in fine grained, video-based studies of social interaction drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. He is currently undertaking research in areas that include health care, markets and economic behaviour, and museums and galleries. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences (FAcSS), a Freeman of the Worship Company of Art Scholars and was recently received the EUSSET-IISI Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the fields of Computing and Informatics. His publications include: The Dynamics of Auction: Social Interaction and the Sale of Fine Art and Antiques (Cambridge: ISCA Best Book Award), Video and Qualitative Research: Analysing Social Interaction in Everyday (Sage with Jon Hindmarsh and Paul Luff) and Technology in Action (Cambridge, with Paul Luff).

Paul Luff is Professor of Organisations and Technology at King’s College. He has undertaken detailed video-based studies of diverse settings including control rooms, trading rooms, surveillance centres, surgery, general practice consultations, design and architectural practices. In most of these projects he has worked with computer scientists and engineers developing human-robot interaction, ubiquitous technologies and advanced collaboration systems. Contributions of these studies have been to inform the identification of user requirements, aspects of the design of the technology and ways these might be evaluated and assessed. He is the co-author with Christian Heath of ‘Technology in Action’ (Cambridge University Press) and with Christian Heath and Jon Hindmarsh) of ‘Video in Qualitative Research’ (Sage).

New Approaches to Research & Design

A keynote by Susanne Bødker (Aarhus University)
When second wave HCI meets third wave challenges

Susanne Bødker is Professor at the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University in Denmark. She co-manages the interdisciplinary Center for Participatory IT, and heads the recently started ERC project on Common Interactive Objects. She does participatory design, computer supported collaborative work and activity theory. Email: [email protected]