Lecture by visiting professor Yvonne Rogers

EAISI Visiting Professor at the Department of Industrial Design, Hosted by: dr. Steven Houben

ABSTRACT - TOOLS TO THINK WITH

Technologies have much potential for helping us to think: enhancing how we perceive, attend to, notice, analyse and remember events, people, data and other information. But how do we make this happen - especially against the backdrop of AI which aims to do the thinking for us? In my talk I will discuss how we can design innovative tools that can extend how we think when we learn, work and play. My approach is to make interactive technologies that are empowering; steering, scaffolding and challenging people to think differently and creatively. I begin by covering some of my early research on the UK Equator project where, with a diverse team of ambitious researchers, we designed novel ubiquitous computing tools to encourage children to think more. In so doing, we pioneered a new way of developing ‘technology-enhanced learning’, daring children to think out of the box. Then I will cover some of my current research which is concerned with embedding tools in our everyday and work lives to help people think more systematically. There are many technologies we can design with and, equally, many kinds of thinking we can support. How do we decide? I explain how I have used theory for this purpose, and in particular, Daniel Kahneman’s ‘Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow’ for inspiration and framing. An outcome of this strand of research is to develop new tools that scaffold and integrate our thinking by probing us and externalizing our thoughts.

BIOGRAPHY

Yvonne Rogers (https://uclic.ucl.ac.uk/people/yvonne-rogers) is a Professor of Interaction Design, the director of UCLIC and a deputy head of the Computer Science department at University College London (UCL). Her research interests are in the areas of ubiquitous computing, interaction design and human-computer interaction. A central theme of her work is how to design interactive technologies that can enhance life by augmenting and extending everyday, learning and work activities. This involves informing, building and evaluating novel user experiences through designing, implementing and deploying a diversity of technologies. A current focus of her research is on human-centred data and people in the Internet of Things in urban settings. She is also researching what human-centred AI means in practice.