Archive for January, 2009
Thomas Erickson
IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, USA
http://www.pliant.org/personal/Tom_Erickson/
Biography
Thomas Erickson is an interaction designer and researcher at IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center in New York, to whence he telecommutes from his home in Minneapolis. Prior to joining IBM Research in 1997, he spent nine years at Apple Research, five years at startup called Software Products International, and before that five years studying Cognitive Psychology at University California, San Diego.
Erickson’s current work involves studying and designing systems for supporting computer mediated communication and collaboration in groups and organizations; his principle aim is to create systems that can mesh with the social processes that govern our daily communication practices. His approach to systems design is shaped by methods developed in HCI, approaches to design drawn from architecture and urbanism, and theories and analytical approaches from rhetoric, sociology and anthropology.
Abstract
Humans are social creatures, and as such are exquisitely sensitive to the actions and interactions of their fellows. In face to face settings, the visibility of these actions and interactions and their residua serve as powerful means for shaping interaction and collaboration. However, in the digital realm, these cues are largely absent, and digitally mediated interaction often lacks the fluidity and grace that characterizes our day to day unmediated experience.
If Ambient Intelligence represents a vision of the future where we are surrounded by sensitive and responsive environments, we might ask what form this sensitivity takes, and what, exactly, is doing the responding? One view suggests that the locus of intelligence is in computational systems, and that such systems will be intelligent enough to serve us with the grace and forethought of highly competent and eternally motivated human servants. This talk explores an alternate view: that the intelligence in ambient intelligence will not reside so much in computational devices as in people, and that an important direction for inquiry involves investigating ways of designing digital environments that provide traction for the social processes that underlie human action and interaction.