NAVER LABS Europe seminars are open to the public. This seminar is virtual and requires registration.
Date: 11th March 2021, 10:00 am (GMT +01.00)
HCI for societal impact
Speaker: Dr Jacki O’Neill is the founding director of Microsoft Africa Research Institute (MARI). She is passionate about designing technologies which enhance, rather than remove, agency and create sustainable futures. She brings this passion to the MARI where she is building a multi-disciplinary team, combining research, engineering and design to solve local problems globally. An ethnographer by trade, in her research career so far she has focused on technologies for work – with the aim of making work better; and technologies for societal impact. The inspiration for the MARI came out of this desire to create technologies to enhance work and society globally. Before leading the MARI, she was a Principal Researcher in the Technology for Emerging Markets (TEM) area at Microsoft Research India. Previously she was Principal Scientist and Ethnography Competency Champion at Xerox Research Centre Europe. She has led major research projects in the future of work from new labour platforms to workplace AI and chat, digital currencies and financial inclusion, and Global Healthcare. She has >50 peer-reviewed articles, two innovation awards and 16 patents.
Abstract: In this presentation I will talk about Human Computer Interaction (HCI) for Societal Impact. I will start with an introduction to what Human Computer Interaction is and introduce one of its core methods – ethnography. Ethnographic methods give us core insights into the nature of peoples activities, which can lead to innovative design ideas on how technology might be used to support or transform those activities in a beneficial way – whether they are first time technology users in rural India or fully digital citizens working from home in the Global North. I will use a series of examples to show why understanding people and how they work (which is the core of HCI) is important to computer science and how it can inspire the design of more inclusive systems. I will cover a range of examples from the future of work to financial inclusion and TB treatment programs.