UCLIC Seminar - Design, Engineering, Research Truth and Reconciliation

Speaker: Scott MacKenzie, York University, Canada

This talk will examine the relationship between design, engineering, and research. The context is human-computer interaction (HCI), as embodied in touch-based mobile devices and other high-impact products bearing novel user interface features. Introductory comments will characterize the critical missions of design (form), engineering (function), and research (discovery). Simple enough. How the three disciplines work together is more complicated, however. While design and engineering are closely aligned with products, research seeks to provide the raw materials (materials and methods) that designers and engineers use in creating products. Yet, the vast majority of research results have no direct impact on, or presence in, products. While this might be viewed as a deficiency of research, it is demonstrated that a healthy program of research is well-distanced from the short time lines in product development (and, hence, design and engineering). It is argued that research proceeding in close proximity to product development is, in fact, little more than... The four-letter word completing this sentence will be revealed in the talk.

About the speaker: Scott MacKenzie's research is in human-computer interaction with an emphasis on human performance measurement and modeling, experimental methods and evaluation, interaction devices and techniques, text entry, touch-based input, language modeling, accessible computing, gaming, and mobile computing. He has more than 160 peer-reviewed publications in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (including more than 30 from the ACM's annual SIGCHI conference) and has given numerous invited talks over the past 25 years. In 2015, he was elected into the ACM SIGCHI Academy. That same year he was the recipient of the Canadian Human-Computer Communication Society's (CHCCS) Achievement Award. Since 1999, he has been Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at York University, Canada. Home page: http://www.yorku.ca/mack/

Time: 4pm, Wednesday 16th November 2016

Venue: Roberts Building, Room 106