NordiCHI 2000 — Keynote speakers
Cooperative Design and Personal Utopias: Opportunities and Challenges for
Nordic CHI in a Networked World
| Jonathan Grudin Microsoft USA |
The historical development of many successful technologies involves three phases: early experiments, successful widespread deployment, and maturation. Cooperative, participatory, 'user-centered' approaches are particularly important in the first and third phases, I argue. For many digital technologies, the 1970's and 1980's were the experimental period and the 1990's saw widespread success. For these technologies, cooperative approaches could be even more important in the near future than they are today. Of course, other digital technologies are younger, but may grow up faster.
Nordic designers and developers have some advantages in this process. They include the early widespread adoption of some of these technologies and a cultural bias toward cooperation. A disposition to cooperate will be important in the future whether or not cooperative design has been widely used heretofore or Nordic populations are evolving. On the other hand, presumptions of homogeneity or a goal of consensus may limit one's effectiveness. After presenting views on these issues I will explore some under-examined aspects of the networked world that will greatly affect the context in which we will be working.
Biographies
Jonathan Grudin is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research and Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on CHI. He has participated in CHI (and the first local SIGCHI chapter in Boston) since the first conference in 1983, including service on the SIGCHI Executive Committee. He was visiting faculty from 1989 to 1991 at Aarhus University and in 1997 at the University of Oslo. He has often visited Sweden and Finland, but not yet made it to Iceland. He earned bachelors and masters degrees in physics and mathematics and a PhD in cognitive psychology from the University of California San Diego. He worked several years as a software developer and most recently was Professor of Information and Computer Science at UC Irvine.