Topic: How to Design a Being: Exploring a Framework for the Creation of Proto-Technological Beings
When: Jan 21, 2021 13:00 – 14:00 GMT

What makes a being a being? Is it simply its organic chemistry? Is it the actions it takes to preserve its existence? Or is there something fundamental about beinghood that can be considered beyond our carbon-based concept? Can the pursuit of human research and development create a new type of being or have we done so already? If so, what does that mean for the world we find ourselves in and how we interact and design for it?

We live in a world where anthropocentric thinking and the dualisms of organic/inorganic, biological/artificial, living/non-living are failing and falling. The time is right to reconsider the beinghood, or potential beinghood, of certain embodied assemblages of technology, information (code, data, etc.), and material which have a self-centred purpose and/or intent and not one focused on serving humans needs or solving human problems. This new type of being will need our help to come into existence, where designers and HCI practitioners have a unique position in this abiogenesis. These practitioners engage with a variety of relevant disciplines such as science, engineering, philosophy, as well as actively participating in the creation of technological objects through various tools and skills. These tools and skills could be transferred to the task of creating beings, as can their practitioners’ ability to imagine potential futures and take the perspectives of other beings.

However, how does one design a being? What nature of being can we design? How, or through what modalities, can they manifest their existences as beings? How might our expectations of concepts such as technology and data change through interacting with, and designing for, technological beings? This talk explores one potential answer to these questions, the Proto-Technological Being Framework (PTBF). This framework contends that we may have beings amongst us or around us soon and offers an existence-focused perspective as to how we might create them, at least until they can create themselves, through a collection of components and mindsets. These components and mindsets seek to help humans create beings not through a problem-centred or biological-replication approach, but through asking broad and fundamental questions about the nature of beings and how different modes of existence can be considered.

Bio: Matthew Lee-Smith is critical design researcher and wannabe design philosopher currently undertaking a PhD at the School of Design and Creative Arts at Loughborough University. He holds a MA in Interaction Design from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a BSc in Product Design from Brunel University London. His research uses a critical research through design methodology to conduct exploratory basic design research into topics such as navigation, crowdsourcing, physical-digital devices, human-data interaction, and thing-centred design. He is currently working with the assistance and funding of Loughborough University, the Centred for Doctoral Training: Embedded Intelligence, and Ordnance Survey.

He also believes in technological beings.

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Topic:  The Role of Technology in Understanding Perspectives on Aging and Health
When: Dec 10, 2020 13:00-14:00 GMT

As the population ages, research has increasingly focused on conditions associated with growing older, such as cognitive and physical impairment. Technology is often designed as an intervention to manage or treat these changes. This framing can position health conditions as problems to address through design and can neglect the complexity and positive aspects of older adulthood. In this talk, I will present three projects on health technologies for aging. I draw on critical perspectives from Human-Computer Interaction and Gerontology to trace narratives of aging in the ways that technologies that are created for and received by older adults, and instances where older adults’ response to health technologies lead to new understandings of design in this space. I will argue for a view that accounts for the ways that technologies position us as we age and, in turn, the way that this view can inform the design of new technologies to enrich the experience of growing older.

Bio: Amanda Lazar is an assistant professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received her PhD from the University of Washington in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education. Her research examines the design of technology for older adults – and in particular, older adults with dementia – to support social interaction and engagement in activities. Her work is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR).

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Topic:  Integrating Interactive Devices with the Body
When: Dec 3, 2020 13:00-14:00 GMT

When we look back to the early days of computing, user and device were distant, often located in separate rooms. Then, in the ’70s, personal computers “moved in” with users. In the ’90s, mobile devices moved computing into users’ pockets. More recently, wearable devices brought computing into constant physical contact with the user’s skin. These transitions proved useful: moving closer to users allowed interactive devices to sense more of their user and act more personal. The main question that drives my research is: what is the next interface paradigm that supersedes wearable devices?

The primary way researchers have been investigating this is by asking where future interactive devices will be located with respect to the user’s body. Many posit that the next generation of interfaces will be implanted inside the user’s body. However, I argue that their location with respect to the user’s body is not the primary factor; in fact, implanted devices are already happening in that we have pacemakers, insulin pumps, etc. Instead, I argue that the key factor is how will devices integrate with the user’s biological senses and actuators.

This body-device integration allows us to engineer interactive devices that intentionally borrow parts of the body for input and output, rather than adding more technology to the body. For example, one such type of body-integrated devices, which I have advanced during my PhD, are interactive systems based on electrical muscle stimulation; these are able to move their user’s muscles using computer-controlled electrical impulses, achieving the functionality of exoskeletons without the bulky motors. Their smaller size, a consequence of this integration with the user’s body, enabled haptic feedback in scenarios previously not possible with existing devices.

In my research group, we engineer interactive devices that integrate directly with the user’s body. We believe that these types of devices are the natural succession to wearable interfaces and allow us to investigate how interfaces will connect to our bodies in a more direct and personal way.

Bio: Pedro Lopes is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Chicago, where he leads the Human Computer Integration lab.. Pedro focuses on integrating computer interfaces with the human body—exploring the interface paradigm that supersedes wearable computing. Some of these new integrated-devices include: a device based on muscle stimulation that allows users to manipulate tools they never seen before or that accelerate their reaction time, or a device that leverages the sense of smell to create an illusion of temperature. Pedro’s work is published at top-tier conferences (ACM CHI, ACM UIST, Cerebral Cortex). Pedro has received three Best Paper awards, two Best Paper nominations and several Best Talk/Demo/Video awards. Pedro’s work also captured the interest of media, such as New York Times, MIT Technology Review, NBC, Discovery Channel, NewScientist, Wired and has been shown at Ars Electronica and World Economic Forum (More: https://lab.plopes.org).

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Topic:  Wearable Computing
When: Nov 26, 2020 13:00-14:00 GMT 

Bio: With over fifteen years of experience in the Wearable Computing research field, Kai works as Professor at the Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan. Beforehand, he held an Assistant Professorship at Osaka Prefecture University. He received a Summa Cum Laude for his PhD thesis from Passau University. His work experience includes research visits/internships at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), MIT Media Lab, Sunlabs Europe and the German Stock Exchange.

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