Santa Clara University

Title:  A Post-Rational take on People and Computing

Speaker:
               John Canny, Distinguished Professor of Engineering, Director, Berkeley Institute of Design, UC Berkeley
 
Location:
George E. Pake Auditorium, PARC,
3333 Coyote Hill Rd, Palo Alto, California, USA
http://www.parc.com/util/map.htmlwww.parc.com/util/map.html
 
This presentation is FREE and open to the public.  There is free parking, and
the venue is handicapped accessible.  No registration is required.  Seating
is on a first come first served basis.
 
Mobility Series
This talk is one in a series focusing on novel applications of mobile technologies.  Mobile computing has been gradually progressing for decades.  With the recent emergence of highly interactive smartphones, mobile media players, netbooks, and e-readers, we are now seeing an explosion in new paradigms of mobile information generation, delivery and use.  In the coming series of presentations, you will see a range of applications that exploit some of the unique aspects of having computing devices with you everywhere, all the time.
 
Description
Most people - engineers or not - think of computers as *useful* tools, and of people as purposeful actors who use them as a means to an end.  We critique this perspective and propose an alternative model where purposeful, rational behavior is not assumed. Our starting point is design for users in developing regions. Here, the factors that drive user choices, including their approach to computing systems, are far more complex, political and irrational than one would expect.  Design in this space is less about providing tools for tasks, and much more about persuading and motivating users to overcome the challenges they face. We discuss two recent projects on technology for developing regions, one on teaching english, and the other on maternal health care. The experience from these projects raises a natural question: Are users in developing regions really so different from users in the economic north? Or should we also rethink our models of computing and their role in the everyday lives of northerners as well? Attempting to answer this question has led us to piece together a framework called "postrationalism" which will sketch at the end of the talk.
 
Presenter
John Canny is a Professor in Computer Science at UC Berkeley. His earliest interests were in theory, mathematics, computer vision and robotics - on the interaction between computers and the physical world.  Since the 1990's he has focused on the democratization of computing, and what it means to design systems for the everyday.  In 2002, he founded the Berkeley Institute of Design, an interdisciplinary, human-centered design research lab. BID now houses 30 researchers from 8 departments. His research priorities are IT for health care, educational technology, sensing and actuation technologies, persuasive technology, mobile HCI and CSCW, and understanding people. He still lacks focus, but has best paper prizes from CHI 2007, Persuasive Technology 2008 and ACM KDD 2009, and was a winner in the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning competition in 2008.
 
For more information see:
                http://www.parc.com/event/950/post-rational-take-on-people-and-computing.html
 
About PARC:
   A center for commercial innovation, PARC works closely with our
   clients to discover, test, and deliver new business opportunities,
   turning ideas into impact. Enterprises and entrepreneurs alike can
   gain new insights into customer needs, extend technical capabilities,
   and acquire valuable new technology assets.
 
   Celebrated for innovations such as laser printing, the Ethernet, the
   graphical user interface, ubiquitous computing, blue lasers, MEMS,
   and large-area electronics, PARC has invented and contributed
   technologies that have helped launch more than 30 companies. PARC was
   founded in 1970, and incorporated in 2002 as a subsidiary of Xerox
   Corporation.
 
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