Critical AI & Crisis Interrogatives (CRAI-CIS) Seminar

Monthly dialogues and critical perspectives on artificial intelligence, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), participatory design, and crisis-related research for societal impact.

The CRAI-CIS Seminars engage emerging work across critical AI, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), participatory design, and crisis-related research. The seminars seek to invoke dialogues on how computational, human-centred, and social sciences perspectives can offer new insights and methods for inclusive approaches and critical inquiry with societal impact.

Each event features invited speakers who share distinct perspectives, ongoing research, methods, and challenges for future work in a 45 minute talk, followed by Q&A and space for mingling and networking. The talks will be recorded for open access in the future.

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Michel Beaudouin-Lafon: Theory-driven HCI

Time: May 11, 2023, 14:00–15:30
Venue: Event is hybrid. Participants may attend in person (T2, Computer Science Building, Aalto University) or online on Zoom.

Abstract: 

Human-computer interaction (HCI) seeks to understand the phenomenon of interaction and design new methods to improve the power, simplicity and/or efficiency of this interaction. In this talk I argue that HCI can benefit from theory-driven approaches and illustrate this point with two examples based on Information Theory: the theory of pointing, and the Bayesian Information Gain (BIG) method, which have both led to innovative techniques and up to 40% performance gains. I then introduce Generative Theories of Interaction, which draw insights from empirical theories about human behavior in order to define specific concepts and actionable principles that, in turn, serve as guidelines for analyzing, critiquing, and constructing new technological artifacts. I illustrate the power of generative theory with our work on Instrumental Interaction, based on the theory of affordances and the technical reasoning hypothesis. This work will demonstrate the power and richness of using multidisciplinary theoretical approaches in interaction design.

Speaker Bio: 

Michel Beaudouin-Lafon is Professor of Computer Science, Classe Exceptionnelle, at Université Paris-Saclay, senior fellow of Institut Universitaire de France, recipient of the CNRS Silver Medal and ACM Fellow. He has worked in human-computer interaction for over 30 years and was elected to the ACM SIGCHI Academy in 2006. His research interests include fundamental aspects of interaction, novel interaction techniques, collaborative computing and engineering of interactive systems. He is the laureate of an ERC Advanced Grant and an ERC Proof-of-Concept project, head of the infrastructure projects Digiscope (6.7M€) then CONTINUUM (13.6M€), and co-director of the eNSEMBLE project on the future of digital collaboration (38M€). Michel has been director of LRI, the laboratory for computer science at Université Paris-Sud, and chair of the Department of Science and Technology of Information and Communication of Université Paris-Saclay. He is currently adjunct director of the newly created LISN laboratory (380 people). He founded AFIHM, the Francophone association for human-computer interaction, and was its first president. He has been active in ACM and SIGCHI for over 25 years, including as Technical Program Co-chair for CHI 2013 in Paris. He sits on the editorial boards of ACM Books and ACM TOCHI, and is currently vice-chair of the ACM Technology Policy Council. He received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award in 2015.