Conference organised by the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design (HCID), and City Interaction Lab, City St George’s, University of London
By Dr Shamim Quadir (Senior Communications Officer), Published (Updated )
On Wednesday 18 September the Centre for Human Computer Interaction Design (HCID) held its annual Open Day, which took the format of a conference for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and User Experience (UX).
Two keynote lectures were delivered, with a further 15 additional presentations across the day, split between two parallel tracks.
Lecture highlights
Centre co-directors, Professor Stephanie Wilson and Dr Sara Heitlinger (who has recently taken over responsibilities from Dr Stephann Makri), kicked off proceedings, sharing how the theme for the day, Design for All, builds on the themes of ‘Design for Good’ and ‘Design Better’ from the previous two years, and how the conference presentations would focus on design for widening participation, inclusion and accessibility, along with considering how design impacts the natural world.
They highlighted how these themes tie in with how the HCID aims to use design as a force for good, and reflects upon the work that the Centre does, and how it sees the responsibility of designers, as exemplified by the HCID Charter.
The co-directors also introduced the new HCID Activity Report 2024, with a printed copy given out to all attendees.
Tobias Revell, Design Futures Lead at Arup Foresight, delivered the opening keynote lecture. He shared how Arup uses design as a tool to explore what futures might feel like, question and challenge our assumptions and give actionable guidance on how to navigate change with clients and partners.
Following his keynote the conference programme split into its two parallel tracks of presentations.
One track focused on “Practice/People”, and included presentations including from Martijn van der Heijden & Sabrina Beall from Diabetes UK, James Gadsby-Peet from William Joseph; Tony D Sampson from the University of Essex; Helen Calderon from Kainos; Humphrey Curtis, Kings College London; and Brian Grellman from Aviva, as well as two recent alumni from the MSc HCID programme: Inemesit Emmanuel and Karl Tonna.
The other track focused on “People/Planet”, and included talks by Paulina Yurman, Wellcome Trust; Joycelyn Longdon from ClimateInColour & Oxford University; John Tweddle, Natural History Museum; Georgia Panagiotidou, King’s College London, as well as City St George’s colleagues: Dr Sara Jones , Bayes Business School; Dr Sara Heitlinger and Larisa Blazic from HCID.
The final keynote lecturer of the day was delivered by Laura Forlano , a Fulbright award-winning and National Science Foundation funded scholar and Professor in the departments of Art + Design and Communication Studies at Northeastern University, USA.
Dr Forlano spoke about her new book, co-authored with Danya Glabau, called “ Cyborg ,” published by MIT Press.
The book takes feminist cyborg theory as its starting point to explore the myriad ways that technology traverses our daily lives and practices and asks: how do social and cultural factors—from gender to race, class to ability— affect how technologies are imagined, developed, put to use, and, crucially, resisted.
Reflecting on the event, Dr Heitlinger said:
If you would like to hear about next year’s HCID conference, please email Dr Heitlinger or Stuart Scott, City Interaction Lab Manager.
