HumanCentered Computing Paul Dourish Xerox PARC dourishparc xerox

Human-Centered Computing Paul Dourish Xerox PARC dourish@parc. xerox. com http: //www. dourish. com

My Background • Currently: – Computer Science Laboratory, Xerox PARC • working on Placeless Documents, a document management system • Previously: – Discourse Architecture Lab, Apple Research • working on novel architectures for malleable interactive systems – Rank Xerox Euro. PARC • working on media spaces, collaboration toolkits & workflow systems.

My Background • Research foci: – HCI • relationship between system design and interaction • relationship between social and design sciences – CSCW • computation as a medium for interaction and collaboration • support for the fluidity and evolution of practice

Focus on Practice • It’s not about users… • It’s not about interfaces… • It’s about practice – what people do in the course of doing what they do – routine, informal, emergent, improvised, varied… – Q’s: How does practice emerge and develop? How is it sustained, communicated and evolved?

Foundational Connections • Building a foundation for design – systematic relationships between social and technical • Foundational elements – generally operative social processes • not specific practices, but the mechanisms that sustain them – computation • not systems, but the mechanisms from which they are constructed – e. g. how does abstraction in software

Some Implications • Consider computation as a medium – practice is not embedded in computer systems, but performed through them • Develop theoretical underpinnings – need strong grounding in order to make generalisable claims • more than just how one set of users in one setting can use one system

Some Implications • Strong computer science, too – not just system design, but the nature of systems • Study real world settings – experimental subjects have behaviours, but people in real settings have practices