Geraldine Fitzpatrick

Short Biography

Geraldine Fitzpatrick is Professor of Technology Design and Assessment at TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology) where she leads the Human Computer Interaction Group. She was previously Director of the Interact Lab at the Uni of Sussex, User Experience consultant at Sapient London, and Snr Researcher at DSTC/Center for Online Health in Australia. Her research is at the intersection of social and computer sciences, with a particular interest in applying qualitative methods for the design of technologies for everyday contexts, supporting collaboration, health and well-being, community building and active engagement for older people. She sits on various advisory boards, and serves in editorial and program committee/chair roles in various CSCW/HCI/health related venues. She is also an ACM Distinguished Scientist and an ACM Distinguished Speaker.

Course "Ethnography-informed Research"

Date

November 16th, 2018

Description

As applications become more complex and open-ended, traditional software requirements techniques struggle to account for the messiness of everyday life into which many systems are now embedded. In both academia and in industry, there is an increasing shift to adopt qualitative research methods to understand people and their behaviours in their everyday contexts of use and using these insights to inform software design and/or to evaluate systems in use.

This highly interactive course will provide a broad introduction into when and why to use qualitative methods, and how to practically use core methods of observations and interviews, for the ultimate purposes of technology design and evaluation.