Lecture title:
"Exploring Design Trade-Offs for Quality of Life in Human-Centered Design"
Abstract:
To understand, foster, nurture, and support “Quality of Life (QoL)” is one of the most challenging design problems of the digital age. QoL is a broad concept without a precise, generally accepted definition that is not out in the world to be discovered, but it is an objective achieved by design. Design is choice: it is an argumentative process with no optimal solutions. In design, trade-offs are universal because there are no best solutions independent of goals, objectives, and values. Grounded in ideas and research activities from a broad spectrum of different disciplines, the paper explores requirements and components for create a framework for QoL with a special emphasis on specific design trade-offs. The insights and arguments are summarized in requirements for the design of socio-technical environments to address future challenges for human-centered design (HCD) grounded in a QoL perspective.
Short bio:
Gerhard Fischer is a Professor Adjunct and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, a Fellow of the Institute of Cognitive Science, and the Director of the Center for Lifelong Learning and Design (L3D) at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a member of the Computer Human Interaction Academy (CHI; 2007), a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM; 2009), and a recipient of the RIGO Award of ACM-SIGDOC (2012). In 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
His research has focused on new conceptual frameworks and new socio-technical environments for human-centered computing, design, and learning, working, and collaborating. His recent work is centered on quality of life in the digital age, social creativity, meta-design, cultures of participation, design trade-offs, and rich landscapes for learning (including MOOCs).