Prior to establishing Spy I had worked for New
Jersey Senator Bill Bradley on his 1984 re-election campaign before
studying Law at the London School of Economics. I began working in
electronic publishing in the US when I got a summer job working on
a small newsletter in Georgetown, Washington DC. I had gone there to
intern on Capitol Hill.
How successful is knowledge transfer between research and practice in interaction design and HCI? Is research relevant, understandable and actionable for working designers? We bring together researchers with practitioners from BBC Future Media & Technology to discuss the problems and opportunities in these areas. HCI2006 site.
This panel was inspired by the AHRC/BBC New Media Knowledge Transfer initiative, though it was not formally connected.
Panelists
Professor
Robert Zimmer, Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University
of London
Professor
Angela Sasse, Department of Computer Science, UCL
Kai En Ong, Senior Designer, BBC Factual and Learning
James Howard, Design and Development Manager, BBC
Sport Interactive
Chair: Nico Macdonald, Spy
Documentation
Rough notes from the panel and audience discussion [text file].
The discussion may form the basis for an article in the March-April 2007 issue of ACM interactions magazine.
Format
11:30–1 pm. Introduce chair and panelists. Introduction and scene setting from chair. Introductions from each panelist (up to five minutes). Direction questions to panelists (if appropriate). Panel discussion. Audience discussion. Summing up.
Themes
Major
- How successful is knowledge transfer between research and practice in interaction design and HCI?
- Is research relevant, understandable and actionable for working designers?
Minor
- What is the attitude of practitioners to researchers? Engagement, ingorance, non-plussed, irrelevant? And What is the attitude of researchers to practitioners ?
- What are the best formats for communicating research insights?
- How are research agendas set? To what extent are they, or should they, be influenced by industry?
- What examples of successful knowledge transfer initiatives are there?
- Do designers need to be educated better to understand HCI research and theory?
- What impacts are the changing dynamics of the HCI world having?
- How can we better connect practitioners and researchers?
- What do researchers need from industry, and how can industry better help research (and benefit from this activity)?
