Opening Keynote:
To Care, and How We Get There
Dr. Neha Kumar
Care shows up in many ways and forms in HCI research and practice, and increasingly so. Touching upon some of these wide-ranging manifestations of care work in HCI worlds, this talk will go on to consider what futures of care work might look like. We will proceed then to discuss learnings for futures of work more broadly, and how we might infuse these with care.
Speaker bio: Neha Kumar is an Associate Professor at Georgia Tech, with a joint appointment in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the School of Interactive Computing. Her work lies at the intersection of human-centered computing and global development. She was trained as a computer scientist, designer, and ethnographer at UC Berkeley and Stanford University, and thrive in spaces where she can wear these three hats at once. Her research engages feminist perspectives and assets-based approaches towards designing technologies for/with underserved communities. Dr. Kumar serves as ACM SIGCHI President.
Closing Keynote:
Yesterday’s Work, Tomorrow’s Work
Dr. Wendy Ju
As we contemplate the future of work, it can be helpful to look back at the history of work research for insights and inspirations. In this talk, I will specifically discuss the work of Lillian and Frank Gilbreth. The Gilbreths invented the field of Time and Motion study to understand how everyday workers–bricklayers, factory workers, garment workers, typists–performed their tasks. They were also inventors, of a sort, pioneering methods for using film, lights and clocks to capture how work activity unfolded over time, and to pinpoint the ways that skilled workers functioned compared to novices. Their research also inspired controversy, and was not always welcomed by the workers or managers they studied. This groundbreaking work in many ways foretells the challenges for the CHIWORK community as we undertake the future of people working in the 21st century.
Speaker bio: Wendy Ju is an Associate Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and the Technion and in the Information Science field at Cornell University. Her research highlights the ways that interactive devices can be designed to be safer, more predictable, and more socially appropriate. Professor Ju has innovated numerous methods for early-stage prototyping of automated systems such as autonomous cars and robots, for the purpose of understanding how people will respond to systems before the systems are built. She has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford, and a Master’s in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT.