| Keynote Speakers |
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Three distinguished keynote speakers will inspire us at NordiCHI2010:
 Ari Kristinn Jónsson, rector of Reykjavik Unversity: Developing interactive artificial intelligence software for NASA mission control
Over the last decade, artificial intelligence technology has moved from being an obscure research project within NASA to being an important tool for NASA mission controllers who operate spacecraft such as the Mars Exploration Rovers and the International Space Station. This achievement is in part due to advances in artificial intelligence, but a critical part is due to the development of a good understanding of mission controllers needs and how they interact with computer software. This talk presents the development of these interactive software tools, with focus on user involvement and how lessons learned were applied to improve the technology.
Ari Kristinn Jonsson is the rector of Reykjavik University. He holds a Ph.D. and MS in Computer Science from Stanford University. Before joining the University of Reykjavik he was a senior research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center working on the Mars Exploration Rovers. For details, see his curriculum vitae.
 David Merrill, co-founder of Sifteo: The New Era of Physical/Digital Play
The landscape of human-computer-interface possibilities has changed dramatically in recent years. Rising popularity of mobile phones has driven down the cost of microprocessors and other electronic components, and driven their quality up. Sensors have become tiny and embeddable, and graphical displays can be found on more and more of our personal devices. We are now entering the era of ubiquitous computing that Mark Weiser famously wrote about, where these technologies are disappearing into the fabric of our everyday lives. How will these new capabilities affect our experience of being human? One domain already experiencing great change is play. In this talk I will discuss some changes to the ways we play that are arriving as a result of technological advancement. I will explore implications of these changes for human-computer and human-human interaction, and how technology-based play in the future may look more familiar to us than we may think.
David Merrill is co-founder and president of Sifteo, a company based in San Francisco building the future of play. Sifteo's first product is Siftables: a tabletop user interface for learning and play made of active physical+graphical tiles. David is a graduate of the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab, where he studied with professor Pattie Maes and developed the first prototype of Siftables. His work explores how human interactions with computers can leave the limitations of the desktop interface behind, through the development of physical-digital tools that operate comfortably in our real-world environment to enable new forms of play, expressivity, problem-solving and collaboration. He has lectured in computer science at Stanford University and led music controller design workshops at the MIT Media Lab.
David holds a Ph.D. and MS from the MIT Media Lab, and an MS in Computer Science and BS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University. He was a Mayfield fellow in 2001, and was awarded graduate fellowships from Motorola and Samsung at MIT.
 Tone Bratteteig, associate professor, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo: Changing boundaries of design and use
In the Nordic countries humans interact with computers constantly and in a range of different ways. A fully developed IT infrastructure constitutes a basis for advanced public and private services. The Nordic populations are mature and experienced users of all sorts of computerized products and services in all parts
of their lives. This “ubiquitous computing” environment obviously changes how we interact with computers and how we design and use them. Understanding use of IT needs to address use as an aspect of any activity, and as an integrated part of the conceptualizations of the activity as well as of the practical know-how.
Drawing on traditional design disciplines IT can be conceptualized as a design material with particular qualities that influence both the design process and the product. I will discuss these conceptualizations and how they can address the changing relations between design and use of IT.
Tone Bratteteig holds a Ph.D. from The University of Oslo, addressing design and use of IT as an interdisciplinary research field. She is associate professor at Department of Informatics, U of Oslo, where she leads a research group on Design of Information Systems. She is an experienced teacher, and her curriculum vitae includes co-teaching a course at Stanford’s d.school. Tone was part of the first Participatory Design research project in Norway, and her current research addresses how to reframe PD for contemporary society.
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