Stephen Payne

Accomplishment and Accumulation: perspectives on human activity for HCI

"I will review some recent investigations of how people choose to spend their time. My aim is not to speak directly to HCI design, but rather to develop theories of human behaviour that may provide design insights. I will present laboratory studies of browsing and of task switching to support new theories of skim-reading and of time-allocation in the Information Foraging tradition. I'll close by offering a more speculative general framework to guide research in this field."

Stephen Payne is a Professor of Interactive Systems Design in Manchester Business School.

Previously he has been a lecturer in psychology and computing at the University of Lancaster, a research scientist in IBM T.J. Watson Research Centre, User Interface Institute, and a Professor of Psychology at Cardiff University (1991-2005). He has served on the editorial board of 4 major HCI journals (currently on the boards of Behaviour and Information Technology and Human-Computer Interaction). He is papers co-chair for the ACM CHI conference in 2007.

Stephen is interested in many aspects of the psychology of human-computer interaction, and more generally in the psychology of learning and performance. His current research is funded by EPSRC/ESRC and BBC and concerns on-line information, multi-tasking, and social effects of communications technologies.

Jared Spool

If you‘ve ever seen Jared speak about usability, you know that he‘s probably the most effective, knowledgeable communicator on the subject today. What you probably don‘t know is that he has guided the research agenda and built User Interface Engineering into the largest research organization of its kind in the world. He‘s been working in the field of usability and design since 1978, before the term "usability" was ever associated with computers.

CEO & Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering

Jared spends his time working with the research teams at the company, helps clients understand how to solve their design problems, explains to reporters and industry analysts what the current state of design is all about, and is a top-rated speaker at more than 20 conferences every year. He is also the conference chair and keynote speaker at the annual User Interface Conference, is on the faculty of the Tufts University Gordon Institute, and manages to squeeze in a fair amount of writing time.

Elizabeth Churchill

Principal Research Scientist, Yahoo! Research, USA.

Elizabeth Churchill is lead scientist in the area of Media Experience Research for Yahoo! Research, in Santa Clara CA, USA. She is interested in social aspects of interactive technology design, including HCI and mediated communication. Current interests are in sociality on the Internet and the development of new methods to address the vastness and complexity of internet experience. Her work continues threads that have been previously developed: mediated collaboration, mobile connectivity, transmedia technologies, digital archive and memory and the development of emplaced media spaces. Influences on her work include psychology, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, urban studies and film studies.

Prior to Yahoo! Research she worked at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and FX Palo Alto Laboratory (FXPAL) where she was leader of the Social Computing Research group. Originally from the UK, she holds a PhD in Cognitive Science from Cambridge University. She has published in a wide variety of areas which include psychology, human-computer interaction (HCI), computer supported co-operative work (CSCW) and collaborative virtual environments.