14h30 : Stéphane Huot - Human-Computer Interaction: Back to the future and... forward to the past

12:30

Thursday

Apr

2018

Keynote Speech

Place:

IMAG Building Amphitheatre

Organized by:

L'équipe des Keynote Speeches : Sihem Amer-Yahia, Jérôme David, Renaud Lachaize

Speaker:

Stéphane Huot, Inria Lille Nord Europe

Stéphane Huot (PhD, Université de Nantes 2005 and HDR, Université Paris-Sud 2013) is "Directeur de Recherche" (Senior Researcher) at Inria Lille Nord-Europe since October 2014 where he leads the Loki research group (http://loki.lille.inria.fr/) in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2005 and spent one year at Télécom ParisTech as a post-doctoral researcher. He then moved for a post-doctoral position in the Inria AVIZ group and was hired in 2007 as as an Associate Professor in the in|situ| lab (Inria & LRI - Université Paris-Sud & CNRS). In 2014, he get a "Directeur de Recherche" position at Inria Lille Nord-Europe in the Mjolnir team (Inria & CRIStAL - Université Lille 1 & CNRS) that he was leading from July to December 2017 before to create and lead the Inria Loki team in January 2018.

His research activities mainly concern Novel Interaction Techniques, Engineering of Interactive Systems, Input Devices and Multi-Surface Interaction, cross-disciplinary research themes that he ties together into an integrative conceptual framework called "Designeering Interaction". He has published and served as reviewer in conferences such as ACM CHI, ACM UIST and IFIP Interact, as well as in several program committees (UbiComp'15, NIME'14 & 15, CHI'13, IHM) and organizing committees (CHI'15, UIST'14 & 15). He is a member of the ACM, ACM SIGCHI and serves in the AFIHM - the Francophone Association in Human-Computer Interaction - Scientific Board (and previously also in the Council).

Long before personal computers, the Internet and smartphones, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) was already at the heart of some of the visions that have shaped modern computing. But for years, priority has mostly been put on intrinsic power and development of features rather than how to use them. The popularization of digital devices such as smartphones, tablets or gaming consoles slowly reversed this trend and the argument of simplicity of use has replaced that of the intrinsic power. But it also led to a relative impoverishment of the possibilities offered by technologies that are paradoxically more powerful than ever. By hiding complexity rather than helping to master it, by keeping the myth alive that such devices make it possible to do a lot without efforts, the trend is now to sacrifice empowerment of users for simplicity of use.

This balance between simplicity of use and power of the tool is a tough compromise, and it is one of the challenges of HCI: observing and understanding sensory and psycho-motor phenomena, cognitive, social and technological aspects of interaction between people and systems in order to improve interaction and to inform its design to empower users. The goal is ultimately to allow them to achieve what they would not be able to do without computers, even if it requires some learning efforts.

In this seminar, I will first present what HCI is as a research field, with its objectives, methods and practices. Then, after a brief history of computing through the prism of interaction and pioneering visions of the field, we will see that many of actual and future challenges of HCI originate from these visions. I will conclude by discussing the need to adopt a user-centered approach, focused on interaction, at a time when major scientific, technological and societal challenges are raised by the design of autonomous or "intelligent" data processing systems.

Attached file: