Research: Human-Computer Interaction, older people, ethnography
Current position (as of 17-Sept-2012):
Visiting post-doc (Alliance 4
Universities A4U Fellowship)
Interactive Systems Group
Computer Science and
Engineering Department
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M)
Madrid, Spain
Main previous posts
held:
Sergio Sayago's profile in Google Scholar
My main research interest lies
in ethnography in HCI with older people (60+). I have conducted
classical, long-term face-to-face ethnographical studies of ICT
use and learning with 420 older people, who experienced
mild-to-moderate age-related changes in functional abilities, in
adult educational centres in Barcelona (Spain) over a 3-year
period (2005-2008), and in a computer clubhouse in Dundee
(Scotland) during two years (2010–2012). These studies have
addressed key elements of the different waves or generations of
HCI research, ranging from the role of selective attention in
filling in online forms without making mistakes and
intergenerational relationships in the everyday use of
Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) tools, to the motivations
for using these technologies (and ICT, in general) and
strategies for conducting social sharing practices in Social
Network Sites (e.g. YouTube) over extended periods of time.
My current and future research plan,
which is inspired by my participation in three projects, a) Barcelona
Word Race Game 2011, which was
played by around 50,000 people over a 5-month period; b) Life 2.0, which looks at designing geographical positioning
services to support independent living and social interaction
amongst older people; and c) WorthPlay, which addresses digital games which are worth playing by them, is
to deepen my HCI research with older people (but not exclusively
with them) by looking into 1) their user experiences of digital
game play with different emerging human-game interaction styles,
such as body- and touch-based interaction, 2) cross-cultural
(and gender) aspects of their everyday ICT use, and 3) co-design
and ethnographically-inspired design techniques to engage them
in experience design. I plan to do so by
continuing my classical ethnographical approach and adopting
others, especially ethnography in online settings.
This research plan
should allow me to strengthen my contributions to HCI in the coming years.
Population ageing is an unprecedented phenomenon, with numerous
implications, which continue to grow every day that goes by,
both for society (design of more inclusive cities, health &
wellbeing, accessible transport...) and for the design of ICTs
(e.g. digital inclusion). Digital games are pervasive and
representative of key advancements in digital technologies and
interaction styles, though the relationship between digital
games and older people has attracted very little research
attention. There is growing research interest in understanding
a) the online - as well as the offline - everyday side of
people’s interactions with ICT, due to
the increasing amount of time we spend online, and b) the cultural side of these interactions, due to
the globalization of ICTs. Thus, ethnography will be key to get
a better insight into cultural and online/offline components of
ICT experiences.
The research I have been conducting with my colleagues has mainly resulted in a better understanding of:
Other research
contributions are methodological, providing a better
understanding of ethnography, e.g. rapid and classical
approaches, and of other research methods, such as interviews
and questionnaires in HCI with older people – in the context of
“in the wild evaluation”. Studies of the usability and
accessibility of W3C WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)
guidelines and of different types of representations of
geographical information with older people are further
contributions.
These most relevant research contributions have thus far been
published in:
In Mendeley, you can see
my overall
track of publications.
I have also been invited
to give talks and seminars
While doing my PhD, I
coordinated the evaluation of 6 European projects
in the areas of Digital Cinema and Media Entertainment, and of
eLearning and Lifelong Learning. These projects involved people
with different backgrounds, such as digital media professionals
and learning providers. I also conducted research into user
interface design and usability evaluation in 2 of these
projects, one in eLearning and the other in Digital Cinema.
My role as an evaluation
coordinator consisted of establishing a common evaluation
methodology in each individual project, understanding the needs
of both the project and end-users, coordinating with industry,
user-groups and research partners; reporting evaluation
activities in formal documents (deliverables) and participating
in project meetings and reviews.
Undergraduate: Over 6
years (2003-2009), I was a teaching assistant in a second year
course within the CS (Computer Science) degree at UPF on user
interface design, which focused on iterative prototyping
and end-user evaluation. In 2009, I
designed and coordinated a first year course on interaction
engineering within the studies of Informatics and
Media Technology at UPF. Between 2010 and
2012, while being a visiting post-doc at the School of Computing
at the University of Dundee, I contributed guest lecture
sessions to teaching programmes in HCI and Usability
Engineering. From September to December
2012, I lectured (in English) HCI in a third year course of the
degree in CS at UC3M.
Postgraduate: From September to December 2012, I lectured multimedia
and HCI in a course within the MSc in Software Engineering at
UC3M, and from February to May 2013, I coordinated a course on designing
and evaluating interactive products within the MSc in
Computer Science and Software Engineering at the same
university.
Supervision: I supervised 25 Software Engineering degree
projects about HCI and CS between 2003 - 2009. The
average mark of the projects was 9.02 (max = 10). 3 projects
were published as part of journal, conference and magazine
papers. Since 2010, I am co-supervising 3
PhD students, jointly with Prof. Josep Blat, at GTI-UPF. Two of
them are looking into iTV and community informatics with older
people, and the other, is focusing on free-play with
schoolchildren augmented with digital accessories.
In June 2010, I was accredited as a tenure-track lecturer by the Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency.
My teaching philosophy
is based on my lecturing activities, which have hitherto focused
on HCI with students with a technical (mostly, CS) background.
With respect to my conceptualization of learning, I understand learning in HCI as a two-way process: a) learning about HCI, which entails addressing different elements of the HCI waves (i.e. human factors, human actors, and, currently, user experience - aka UX), providing students with concepts and tools to b) learn how to do HCI, which entails a strong H, as the human is the measure of success or failure of many ICT systems. I do so by adopting an engineering approach, using methodologies, such as Contextual Design, as HCI is a process, and moving from the lecture room to interaction in the wild. Learning is all about changing, and this learning has changed the attitudes of most of my students towards HCI, moving from "this is easy or useless" to "designing a good interface is really difficult, but it is worth the effort".
How do I facilitate this learning? I adopt different roles, such as the sage on the stage and guide on your side, since helping students to learn is a highly variable process, and I motivate them to adopt a human-centred approach, which most of my students (with a technical background) find it difficult to adopt, as it entails a change of perspective. I do so by stressing the fact that I am more interested in how they finish than in how they start.
In terms of learning
objectives and skills, I want my students to understand that
good programming is not enough to develop useful, meaningful and
accessible ICTs. I also want them to understand that the user is
key and that HCI helps us address this human side of technology.
I also want my students to be able to understand the interaction
of humans with computer systems in terms of human factors, human
actors and experiences, and use HCI to design and/or suggest
implications for designing better systems. By meeting these
objectives and developing these competences, I consider that my
students develop important skills and learn a vocabulary
necessary for their careers (academic or more
industry-oriented).
How do I implement my
teaching philosophy? In my classroom activities, I encourage the
completion of student-driven projects, as personalisation and
involvement are key aspects to motivate them to learn. I combine
textual and visual presentations with real-life examples, which
help me to discuss abstract concepts, such as mental models; and
try to create different opportunities for participation, as all
my students, regardless of their type of personality, should be
able to participate in the learning activities. In my
supervision activities, I strive to be close to my students'
research, since this allows me to establish a good relationship
with them, and, in addition to this, I have realised that by
seeing their supervisor working as hard as them, my students are
more motivated and more confident in themselves. It goes without
saying that I try to learn with and from my students too.
In hindsight, over the
years, my approach to student education has shifted from
focusing on my teaching to my students' learning, to a
realisation that studying HCI involves the student and lecturer
in conversations in a dynamic atmosphere that empowers both of
them to learn, and to my participation in TEL research
activities to keep up-to-date to technological advancements in
learning and teaching. In my classroom activities, I plan to
enhance my awareness of how students are experiencing their
learning, in order to provide them with better learning
experiences. I aim to do so by using classroom assessment
techniques. In my supervision activities, I am working to help
my postgraduates students to find and develop the working style
that works best for them.
I consider that lessons
I have learned about lecturing HCI, such as motivation,
personalisation, student-driven projects, and taking different
roles, along with my background in CS, should help me lecture
other engineering/CS topics.
•
Advocate at W4A 2012
• Reviewed conference papers: ACM-CHI 2012,
ACM-IDC (Interaction Design and Children) 2012 conference,
ACM-CHI 2011
• Reviewed journal papers: Gerontechnology,
Interacting with Computers, International Journal of
Human-Computer Studies, International Journal of Emerging
Technologies and Society, New Review of Hypermedia and
Multimedia
• External reviewer of a PhD dissertation at
Charles Sturt University (Australia) on older people and online
communities, September 2010
• Member of the Advisory Panel of the BRAID project (Bridging Research in Ageing and ICT
Development, EU FP7 Support Action)
E-mail: ssayago [at] inf [dot] uc3m [dot] es