CS547 Human-Computer Interaction Seminar   (Seminar on People, Computers, and Design)

Fridays 11:30am-12:30pm PT · Gates B3 · Open to the public
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Jacob O. Wobbrock
University of Washington
Addressing Situationally-Induced Impairments and Disabilities in Mobile HCI
February 15, 2019

The computer user of today operates in situations very unlike those of the computer user from the 1980s, when PCs sat atop desks in staid office environments that provided ample lighting, comfortable seating, controlled temperatures, and minimal noise or distraction. Computer users of today, by contrast, are likely to be using a touch screen device, perhaps while on-the-go, perhaps outside, perhaps surrounded by attention-grabbers like people, traffic lights, curbs, and signs. Users might be trying to interact while carrying luggage, wearing gloves, squinting in bright sunlight, or wiping rainwater from their screens. Unfortunately, however, today's mobile devices know little about these challenging situations, and offer even less to users by way of help or support for interaction. A useful perspective is to view these challenges through the lens of ability, disability, and accessibility, given that these notions involve the interplay of personal, environmental, contextual, and social factors. In this view, people can be "situationally impaired," as their abilities and resources for action are diminished by context. In this talk, I present the conceptual and historical foundations for situationally-induced impairments and disabilities, including the rightly controversial aspects of this notion. I distinguish situation, context, and environment, and define a space of impairments that broadens accessibility to include everyone, not just people with disabilities. Having established the foundations for this work, I then tour a handful of my projects in which mobile devices are given enhanced situation- and user-awareness (without adding custom sensors), resulting in new capabilities and improved interactions. By the end, I hope to have convincingly motivated the need for our mobile devices to become much more situationally-aware, better supporting users as a result.


Jacob O. Wobbrock is a Professor of human-computer interaction (HCI) in the University of Washington's Information School. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. His work seeks to scientifically understand people's interactions with computers and information, and to improve those interactions through design and engineering, especially for people with disabilities. His specific research topics include input & interaction techniques, human performance measurement & modeling, HCI research & design methods, mobile computing, and accessible computing. Prof. Wobbrock has co-authored over 140 peer-reviewed publications and received 23 paper awards, including 7 best papers and 8 honorable mentions from ACM CHI, the flagship conference in HCI. For his development of Ability-Based Design, he received the 2017 SIGCHI Social Impact Award. His work has been covered in The New York Times, The Seattle Times, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Huffington Post, M.I.T. Technology Review, and other outlets. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award and 7 other National Science Foundation grants. He serves on the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction. His doctoral advisees have been hired at Harvard, Cornell, Colorado, Washington, Brown, Simon Fraser, and elsewhere. Prof. Wobbrock is also an entrepreneur --- he was the founding CEO of AnswerDash for nearly three years, during which time he raised over $2.5M from Seattle VCs. Prof. Wobbrock received his B.S. with Honors in Symbolic Systems and his M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1998 and 2000, respectively. He received his Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University in 2006. Upon graduation, he was honored with CMU's School of Computer Science Distinguished Dissertation Award.