Fórum Global

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Marianna Obrist will do a talk next Tuesday at 10am, in the classroom #1 at M-ITI (Floor -2 at Madeira Tecnopolo building) and all of you are invited.

Abstract:

The shift from pure usability research towards user experience research has become obvious and increasingly recognized within the HCI field. Marianna Obrist studied users’ experiences in different domain areas and with different user groups.

Within this talk, she will present one of her latest studies on tactile experiences. A common problem with designing and developing applications with tactile interfaces is the lack of a vocabulary that allows one to describe or communicate about haptics. In her talk, Marianna will present findings from a study conducted in collaboration with the Bristol Interaction and Graphics Group, exploring participants’ verbalizations of their tactile experiences across two modulated tactile stimuli related to two important mechanoreceptors in the human hand. The study, with 14 participants, applied the explicitation interview technique to capture detailed descriptions of the diachronic and synchronic structure of tactile experiences. Marianna will present the study details and findings summarized in 14 categories for a human-experiential vocabulary, which is tied back to neurophysiological and psychophysical data on the human hand. Examples for design opportunities of selected categories will be discussed with respect to their related experiential understanding.

Check this video about the theme.

Short bio:

Marianna Obrist is a Marie Curie post-doc Fellow at the Culture Lab at Newcastle University, UK. The focal point of her research is on user experience (UX), its methodological and theoretical foundations. Within her Marie Curie project she aims to identify the key UX qualities for a better ICT-enabled life for older people. Before, Marianna was Assistant Professor in the HCI & Usability Unit of the ICT&S Center at the University of Salzburg, Austria. She holds a doctoral degree in Communication Science from the University of Salzburg. More information can be found on her website http://obrist.info/