Title: The story of Swarachakra – Cracking the puzzle of text input in Indian languages

Abstract: There was a time when text input in Indian languages was called a ‘puzzle’. People found it so difficult that became a barrier that prevented them from using most other technology products, from doing common tasks such as searching the web or saving a contact. As a result, Indians typed very little in their own languages. The Roman script (in which we write English) is an Alphabet. In contrast, a large majority of Indian scripts are Abugidas – a different type of scripts. In our lab, we were convinced that we need different solutions – what works for Alphabets may not work for Abugidas. Over the years we explored several designs. Our early solutions were for desktop computers. Later we developed concepts for the feature phones. We tried several creative ideas and made prototypes. We got interesting results in the lab. We published papers and case studies. But beyond that, we could not reach out and make a difference to the end-users. Then smartphones arrived, and quickly became popular. It became relatively easier to develop and deploy keyboards. Again, we tried several ideas. One solution stood out in comparison with others. We called it “Swarachakra”. Today, Swarachakra is available for 12 Indian languages and has been downloaded by about 4 million users. What was the problem, and how was it solved? And what challenges remain? Come to the talk to find out.

Speaker biography: Anirudha Joshi is professor in the interaction design stream in the IDC School of Design, IIT Bombay, India, though currently he is on a sabbatical, visiting universities in the UK. His specialises in design of interactive products for emergent users in developing economies. He has worked in diverse domains including healthcare, literacy, Indian language text input, banking, education, industrial equipment, and FMCG packaging. Anirudha also works in the area of integrating HCI activities with software engineering processes. He has developed process models, tools, and metrics to help HCI practitioners deliver a better user experience. Anirudha is active with HCI communities in India and outside. He has chaired in various roles in several conferences including India HCI, INTERACT and CHI. Since 2007, he represents India on IFIP TC13. He is the founding director of HCI Professionals Association of India since 2013. Since 2015 he is the Liaison for India for the ACM SIGCHI Asian Development Committee. Since 2016, he has been the VP Finance of the ACM SIGCHI Executive Committee. Anirudha has diverse backgrounds. He is a BTech (1989) in Electrical Engineering, an MDes (1992), in Visual Communication Design, and a PhD (2011) in Computer Science and Engineering, all from IIT Bombay.

Title:  Digital Civics: Infrastructuring Participatory Citizenship

Abstract:  Firstly, this is not technical talk, its a talk about a research initiative in “Digital Civics” that Open Lab is undertaking primarily with partners in the North East of England, but also nationally and internationally. Digital Civics proposes the use of digital technologies in the provision of relational models of public services, that is, models that take as a starting point the potential of digital technologies to support citizen-focused sharing of knowledge, experience and resources. By framing government as more than simply the provider of uniform and mechanistic services, digital civics aims to leverage technology to foster environments in which local agents (e.g. charities, local businesses, citizens) are able to solve problems together. Digital Civics research is inherently cross-disciplinary, action-oriented and place-based, and this requires us (as academic researchers) to configure ourselves differently to the communities with whom we conduct our research. In this talk I will be describing examples of our digital civics research, from applications in community engagement and education to public health and social justice, as well as the trajectory and pragmatics of the overall endeavour.

Speaker biography:  Patrick Olivier is Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the School of Computing, Newcastle University, UK. He founded and leads Open Lab, Newcastle University’s centre for cross-disciplinary research in digital technologies. His research interests span interaction design, social computing and ubiquitous computing, particularly in public service and civic application contexts (education, public health and social justice). He is director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Civics (55 cross-disciplinary PhD students) and the EPSRC Digital Economy Research Centre (a multidisciplinary five-year project involving 25 postdocs).

Google scholar:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=CUu9heMAAAAJ

ORCID:

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2841-7580

Open Lab:

https://openlab.ncl.ac.uk/

Digital Civics:

https://digitalcivics.io/

Title: User Experience: a step towards Natural User Interfaces.

Abstract: The road to natural interfaces is still long and we are now witnessing an artificial naturality. These interfaces are natural, in the sense they employ hand gestures, but they are also artificial, because the system designer imposes the set of gestures. In this lecture we will explore together the benefits and issues of Natural User Interfaces.

Speaker biography: Alessio Malizia is a Professor of UX Design at the University of Hertfordshire and a distinguished speaker of the ACM (the international Association for Computer Machinery); he lives in London but is a “global soul” and has been living in Italy, Spain and US. He is the son of a blacksmith, but thereafter all pretensions of manual skills end. Prof. Malizia began his career as a bearded computer scientist at Sapienza – University of Rome and then, after an industrial experience in IBM and Silicon Graphics, moved on with a career in research. He was visiting researcher at the Xerox PARC where he was appreciated for his skills in neural networks (Multilayer Perceptrons) and as peanut butter and chocolate biscuits eater. He worked as Senior Lecturer at Brunel University London and as Associate Professor (and Spanish tapas aficionado) at the University Carlos III of Madrid. Prof Malizia’s research and teaching interests focus on Human-Centred Systems.

He is interested in the design of Ubiquitous Interactive Systems with a special focus on the End-User Development community. He is particularly interested in systems where the physical and digital become seamlessly intertwined producing a new hybrid landscape and the study of problems arising from designing such complex hybrid environments involving collaboration of various disciplines and stakeholders. In his role at the School of Creative Arts at University of Hertfordshire, he is keen to develop novel approaches and attract funding for improving methods to design almost invisible interfaces embedded in a physical environment naturally exploited by users’ innate interaction modalities.