An exploration of measurement in human-centred computing research

UCLIC seminar talk, 11th January 2022

A desk ruler and the end of a pencil

Abstract

Much of human-centred computing research is empirical. This kind of research requires us to decide what things we will observe (or measure) and how we will observe them. How do we decide on these things, and which constraints influence the decisions that we make? In this talk, I will explore these questions by considering (and critiquing) decisions about measurement that I have taken in my own research. I will speculate on where this research might have gone if I had made different decisions about what to measure. I will finish the talk by theorizing about the ways in which our choices over measurements are influenced by (and perhaps influence) not only our local research contexts, but also the world at large.

Recording

I’m grateful to the folks at UCLIC who facilitated the recording of the talk – much appreciated!

Talk slides

The slide deck is available in PDF form.

References

I mention four of my papers in the talk. These are the full references:

Images

I have used images from various sources in the talk:

About Sandy

Sandy Gould

Sandy is an academic at the School of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University. You can email him at goulds@cardiff.ac.uk.