Global group holds first New Zealand meeting in Hamilton

16 January, 2014

Global group holds first New Zealand meeting in Hamilton

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The University of Waikato will in February host several world experts on human computer interaction.

They will be in Hamilton for a three-day meeting of the human-computer interaction technical committee of the International Federation for Information Processing.

The federation is a global grouping of national organisations, with the University of Waikato’s Professor Mark Apperley the representative for the Institute of IT Professionals, formerly the New Zealand Computer Society.

Professor Apperley, from the Faculty of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, says it will be the first time the committee has met in New Zealand as it was often difficult to get Europe-based experts to travel here.

“We certainly regard it as a coup,” he says.

The three-day meeting is mainly geared towards organising a major conference in Germany in 2015 but includes a mini-conference for delegates.

The first day of the meeting, on Tuesday, 18 February, will be an open research symposium, followed by a public lecture by Professor Jan Gulliksen from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in Sweden.

Professor Gulliksen has recently been appointed chair of the Swedish government’s Digital Commission, has carried out several projects to introduce more user-centred designs in computers and authored more than 100 papers on the subject.

Other international experts attending the meeting include Professor Tom Gross, chair of human-computer interaction at the University of Bamberg in Germany, IBM senior researcher John Karat from the US, Professor Janet Wesson from South Africa, Professor Julio Abascal from Spain and Emeritus Professor Gerrit van der Veer from the Netherlands.

The open symposium will feature eight international experts along with three from the University of Waikato.

Professor Apperley says human computer interaction has been a recognised research discipline since the 1970s. It ranges from software to ergonomics and behavioural sciences.

The program for the open day is available at:

http://www.irit.fr/~Marco.Winckler/events/IFIPTC13meeting-NZ-2014/

ENDS

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