Kristina Höök is the lab manager of the interaction lab at SICS. She also upholds a position as Professor in Human-Machine Interaction at Department of Computer and Systems Sciences that belongs both to Stockholm University and Royal Institute of Technology (KTH).
The first, and perhaps most known, concept I worked with, we named social navigation. Bascially, social navigation makes other’s social trails through information spaces visible. This helps users find their way in large information spaces as we typically rely on the judgement of others. After working with the concept of social navigation for a while, some of the colleagues I was working with at the time, figured that we could move this concept out into mobile contexts. Thus, we built a range of social mobile services . This in turn, made us discover the problematic nature of seamlessness, a concept often promoted by the telecom-industry. Instead of seamlessness, we have therefore been working with seamfulness. A seamful design is one where the seams in the network coverage, positioning system, or between different media in a space are not hidden but instead used as a resource in the design, shown to the users so that they can make sense of them, appropriate them and have fun with them.
After working with social navigation for many years, I became really interested in affective computing after listening to Rosalind Picard in 1998. But my take on affective computing is somewhat different from Roz’ direction of research. Together with the affective presence group I have been exploring an alternative view on how affect can be integrated into interaction with end users. Our take is that of affective interaction. In particular, with my research group we have been exploring the idea of involving users both physically and cognitively in what we name an affective loop.
All these “interaction concepts” that I have been working with throughout my research career all belong to the same theoretical foundation: that of embodied interaction (as discussed by Paul Dourish). But instead of being grand theories of life, universe and everything, our aim is to make these concepts carry the grand theory into usable design concepts that anyone can pick up and make use of in their design practice.”