The fourth Whitehead lecture of the autumn series 2009  will be given by Professor Pat Healey from Queen Mary University of London, at 4 pm on Wednesday 18th November and will be entitled "Design for Human Interaction?". An abstract for the lecture and short biography for the speaker are appended below. A colour display poster can be downloaded from  .

The lecture will take place @4pm in the Ben Pimlott lecture theatre at Goldsmiths College .

Everyone is very welcome to attend the lecture and a drinks reception afterwards.

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18th November 2009

Design for Human Interaction?
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Many of the most successful contemporary applications of technology depend less on good human-system interaction and more on good  human-human interaction; as Kang (2002) noted "the killer application of the internet is other people". Text messaging, video conferencing and online communities provide three examples that illustrate the basic disconnect between the effective support for human-system interaction and effective support for human-human interaction.  More interestingly, these disconnects reveal more fundamental problems with the way human interaction is often conceptualised and modelled. Consider the use of space.  A common strategy used in the design of online social environments is to employ an apparently simple 'face-to-face-like' spatial metaphor. Although intuitively appealing this is problematic. First, because it imports or re-imposes a limit on face-to-face conversation that people prefer to escape if they can. Second, because it misconceives the way embodied communication in a shared space is used as a resource for communication. Third, because it privileges a quantitative, physical concept of space that obscures the qualitative structure of interpersonal space and it's relationship to human 'closeness'.  Drawing on these points I will argue for an approach to understanding human interaction, and design for human interaction, which treats miscommunication as the key phenomena.

Pat Healey is Professor of Human Interaction in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary, University of London. He is leader of the Interaction, Media and Communication (IMC) Group and the Augmented Human Interaction Laboratory.   After graduating from Nottingham University with a B.Sc. in Behavioural Science (Psychology and Zoology) he studied for an M.Sc. in Cognitive Science and Natural Language and then a Ph.D. in Edinburgh.  He joined QMUL after periods working as a post-doctoral researcher at University College Cork, Ireland and ATR Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan.  He is currently co-director of the Media and Arts Technology programme at QMUL; an EPSRC Doctoral Training Centre and also working on an ESRC project 'Dyamics of Dialogue'.