Alarith UHDE Lecturer
- 所属学部
- 情報理工学部
- 職位
- Lecturer
- 専門
- Human-Computer Interaction, Experience Design
- 主な担当科目
- Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science
- 研究分野・テーマ
- Human-Computer Interaction, User Experience, Social Acceptability, Social Situatedness, Social Practice Theory
- 過去の部活動
- I used to play rugby, later basketball and bouldering.
- 得意な科目
- I was good at mathematics and foreign languages (English, French, Japanese)
- 苦手な科目
- I did not like Chemistry, and for most of the time I was bad at History until I had a really good teacher for the final years before graduation.
- おすすめの書籍
Hermann Hesse was a great author – I like “der Steppenwolf”. Another favorite author is Friedrich Dürrenmatt (for example “die Physiker” or “der Besuch der alten Dame”). Generally, I recommend to read “classics” even if they may seem boring in class sometimes. Usually there is a good reason why they became a classic, and that reason tends to be the high quality of writing.
Message
What are the appealing and interesting points of Information Science and Engineering?
The ISSE program provides an international and interdisciplinary environment. Researchers and students come from various backgrounds and work together here.
Please describe your major research, activities, and current research themes.（Itemize）
My research focuses on how people experience and interact with technology, especially in social situations. I want to understand how technology design shapes social situations, and how social situations shape our situated experiences.
What are your expectations for new students entering the university? How would you like to see them progress during their time at the university?
I think that critical thinking is an essential skill and I would like students to reflect on how they interact with technology in everyday life, to become better technology developers themselves. In that sense, I encourage students to ask “why” questions more frequently (e.g., why should we build this technology?) before moving on to the “how” questions.
Please describe technologies that you find interesting now.
We can currently see how big tech companies across the board have gained too much power, and increasingly misuse that power against their own users. While I see this as a problematic trend, there are also many interesting alternatives coming up, such as decentralized social media (Mastodon), a renewed interest in Linux and Open Source, and even open hardware projects such as the MNT Reform.