In this talk, Jodi Forlizzi will share some nascent ideas about why and how the the field of HCI should move beyond user-centered design in framing problems and creating solutions. In the past three decades, topics of interest within HCI have migrated from usability of desktop computers for office workers to complex, societal problems including healthcare and sustainability. Forlizzi finds that current HCI approaches, inspired by user-centered design, are insufficient to appropriately take on these new challenges. Instead, Forlizzi proposes that we take a service design approach and conceive of product service systems to look at problems holistically, and to consider the implications of what we might design.

Jodi Forlizzi is an Associate Professor of Design and Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, PA. She also leads the Human-Systems Interaction Group of the Quality of Life Technology Center, an NSF Engineering Research Center. Jodi is an interaction designer who examines theories of experience, emotion, and social product use as they relate to interaction design. Other research and practice centers on notification systems ranging from peripheral displays to embodied robots, with a special focus on the social behavior evoked by these systems. One recent system is Snackbot, a robot that delivers snacks and encourages people to make healthy choices.