Title: Dealing with Contrasting Asymmetries of Needs, Abilities, and Motivations in HCI

Speaker: André Rodrigues (LASIGE)
When: Wednesday, November 17th, 16h30
Where: FCUL, room 6.3.27
(Coffee break included)

Abstract: In this talk, I will describe my research at the intersection of accessibility and Human-Computer Interaction, where I have addressed the needs, abilities, and motivations of populations with and without disabilities. I will focus on two topics: Mobile Sensing and Inclusive Gaming.
I will briefly refer to my past work on mobile accessibility, highlighting how we leveraged mobile sensing to deal with contrasting needs of sighted authors and blind users creating a human-powered task assistant. Then I will present my latest and upcoming work on mobile sensing, capitalizing on the richness of typing data in a variety of contexts associated with digital health by using a privacy-aware data collection keyboard toolkit. Lastly, I will detail our work in exploring asymmetric game design for inclusive digital play.

Bio: André Rodrigues is a computer science researcher focused on HCI, with a particular interest in how technology can and is leveraged in accessibility, health, and gaming. He completed his PhD with distinction and honour in January 2020 in Computer Science from Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa. For the last seven years, he has dedicated himself to learning, designing, developing, and evaluating mobile services, applications, and platforms for a variety of contexts (e.g. people with visual/motor impairments, people with Parkinson’s Disease), always working closely with and/or within the communities.
André is currently a Researcher at LASIGE and a long-time member of SIGACCESS where he serves as the Newsletter Editor.