UCLIC Seminar, 9 May 2024. Amanda Lazar.

Seminar Title: Centering the Tension between Critical Perspectives and Practice to Advance HCI Research on Health and Aging.
Abstract: Technology designers and developers have focused on the domain of health and aging for decades. Recently, researchers are adopting critical perspectives which push back on prior ways of approaching technologies in these spaces. I center these and other tensions between practice-based and critical approaches in my work, arguing that it is important to rigorously attend to and learn from both of these approaches. In this talk, I will present several projects on technology for health and aging. First, I will argue for the importance of understanding the tension between critical and practice-based approaches, and how these can be traced in our research. Then, I will present my work that seeks to leverage these tensions to advance design.
Bio: Amanda Lazar is an associate professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research in Human-Computer Interaction examines the design of technology for older adults - and in particular, older adults with dementia - to support social interaction and engagement in meaningful pursuits.