Understanding user needs and designing new technologies to meet those needs has long been a focus of HCI research. HCI has been embedded within a sociotechnical systems approach often considering user needs within a work context where an employing organization designs the work, chooses the technologies, and hires and trains the employees. This organizational “container” has been eroding, which raises interesting questions about the relationships among people, innovative technologies, work, and the role of HCI in this new hyper-diverse environment.
Susan J. Winter, Ph.D is Associate Dean for Research and co-Director of the Center for Advanced Study of Communities and Information at the University of Maryland’s School of Information Studies. She has previously been a Science Advisor in the Directorate for Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences, Acting Deputy Director of the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation and a Program Director supporting distributed, interdisciplinary scientific collaboration where she was responsible for programs funding research on virtual organizations as sociotechnical systems, cyber-enabled discovery and innovation, and cyberinfrastructure education, and enabling resources for building community and capacity for complex data-driven and computational science including high performance computers, large-scale databases, and advanced software tools. Her award-winning research on the impact of information and communications technology on the organization of work has appeared in top journals; she has extensive international managerial and consulting experience, and currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Information Technology, Information and Organization, and Group and Organization Management. She received her PhD from the University of Arizona, her MA from the Claremont Graduate University, and her BA from the University of California, Berkeley.