Human-centered Computing

Computing is at one of its most exciting moments in history, playing an essential role in supporting many important human activities. The explosion in the availability of information in various media forms and through multiple sensors and devices means, on one hand, that the amount of data we can collect will continue to increase dramatically, and, on the other hand, that we need to develop new paradigms to search, organize, and integrate such information to support all human activities. Whether we talk about the pervasive, ubiquitous, mobile, grid, or even the social computing revolution, we can be sure that computing is impacting the way we interact with each other, the way we design and build our homes and cities, the way we learn, the way we communicate, play, or work (Pentland, 2005)(Vinciarelli, Pantic, Bourlard, and Pentland, 2008). Simply put, computing technologies are increasingly affecting and transforming almost every aspect of our daily lives. Unfortunately, the changes are not always positive and much of the technology we use is clunky, unfriendly, unnatural, culturally biased, and difficult to use. As a result, several aspects of daily life are becoming increasingly complex and demanding. We have access to huge amounts of information, much of which is irrelevant to our own local socio-cultural context and needs or is inaccessible because it is not available in our native language, we cannot fully utilize the existing tools to find it, or such tools are inadequate or nonexistent. Thanks to computing technologies, our options for communicating with others have increased, but that does not necessarily mean that our communications have become more efficient. Furthermore, our interactions with computers remain far from ideal and too often only literate,