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Elin Rønby Pedersen, PhD mailto:elin@elin.us |
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General profile |
Working in research, R&D and product strategy, Elin Pedersen has repeatedly demonstrated an acute sense for technology opportunities created by users’ desires, capabilities, and experiences. She brings a unique combination of skills to the table: she architects and develops software; she observes people and translates the observations into innovations; and she also has a strong sense of design. Backed by advanced degrees in Computer Science and Humanities, she has more than 15 years of experience working for leading US research labs, and she has done pioneering HCI (Human Computer Interaction) research, going beyond the confines of goal-oriented work at the desktop, making computing a vital and delightful part of our everyday lives. That includes a broad range of HCI themes:
In recent years she has increasingly focused on two hard questions: how to make research have more impact on products without losing its “disruptive” quality, and how to make better decisions about where to spend limited research resources. She co-developed a blueprint for an innovation process (UITTL) that embraces both technology prototyping and ethnographic exploration of usage domains. |
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Education |
Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 1988 M.Sc., Computer Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 1982 B.A., Nordic Literature and Language, University of Aarhus, Denmark, 1978 |
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Employment history (post PhD only) |
2005 - current, Microsoft, Redmond, WA Senior Researcher Joined Microsoft, office of the CTO, Platform Technology and Strategy, to provide vision and direction for incubation projects that merge rapid, innovative prototyping with ethnographic research. She scoped R&D efforts of existing 5-person team to focus on activity-based relationships as a 1st class citizen in the information worker domain. Spearheaded technology innovation on capturing and exposing relationships between documents based on automatically captured usage patterns. She provided key insights to data analysis (ethnographic field findings) and added an innovative technology component to a UI conceptual design. |
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2001 - 2005, Kraka, Inc., Redwood City, CA Principal, strategy advisor and chief prototyper Founded the Redwood City based consulting company, Kraka, Inc., to help clients (corporate research centers, R&D groups, and product planning groups) transform promising technology into appealing product concepts - primarily by organizing an innovative process (UITTL) that combines rapid prototyping and user experience insights. Elin oversaw all aspects of Kraka’s operation, learning hands-on the challenges of running a small business and leveraging peer professionals. Engagements included: Methodology: Helped build user experience teams for clients, recruited and trained a strong multi-disciplinary team of user experience researchers, designers and prototypers. Created and evangelized the UITTL innovation process that develops and assesses value proposition for novel technology. Exploration: Conducted brief ethnographies and workflow analysis for several R&D projects aimed to identify and chart promising user domains. Worked closely with business strategists to help a couple of large US universities improve their intellectual property processes. Specific contributions include gathering stakeholder experience and translating these into action items and web-service designs. Prototyping: Provided technical leadership for rapid prototyping of a personal and personalizable portal to contact information and devices. Designed and implemented web-based professional communities, supporting a large distributed and only loosely connected research collaboration (NSF industry/university cooperative research center, including 10 major industry partners). Both projects deployed MVC architecture, scripts, servlets, beans, and relational databases. |
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2000-2002, Cisco Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA SE engineer level V, visionary lead in User Centered Design group Joining Cisco to help them serve a new, much wider and more diverse user population brought about by Cisco’s entry into the market of IP telephony. Elin produced brief ethnographies, Day-in-the-life narratives, use cases and fast low-fidelity prototyping, all of which helped IP telephony engineers envision their prospective users, and supported their ongoing decision-making as they progressed towards a beta product. She also enhanced the central usability effort by designed processes for early engagement of user experience in production cycle. |
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1997-2000, Fuji Xerox Palo Alto Laboratory, Palo Alto, CA Senior research scientist, manager of several research projects Elin developed and led the research program Tacit Interaction, centered on making technology supplement human expertise, rather than substituting it (see also Stanford talk on "Tacit Interaction" in MURL, http://murl.microsoft.com/LectureDetails.asp?265. She defined the research agenda, managed a team of 4-6 other researchers and interns, and took active part in the delivery by building prototypes (in java, WML, servlets, SQL), and conducting user/usage studies. She so-invented paper-based interaction technologies using tags like barcodes, RFID, etc. (Palette and PaperButtons) She developed and led a research program for mobile communication HCI: (1) Bringing people's social interaction skills to bear on mediated communication and "getting in touch"; and (2) Looking at each phone interaction as part of an ongoing interaction. (Calls.calm) She introduced the so-called innovation workshops into the lab to help prioritize and focus research activity. One workshop packaged data and analysis material from ethnographic study of mobile work in a Fortune 500 sales force, and had a significant impact on the following year’s research program. |
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1996-1997, Roskilde University, Denmark Associate professor in Computer Science Elin supervised graduate students, and taught graduate courses on HCI, Java/Object oriented programming and introductory computer graphics. Ported Tivoli-like informal sketching functionality to the Java and web. She developed and led the AROMA research program, exploring technologies to support expanded peripheral awareness: (1) Provided data for people to allow them be "peripherally aware" of situations where they are not physically present; (2) Solved some of the tough privacy problems in home based media spaces by using abstract representation of activity (and at the same time solving serious bandwidth problems) |
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1994-1996, Interval Research Corporation, Inc., Palo Alto, CA Member of research staff, manager of research project Elin explored gesture-rich interaction technologies using large interaction surfaces to support remote collaboration (LookingGlass with gestures) She pioneered the research domain of domestic media space technology (Casablanca); prototyping in Director and C++. Conducted ethnographic study in domestic settings of people and technology |
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1992-1994, Roskilde University, Denmark Associate professor in Computer Science Elin supervised graduate students, and taught graduate courses on HCI, Java/Object oriented programming and introductory computer graphics. She developed and led the Scribble research agenda for multidisciplinary effort in sketching and gesture based interaction, funded by the Danish Science and Technology Research Council |
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1990-1991, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA Member of research staff Elin joined the ubiquitous computing program under Dr. Mark Weiser's leadership, primarily contributing as front-end programmer (C++ and X-windows) and co-visionary on tools for early idea sketching. She developed a walkup user interfaces for the Liveboards; developed distributed software architectures by replication (Tivoli); and invented technologies for pen interaction for wall-sized interaction surfaces (Tivoli) |
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1988-1991, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark Assistant professor in Computer Science Elin explored formalization and computer support in intellectual work |
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Other professional services |
Member of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and sub committees: SIGCHI, SIGMOBILE, BayCHI, and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc (IEEE). Committee member and reviewer for several international journals and conferences (CACM, TOCHI, TOIS, HCI Journal; CHI, CSCW, UIST, etc.). Visiting scholar with Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Interaction (CSLI) and Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research (ScanCor). Elin has regularly mentored younger co-workers and young professionals. She has also been engaged in mentoring Stanford University projects for many years, typically in projects that deal with case studies and "real world" client contact. |
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Patents and publications |
Inventor of 9 issued patents and 5 pending patents, and author/co-author of numerous scientific papers in peer reviewed publications, i.e., book chapters, conference proceedings and journal articles. A thematic index to papers and patents (including links to local copies of papers) can be found at http://www.kraka.com/ElinPedersen/currPortfolio.html. And finally, a portfolio of interaction designs. mostly from the 90s, can be found at this address, http://www.kraka.com/DesignPortfolio/index.html |
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Other interests and passions |
Elin is passionate (and opinionated) about design and architecture in the physical world. Having a can-do mentality in most matters, she is well versed in construction methods, building code, and import regulation (to bring in her favorite objects of design), She is also an avid reader of fiction, sometimes dreaming of retiring as a writer. |
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Citizenship |
Danish citizen; permanent resident of the United States since 2000 |
