Dr. Victoria Bellotti: When Ubiquitous Computing Meets User Experience
Dr. Victoria Bellotti is passionate about contextual intelligence, which means “using collected data and sensed data to make inferences.” In the field of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp), contextual intelligence is the dream; having a device which can use a training model and sensed data to compute answers for people based on devices from all around them. As read in other pieces in the Digital Shroud, ubiquitous computing is explained and demonstrated through reviews, profiles of famous figures, and design fiction about devices that may come into existence in the future; the simple explanation is that computing devices will be embedded in our space in varied ways from our clothes to our appliances, becoming such normal fixtures they will fade into the back of our minds and we won’t recognize the computer within anymore; similar to cell phones. They are powerful devices and yet we don’t equate them with their computing power. Dr. Bellotti is a prominent figure in this field for her work in personal management information and task management.
Education and EuroPARC
Victoria Bellotti attended University College in London for her Bachelors of Science in Psychology and her Masters of Science in Ergonomics. She then moved to work on her PhD at Queen Mary University in London in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). HCI is a field which studies how users interact with their devices, systems, and how to improve those interactions. Post-graduation, Dr. Bellotti moved her research over to EuroPARC before moving to the United States. While at EuroPARC, she co-authored a paper about knowledge worker activity management, in a shared document editing program in 1992 called “Awareness and Coordination in Shared Workspaces.” She produced an overview of shared text editors available at the time, a short comparison of them, and conducted a small study on a focus group writing a paper collaboratively. The image below is the interface for the shared text editor, ShrEdit, used in the small study of the focus group (apologies for the graininess):
One of the key concepts discussed in the paper is “awareness,” or understanding what colleagues are doing. In my own experience, this is a concept that rings true when collaboratively building a document; especially if all of the group’s interactions take place remotely.
Research at Apple
After moving to the United States of America in 1994, she took a position at Apple in their Advanced Technology subgroup of User Experience Research. After 3 years with Apple, Bellotti took a position as a research fellow, later promoted to Principal Scientist, at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), the birthplace of the ubiquitous computing concept, as the manager of the socio-technical and interaction research team. While working at PARC during this time, she managed to write several papers including “Telework: When Your Job is on the Line.” She specifically contributed to a section called Teleporters (someone who brings work home) and Telepaths (those who work from their home office). This section explores the differences between teleworker varieties and their practices, which lines up with her background in Ergonomics and HCI. These differences can be felt by people in every sector as they figure out how to navigate a new remote working environment.
Lyft and Tenure at University of California, Santa Cruz
Bellotti has also worked at Lyft, researching User Experience in both Autonomous Driving policies and managing growth. She has also worked as an adjunct professor for the Jack Baskin School of Computer Engineering at University of California Santa Cruz, where she mentored students as well as collaborated with faculty and staff in areas related to HCI, User Interface and User Experience design (UI/UX), and dialogue design. Dr. Bellotti is quoted as saying she is a social scientist by training, but works well with engineers and much of that comes from her experience in research. Her pursuit of user experience research provides her exposure to the human experience of what engineers create, and she needs to be able to provide the feedback for the engineers in a way where they can create a solution to support the everyday user, who did not develop the application. One of the key points of UI/UX research is that you can not assume things are obvious to the user, without asking the user beforehand to remark on the obviousness of design choices.
One of the issues with ubiquitous computing is the various ways users will be asked to interact with their devices. These interactions could be physical with a clap or hand gesture, voice activated like an Alexa or Google Home, or through a user interface on the device’s screen. Given Dr. Bellotti’s social science background, this would be an excellent area to apply her expertise. Social scientists are often trained to study people and ask questions which add more observations that are not physically seen. This deepens the connection of the designer to the user and helps motivate the designer to improve the interaction of their product; it’s one of the many reasons why designers will create personas, or richly detailed user profiles for target groups of their audience.
It serves as a reminder of the people that will be using their creation and the factors which may improve usability for the target group, such as needing to increase the size of text on the screen to read it. As ubicomp devices are more varied in their size and interaction method, UI/UX research will play a key point in how users react to the end product and their acceptance of the design. With ubicomp devices there is an expected learning curve, but as always the question becomes how much of a learning curve are people expecting or are able to adapt to?
Every piece of software has a similar learning curve, but ubicomp will be different interaction methods instead of different operating system layouts or color choices. Recently, Dr. Bellotti has expanded her interests of UI/UX into the sharing economy, like Lyft or Postmates, and how to improve user interaction and engagement on these types of applications.
Dr. Bellotti has co-authored over 19 patents and 62 publications, varying from conference proceedings to chapters in books. She currently works at Netflix as a Senior Core User Experience Researcher, for the Core member experience. As the field of ubicomp evolved, Dr. Bellotti’s research evolved with it and in an important way. Now more than before, UI/UX research is important to allow access for more people as technology and its applications change. Ubicomp is an evolution of computers being embedded in everyday life, but it also presumes universal accessibility which is not the case; with ubicomp taking advantage of UI/UX research, everyone could have their life enhanced by their devices.
