New semester, same old university processes. Seems little has been learned from the pandemic, we’re just doing business as usual. The once in a lifetime opportunity to think outside the box has obviously led us to believe the old ways are the right ways. OK. Am not complaining about being back in a classroom though, I prefer being able to see my students in real space where I can pick up their cues on what interests them, what confuses them and what worries them. Roll on Spring ’22
Office hours this semester still by zoom: email me for a time if you want to connect virtually one on one.
After 15 years as Dean of the School of Information, I returned to life as a faculty member here in 2018. I study humans and the emerging information infrastructure, with the goal of shaping information space to serve humans better. My work engages design, human behavior, and social justice. I earned a PhD in Psychology from Loughborough University, an an M.A. (1st class) from University College Cork. I hold the V.M. Daniel Professorship here in the iSchool as well as appointments in Psychology and the School of Business. I also serve on the Faculty Advisory Board of IC2 here at UT.
Prior to life in Texas, I was a founding faculty member of the School of Informatics at Indiana University and a Research Fellow at Loughborough. I serve on the editorial boards of Journal of Documentation, Interacting with Computers, and am now co-editor of Information & Culture (we’ve broadened the scope and want your papers, so contact me!)
Read my InfoMatters blog to get some of my latest words on all matters information-related. In the last year I’ve been filmed and interviewed several times on the topic of humans’ need to collect things. Seems I’m not the only one who thinks this area is not well theorized. I’ll be writing more on this in due course.
My major focus is a book examining the nature of users (nearly done). I want to us to rethink user-centered design to consider the full human experience, from physical to social, and this book will explain my argument for the ‘vertical slice’ through the layers of boundaries in social science. We are all physical, perceptual, cognitive, social and cultural beings in one material form. Let’s design for that! Also giving some thought to the next book after that, possibly on the human desire to collect, and the infrastructure and human foibles that emerge around this. More about me and my work can be found in the links below, feel free to reach out. Email is my preferred channel – adillon @ ischool.utexas.edu
[LinkedIn] [GoogleScholar][ResearchGate]