Kristina Höök upholds a position as Professor in Human-Machine Interaction at
. Kristina Höök is also the lab manager of the
at SICS.
Throughout my research career I have worked with a range of design
concepts that I believe may come in useful in some interaction design
situations - not all - but some. Some of these I would even claim to
be what we could name middle-range theories.
The first, and perhaps most
known, concept I worked with, we named social
navigation. Bascially, social navigation makes other's social
trails through information spaces visible. This helps users find their
way in large information spaces as we typically rely on the judgement
of others. After working with the concept of social navigation for a
while, some of the colleagues I was working with at the time,
figured that we could move this concept out into mobile
contexts. Thus, we built a range of social mobile
services . This in turn, made us discover the problematic nature
of seamlessness, a concept often promoted by the
telecom-industry. Instead of seamlessness, we have therefore been
working with seamfulness. A
seamful design is one where the seams in the network coverage,
positioning system, or between different media in a space are not
hidden but instead used as a resource in the design, shown to the
users so that they can make sense of them, appropriate them and have
fun with them.
After working with social navigation for many years, I became really
interested in affective computing after listening to Rosalind Picard
in 1998. But my take on affective computing is somewhat different from
Roz' direction of research. Together with the affective presence
group I have been exploring an alternative view on how affect can
be integrated into interaction with end users. Our take is that of affective
interaction. In particular, with my research group we have been
exploring the idea of involving users both physically and cognitively
in what we name an affective loop.
All these "interaction concepts" that I have been working with
throughout my research career all belong to the same theoretical
foundation: that of embodied interaction (as discussed by Paul Dourish). But instead
of being grand theories of life, universe and everything, our aim is
to make these concepts carry the grand theory into usable design
concepts that anyone can pick up and make use of in their design
practice.
Obviously, I am an academic and thus you can read more about what I do
in my
publications. If
you want to know the whole story about my work life you can also check
out my
C.V. Right now I
am involved in the following
projects. In case you
want to contact me there here is my
address. In general,
we do not have any open positions in my group. If we do, they will be
advertised in the news section of the
interaction lab
description.
Please do not mail me with an application unless you've
seen an ad at those pages.
I am married to
Sverker
Janson and we have two kids, Adam and Axel. Some
family
pictures. My only leisure time activity is horseback riding on
icelandic horses.
Here are also some more pictures of me that
you may use if you want to.

My current PhD-students are:
I also co-supervise:
I used to supervise:
Looking for MSc-people(2006-02-08):
I am currently looking for three - four people who want to do their MSc (unpaid):
- One who is interested in studying World of Warcraft from one particular angle, namely the emotional communication in WoW. This MSc-job will be supervised by me and Fatima Jonsson. More information will come soon.
- A student who likes to program in Half-life II and C++ focusing on an interactive narrative. The work will be done within the Kaktus-project lead by Jarmo Laaksolahti.
- A student who is interested in sensor-solutions, who likes to figure out which sensordata relates to what when it comes to bodily and emotional interactions.
If you are interested in any of the above, contact me: kia@dsv.su.se.