<-- Ylva Fernaeus

PhD in Human-Computer Interaction
at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences
Stockholm University/KTH

Research interests
Since january 2008, I no longer work at DSV, but at SICS. There, my projects primarily have to do with human-robot interaction, explored in casual and social settings.

My previous work has primarily concerned children's collaborative practices using various programming tools, as well as practical design work, including the development of a new physical platform for behaviour-based programming (called Patcher). Focus has been on children's making and playing own dynamic designs in a way that can blend into more conventional creative play patterns. With this, my thesis had a theoretical focus on what I call ‘embodied programming’. This means that I have explored the activity of programming as it appears in the physical and social space of people. Another important aspect concerns programming as a creative and aesthetic activity. In this work I have created a “physical programming space” (patcher) which have been set up and used by children first in an art gallery setting, as well as at the Natural History Museum in Stockholm.

In my PhD thesis the character of children's programming is conceptualised through the notion of a digital patchwork, emphasising (1) children's programming as media-sensitive design, (2) making programming more concrete by combining and reusing readily available programming constructs, and (3) the use of tangibles for social interaction.

Background
Before becoming a PhD-student, I worked for two years as a programmer at Spiral Productions in London, making interactive exhibits for museums. Before that, I studied at Stockholm University and University of Westminster, and at Brunel and Soundwell colleges in Bristol. And I experimented.

Publications
Fernaeus, Y., Tholander, J., Jonsson, M. (forthcoming). Towards a New Set of Ideals: Consequences of the Practice Turn in Tangible Interaction. Proceedings of TEI'2008.

Fernaeus, Y. (2007). Let’s Make a Digital Patchwork: Designing for Children’s Creative Play with Programming materials. PhD thesis, Stockholm University

Fernaeus, Y. (2007). Tangibles for Social Interaction. Position paper for the Shareable Interfaces workshop, at Open University, UK.

Fernaeus, Y. & Tholander, J. (2007). Patcher: A Tangible Game for Making Ecological Simulations in Museum Settings. Tangible Play Workshop at IUI, Hawaii, pp 25-28

Fernaeus, Y. & Tholander, J. (2006). Designing for Programming as Joint Performances among Groups of Children. Interacting with Computers, 18(5), 1012-1031 pdf

Fernaeus, Y. & Tholander, J. (2006). Finding Design Qualities in a Tangible Programming Space. Proceedings of CHI2006, 447-456. (Nominated for best paper award!!) pdf

Fernaeus, Y., Kindborg, M., and Scholz, R. (2006). Rethinking Children's Programming Through Contextual Signs. Proceedings of IDC2006, 121-128. pdf

Tholander, T. and Fernaeus, Y. (2006). Multimodal Interaction in Children's Programming with Tangible Artefacts. Proceedings of ICLS 2006.

Fernaeus, Y. & Tholander, J. (2005). "Looking at the computer but doing it on land": Children's interactions in a tangible programming space. Proceedings of HCI2005, Edinburgh. p. 3-18. pdf

Tholander, J., Fernaeus, Y. (2004). Embodied programming with visual and tangible representations. presented at SIG-CSCL conference, Lausanne Switzerland.

Fernaeus, Y., Aderklou, C. Tholander, J.(2004). Computational literacy at work. in proceedings of CELDA 2004 in Lisbon, portugal. pdf

Tholander, J, Fernaeus, Y., Holmberg, J. (2004). Tangible programming and role play program execution for kids. Proceedings of ICLS 2004 in LA, USA. (short paper/poster)

Fernaeus, Y., Tholander, J (2003). Collaborative Computation on the Floor. Proceedings of CSCL 2003 in Bergen, Norway. (short paper/poster)

Fernaeus, Y., Tholander, J (2003). Games to Explore Programming. Proceedings of IDC 2003 in Preston, UK. (short paper/poster)

Teaching
I'm involved in the following courses:

Contact details
My email: ylva@dsv.su.se

My office: room 7511 in the Forum building

ylva fernaeus