Information
The research group Human Centered ICT (HC ICT) is a knowledge centre within the Institute of Communication, Media and Information technology. At Human Centered ICT, we work on social cases like the development of a creative economy, realizing inexpensive, high quality healthcare, ‘independent living’, realizing durable solutions, safety and the improvement of participation in the society.
In other words, HC ICT works for humanity and society. ICT and new media make a lot of things easier, more enjoyable, more efficient and effective. They both improve the quality of living at work as well as in the personal environment. Placing the human-being in the centre of the development and designing of ICT and new media seems obvious, but real life experiences proof that this is not as obvious as it seems. Often, ICT-programs or devices don’t match our needs and wants; because they are too unpractical or just not functioning correctly.
The research group Human Centered ICT’s goal is to harvest, process and spread knowledge about human centered design. We want to answer the question of how to design ICT and new media that matches all of our needs and wants. Researching the subjects with teachers and the research group, creates concrete value to human centered design. We advise education managers and curriculum commissions about content-related improvements of existing new bachelor-and master programs. We organize gatherings of education with the improvement of personnel and external orientation in mind. This is accomplished by using our internal and external relation networks of Rotterdam University. This is our way of contributing to the role of Rotterdam University in the society and improving the profession.
On the whole, the research group gathers knowledge for a human centered design approximation(method & mindset) with their research activities. In this approximation, we want the human(people), as well as the technologic(technology) factors to be combined. The following image shows the combination and interaction of these three factors.
Some of these projects were of exploratory nature, but some projects really led to several implementations and publications. For example, in healthcare, there are some ‘soft requirements’ like someone near to your hospital bed, privacy and keeping trusts between nurses and patients that are really important considering the acceptation of information systems. Within a number of projects, guidelines have been created to ‘out’ latent needs of users. This information is used to improve design paradigms of information systems.
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