JIM HOLLAN
My research explores the cognitive consequences of computationally-based media. The goal is to understand the cognitive, computational, and social ecology of dynamic interactive media as the basis for designing computer-mediated interaction and communication. My interests span across cognitive ethnography, distributed and embodied cognition, human-computer interaction, multiscale information visualization, multimodal interaction, and software tools for visualization and interaction. Current research is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Microsoft Research, the UC MICRO Program, and the Chancellor’s Interdisciplinary Collaboratories Program. Recently completed research has been funded by California’s Digital Media Innovation Program, Darpa, Intel, Microsoft, Nissan, NSF, and Sony. (See my website for more information and current publications.)
ED HUTCHINS
I have spent my entire academic career trying to understand human cognition in social, cultural and material context. I was originally trained as a cognitive anthropologist. I believe that cultural practices are a key component of human cognition.
My early work concerned the relationships among language, culture, and thought. In 1975 and 1976, I conducted ethnographic research in the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea. My focus was on reasoning in public litigation. (Culture and Inference, Harvard University Press, 1980).
As a postdoc, I constructed a model of traditional Micronesian navigation based mostly on published accounts of the navigators’ practices.
Later, while employed by the US Navy, I used insights derived from first-hand ethnographic studies to build computer-based training systems for steam propulsion systems and for radar navigation. I then moved my observations to the navigation bridge and used that material to write my first attempt at a coherent statement of the principles of distributed cognition. (Cognition in the Wild, MIT Press, 1995).
Since 1989 my primary research sites have been in the world of commercial aviation.