Steve Whittaker
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Steve Whittaker is a Professor in Human-Computer Interaction at the
University of California Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...
. He is best known for his research at the intersection of
computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
and
social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...
in particular on
computer mediated communication Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is defined as any human communication that occurs through the use of two or more electronic devices. While the term has traditionally referred to those communications that occur via computer-mediated format ...
and
personal information management Personal information management (PIM) is the study of the activities people perform in order to acquire or create, store, organize, maintain, retrieve, and use information items such as documents (paper-based and digital), web pages, and email mes ...
. He is a Fellow of the ''ACM'', and winner of the
CSCW Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is the study of how people utilize technology collaboratively, often towards a shared goal. CSCW addresses how computer systems can support collaborative activity and coordination. More specifically, the ...
2018 "Lasting Impact" award. He also received a Lifetime Research Achievement Award from
SIGCHI The Special Interest Group on Computer–Human Interaction (SIGCHI) is one of the Association for Computing Machinery's special interest groups which is focused on human–computer interactions (HCI). It hosts the flagship annual international HC ...
, is a Member of the SIGCHI Academy. He is Editor of the journal ''Human Computer Interaction.''.


Life

He was born in
Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
in the UK, in 1957. As an undergraduate he studied Natural Sciences at
Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
, obtaining his PhD in Cognitive Psychology at St. Andrews. He spent many years in industry where he worked at Hewlett-Packard Labs,
AT&T Labs AT&T Labs is the research & development division of AT&T, the telecommunications company. It employs some 1,800 people in various locations, including: Bedminster NJ; Middletown, NJ; Manhattan, NY; Warrenville, IL; Austin, TX; Dallas, TX; Atlan ...
, and IBM Research Labs. Moving to academia he was Professor of
Information Science Information science (also known as information studies) is an academic field which is primarily concerned with analysis, collection, Categorization, classification, manipulation, storage, information retrieval, retrieval, movement, dissemin ...
at
University of Sheffield , mottoeng = To discover the causes of things , established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions: – Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield , type = Pu ...
, before relocating to the
University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
in 2009.


Research

He publishes in the fields of
Human Computer Interaction Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, an ...
and Computer Supported Co-operative Work. His applies social science theory to understand people's interactions with technologies, using these insights to design new human-centric technologies. His early research focused on
computer mediated communication Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is defined as any human communication that occurs through the use of two or more electronic devices. While the term has traditionally referred to those communications that occur via computer-mediated format ...
, extending psychological theories of conversation to develop new accounts of online interaction. That work led to the design of novel collaboration, messaging and social computing technologies some which have now become standard. He has also researched
Personal information management Personal information management (PIM) is the study of the activities people perform in order to acquire or create, store, organize, maintain, retrieve, and use information items such as documents (paper-based and digital), web pages, and email mes ...
. He co-published a book with Ofer Bergman: The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff which uses cognitive psychology to understand how we organize and access our personal digital information. He was also one of the first to document how email contributes to information overload, proposing technical approaches to address this. More recently his work examined 'digital memory', critiquing
Lifelog A lifelog is a personal record of one's daily life in a varying amount of detail, for a variety of purposes. The record contains a comprehensive dataset of a human's activities. The data could be used to increase knowledge about how people liv ...
ging approaches and developing new techniques for understanding and reflecting on our pasts.


Awards

ACM Fellow ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing ...
(2015). ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award (2014).
ACM SIGCHI Academy (2008).
ACM CSCW Lasting Impact Award (2018). Editor, Human Computer Interaction (2013–present)


Selected bibliography

* Whittaker, S. and Sidner, C. (1996). Email overload: exploring personal information management of email. In Proceedings of CHI'96 Conference on Computer Human Interaction, 276–283, NY: ACM Press. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/238386.238530 * Whittaker, S., and O'Conaill, B. (1997). The role of vision in face-to-face and mediated communication. In In K. Finn, A. Sellen, S. Wilbur (Eds.), Video mediated communication. LEA: NJ. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1997-08440-001 * Whittaker, S. Terveen, L., Hill, W., and Cherny, L. (1998). The dynamics of mass interaction, In Proceedings of Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 257–264. NY: ACM Press. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/289444.289500 * Nardi, B., Whittaker, S., Bradner, E. (2000). Interaction and Outeraction: Instant Messaging in Action. In Proceedings of Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 79–88. New York: ACM Press. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/358916.358975 * Whittaker, S., Terveen, L., and Nardi, B. (2000). Let's stop pushing the envelope and start addressing it: a reference task agenda for HCI. Human Computer Interaction, 15, 75-106. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1207/S15327051HCI1523_2 * Whittaker, S. (2002). Theories and Methods in Mediated Communication. In Graesser, A., Gernsbacher, M., and Goldman, S. (Ed.) The Handbook of Discourse Processes, 243–286, Erlbaum, NJ. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2003-02476-006 * Sellen, A., and Whittaker, S. (2010). Lifelogging: What Are We Doing and Why Are We Doing It? Communications of the ACM, Vol. 53, No. 5, 70–77. https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/5/87249-beyond-total-capture/fulltext * Whittaker. S. (2011). Personal Information Management: From Consumption to Curation In B. Cronin (Ed.) Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 45, 1-42, Wiley, Medford, NJ. DOI: 10.1002/aris.2011.1440450108. https://doi.org/10.1002/aris.2011.1440450108 * Whittaker, S., Matthews, T., Cerruti, J., Badenes, H., and Tang, J. (2011). Am I wasting my time organizing email?: a study of email refinding. In Proceedings of the 2011 Conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3449–3458. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1978942.1979457 * Bergman, O. and Whittaker, S (2016). The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff, Cambridge, MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/science-managing-our-digital-stuff


References


External links



*Whittaker'
personal homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Whittaker, Steve Human–computer interaction researchers Alumni of the University of Cambridge Alumni of the University of St Andrews Academics of the University of Sheffield Living people Year of birth missing (living people)