40-minute presentation with Karl Fast

Information Overload is an Opportunity

11:45am – 12:25pm EST Saturday 22 Sep 2012Conrad Centre for the Performing Arts

Presented by: Professor of User Experience Design at Kent State University

Talk with Karl Fast • Saturday 11:45 am

Everyone experiences information overload. This is the reality of the digital now. How might we transform this reality from a negative to a positive — from information overload to information opportunity? The standard approaches include massive computation (think Google) and loosely coordinated group action (think Wikipedia). In this talk I will discuss an alternative approach: deep interaction.

By deep interaction I mean how people act on the world to make meaning, develop understanding, and create insight. This does not happen just in our heads. We do not simply look at the world and think. We often need to interact with the information we encounter. Interaction is an integral part of how we analyze, reason about, and solve problems with information. I call this deep interaction because it involves a complex connection between mind, body, and world. It is more than clicking pixels.

This presentation will explore the contours of deep interaction and examine its implications as we move from a world of keyboards and mice to a world of touch, gesture, and beyond. I will argue that deep interaction should play a key role in designing a world where information is an opportunity, not a burden.

About Karl Fast
Professor of User Experience Design at Kent State University
Karl Fast

Curious about Karl Fast?

Fluxible says: The folks at Kent State know where to get top notch talent: north. Despite calling Ohio home these days, the good professor (we've not yet confirmed if he's nutty) hails from Canada. Given his research into the messiness of information in every day life, we'll be sure to print all the conference signage in our finest block letters so as to avoid becoming a case study. Karl Fast is a professor of User Experience Design at Kent State University. He studies how we think by interacting with the world around us, and what this means for designing the digital future. He is a founding member of the Information Architecture Institute.