This week, our speaker is Norman Su. Dr. Su is an Assistant Professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington. His Authentic User Experience (AUX) lab characterizes the relationship of technology with subcultures and designs systems to support their notion of authenticity. He will give a talk about “The Problem of Designing for Subcultures.”

Members of subcultures speak about and act with pervasive technologies in service to their distinct traditions. I will describe how outwardly subcultures maintain a unified front, yet inwardly are rich sites for compromise and confrontation over technology. I will highlight findings from work we have done with subcultures and, in particular, my own fieldwork with Irish traditional musicians. I will close by describing new design opportunities for technologies that acknowledge the remarkable solidarity and discord of subcultures.

Norman Makoto Su is an Assistant Professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington. His research interests lie in human–computer interaction (HCI) and computer–supported cooperative work (CSCW). His Authentic User Experience (AUX) lab characterizes the relationship of technology with subcultures and designs systems to support their notion of authenticity. He received his Ph.D. in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine and a B.A. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Information and Library Studies at University College Dublin, Ireland. He has done internships at IBM, The Aerospace Corporation, and PARC.