Dr. Gitte Lindgaard

NSERC/Cognos Industrial Research Chair in User-Centred Design

Synopsis
Dr. Gitte Lindgaard tries to design interactive technology that is easy to use, that appeals and makes sense to people, and that supports their performance.

Research and Development
Dr. Gitte Lindgaard came to Canada from Australia in 2000 to become holder of North America's first Chair in User-centred Design. User-centred means based around the user's needs, capabilities, and preferences, rather than simply providing functionality. The Chair position is unique because it connects many fields - including computer science, psychology, linguistics, and architecture, among others - with the aim of achieving better utility and usability for users. Utility means that the application delivers the right information at the right time in the right format to support the user's tasks; usability means that it users readily know what to do next, where they came from and where they are going. Dr. Lindgaard follows this path of usability by trying to make sure that every facet of a computer - including software and hardware - are as accessible as possible, and ensuring that the application actually does something users need it to do in a way that matches and supports their task flow.

A big part of making these computers accessible involves figuring out exactly what message the computer should convey in order to support users and to make these users as effective as possible in work or leisure tasks. Dr. Lindgaard studies different aspects of communication - such as sounds, pictures, musical instruments and types of text - to see how different senses and combination of effects change the way a message is perceived. Most recently, she has begun to play with multisensory computing, seeing how using more than one sensory channel can facilitate user performance. Currently, Dr. Lindgaard is in the process of working with Carleton University to establish two multidisciplinary graduate degrees in Human-Computer Interaction.

Biography

Dr. Gitte Lindgaard is the director of Carleton University's Human Oriented Technology Lab (HOTLab). She came to Carleton from Australia, where she held the position of Principal Scientist and Head of the Human Factors Division at Telstra Research Laboratories. While in Australia, she was also Chair of the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group (CHISIG) of the Ergonomics Society of Australia. She remains an adjunct professor and a research associate at several Australian universities. In Canada, she is Deputy Editor of the international journal Interacting with Computers and represents Canada at the International Federation for Information Processing's (IFIP) Human-Computer Interaction Technical Committee (TC13) through the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS).

Major Awards/Honours

• 2002 Inauguration of the Gitte Lindgaard Award for best paper, OZCHI annual conferences
• 2000 Fellow, Ergonomics Society of Australia
• 1996 The Ergonomics Society of Australia, Ron Cumming Memorial Medal
• 1995 Men and Women in Australian Science and Technology
• 1994 Who's Who in Finance & Industry (Marquis, U.S.)
• 1993 Who's Who in America (Marquis, U.S.)
• 1992 Who's Who in the World (Marquis, U.S.)
• 1990 The John Karlin Award for the best paper- International Symposium for Human Factors in Telecommunications
• 1988 ANZAAS medal for excellence in science
  

Contact
Psychology
Department: (613) 520-2644
Office: (613) 520-2600 ext. 2255
Cell Phone: (613) 226-0429
Email: Gitte_Lindgaard@carleton.ca