ERC Advanced Grants are awarded to exceptional research managers who have already achieved outstanding research results.

Professor Bødker is receiving her grant for a project entitled Common Interactive Objects (CIO), which is concerned with radically renewing the thinking and construction of user interfaces for complex human use. The project is a continuation of her long-term research into user interfaces and user experiences of computers.

The hypothesis is that human-machine interaction built up around a new understanding of interactive materials and tools will make users better able to form and control technology in common.

The research project will study areas including the great potential in building up open and shared platforms and communities on the users’ terms – and not those of the computer systems. The project will thereby offer an alternative to both classical desktop interaction and more recent trends such as Big Data and the Internet of Things (IoT), which are based on interactive objects beyond the users’ control.

About Susanne Bødker

More than 30 years ago, Professor Bødker formulated her ground-breaking definition of the ideal criteria for user interfaces and user experiences in the book Through the Interface: A human activity approach to User Interface Design.

“When the interface becomes transparent or disappears from the user, so that you only focus on the actual purpose without thinking about the tools you’re using, you’ve then achieved a good and effective user experience.”

Since then her research has been concerned with developing methods and theories about how to achieve better and more direct human-machine interaction. She has won a number of international prizes for her work, and has been a member of even more Danish and international scientific councils and committees.

For more information, please contact

Professor Susanne Bødker
Department of Computer Science
Aarhus University
bodker@cs.au.dk
+45 8715 6148