Changing Academic Life

Liam Bannon is a Professor Emeritus and founder and director of the Interaction Design Centre at the University of Limerick in Ireland.

Liam has been a hugely influential thinker writer and researcher since the 1980s, along with various collaborators, in shaping work around technology and design.   

Recorded in-person in 2017, he reflects on his interdisciplinary journey and contributions, covering areas such as AI, HCI, CSCW, human-centered design, and collaboration. Liam’s experiences exemplify the challenges and rewards of crafting a unique academic career largely outside the box, grounded in interdisciplinary collaboration and a commitment to improving human-technology interactions, while also highlighting the importance of personal fulfilment and being able to think broadly.

Related Links:

Liam at the Interaction Design Centre, Uni of Limerick

Some of the people & papers he mentions:

George Miller

Zenon Pylyshyn, (1973). What the mind's eye tells the mind's brain: A critique of mental imagery. Psychological Bulletin, 80(1), 1–24. 

H. Rudy Ramsey and Michael E Attwood (1979) Human Factors in Computer Systems: A Review of the Literature, Technical Report SAI-79-111DEN

James Jenkins, Uni of Minnesota

Don Norman, Human Centered Design, UCSD. See also  https://jnd.org

Kjeld Schmidt 

Lucy Suchman

Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics 

Susanne Bødker, Aarhus Uni; see also our 2023 podcast conversation

Mike Cooley, Engineer Lucas Aerospace

Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores, Understanding Computers and Cognition, A New Foundation for Design, 1987, Addison-Wesley.

Bannon, L. & Bødker, S. (1991) Beyond the Interface: Encountering Artifacts in Use. Book Chapter in J.M. Carroll (Ed.) (1991) Designing Interaction: Psychology at the Human-Computer Interface, pp.227-253. (New York: Cambridge University Press) (See also an earlier version)

Bud Mehan, UCSD  

Pelle Ehn, Morten Kyng and Participatory Design e.g., see this paper

Rank Xerox Cambridge EuroPARC e.g., see overview articles 'What is EuroPARC?' and 'Rank Xerox Cambridge EuroPARC'

Liam J. Bannon (2006) Forgetting as a feature, not a bug: the duality of memory and implications for ubiquitous computing, CoDesign, 2:1, 3-15

Liam J. Bannon (2012) Interactions

Schmidt, K., Bannon, L., Four characters in search of a context

Schmidt, K., Bannon, L. Taking CSCW seriously. Comput Supported Coop Work 1, 7–40 (1992). 

The Google Scholar listing of all of Liam’s publications