Dear informatics friends!

After eighteen exciting and educational months abroad I’ve now returned back home to Klagenfurt and the Department of Informatics Systems after travelling over 18,000 kilometres from Christchurch in New Zealand. My visit in New Zealand started in July 2008 when I received an Erwin-Schrödinger scholarship from FWF, The Austrian Science Fund, to conduct research on desktop interfaces at the HCI & Multimedia Lab at the University of Canterbury. After long hours and days in the hosting lab, thinking, prototyping and t

esting on how to re-design and make current desktop tools–such as task switching interfaces (e.g. the Microsoft XP Taskbar and Alt+Tab tool), pull-down menus and toolbars–easier to learn and more efficient and fun to use, I had the opportunity to explore the magnificent scenery of New Zealand, Australia and Cook Islands.

If you’re interested to hear more about my research and my experiences from the south pacific region, I welcome you to join in on our get-together on 8 April when Bonifaz Kaufmann and I talk about our experiences from USA and New Zealand. For more details about the when, who, where, what, and how, click here.

Cheers/
David Ahlström