User:Jcthomas

I have a life-long interest in enhancing our ability to collaborate & cooperate. I earned a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1971. I managed a research project on the "Psychology of Aging" at Harvard Med School for two years and then joined IBM Research in 1973 where I conducted research in many areas of Human-Computer Interaction including query languages, natural language processing, speech synthesis, and the psychology of design.I spent two years at IBM CHQ, under the leadership of Lewis Branscomb with the remit of getting IBM to pay more attention to the usability of its products. In 1984, I left IBM to start an AI lab at NYNEX. Our lab did research on speech recognition, speech synthesis, expert systems, machine vision, and human-computer interaction. In 1998, I rejoined IBM to continue research on Human-Computer Interaction working on the business uses of stories and storytelling, pattern languages for software, smart cities, the X10 programming language, and the usability of some of the Rational software development tools. I retired from IBM in 2013 and have done some part-time consulting on usability since. I've also been involved in pivot projects for the past two years, leading an effort on the psychology of change.

I have also taught numerous courses at a college level including introductory psychology, introductory statistics, cognitive psychology, accessibility, learning, creativity, and usability. I was active in the formation of ACM's Special Interest Group in Computer-Human Interaction and received their Lifetime Service award. I was also a Fellow at the Institute for Rational Living.