Kia Höök on challenges of success & value of slowing down and re-connecting

Kia Höök is a professor in Interaction Design at KTH in Stockholm Sweden, director of the Mobile Life Centre and an ACM Distinguished Scientist. We talk about her early research career, and her experiences securing a large amount of research funding with some colleagues then co-leading a large research centre, building a culture, and managing relationships with industry partners. She also talks about how her year-long sabbatical gave her time and space to reflect on the challenges of success and to reconnect to what is important, to re-set her own rules and to re-think how she wants to engage as an academic."You end up in a situation where everything you do you do in order to be able to work more…and that is not a good life.”“All of that stuff that you get worked up about, is it really that important, or even if it is important, can I have a different attitude.”“It is about finding your core, knowing yourself, slowing down, and being more empathic with other people.”She talks about (times approximate) … [Research background]1:57 Evolving research foci from information searching to social navigation to affective computing – carving out new research areas8:57 Developing the proposal for 10 years funding for the Mobile Life research centre[Shaping and running a research centre]11:27 Learning how to interact with industry to win their funding support, what are their drivers, who to speak to15:57 Learning how to manage a large research centre, learning the hard way – IPR, growing a research group, sharing the funds among the four leaders, the challenges of cross-fertilisation across the four groups19:07 Reflections on wishing they had shared research methods across the groups more and thoughts on what they could have done instead23:17 Strong culture based on seminars, the Swedish Fika – the ‘enforced socializing’ every week -, joint trips25:07 The challenges when some of the four leaders leave and the changes in dynamics27:28 The challenges when some of the key company partners are no longer there and contributing matched funding; now knowing what to look for to see something going on with industry; being able to shape relevant research agendas29:32 Practical suggestions for how to work with industry partners, e.g., needing to communicate what the research means, connecting the dots for them (“what are we seeing that they should care about, translating that”), making everyone work for 3 months with a partner and having people from the partner sit in the research centre, joint workshops34:12 Lessons on managing people, building a culture – the challenges of having researchers from different disciplines, putting together teams based on competences and personality and creating safe creative spaces36:40 Moving from being a researcher who can control the research to being the vision person - scaling up the vision, seeing the connections, … but then losing contact with the reality of the research[The sabbatical experience – reconnecting with what is important]40:34 The amazing invigorating sabbatical experience, time for reading, writing, connecting with the passion, sitting under a tree talking philosophy – “reconnecting with why we are doing this”, why it is important44:22 Not only reconnecting with research, reading etc but reconnecting with herself; time alone, being lonely, unraveling strong personal ‘survival’ rules that were about being productive and efficient to function managing a...

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