Ruth Stalker-Firth, PhD (EPFL), fascinated by how people use technology, and vice-versa.
Hello, my name is Ruth, I write about technology and storytelling as, for me, they are inextricably linked to understanding ourselves and the world around us. When working as an interaction designer (IxD and UX), I found myself listening to stories about my users’ whole lives not just their computers.
I became a university lecturer in 2001 and over the years (at Lancaster, Westminster and Birkbeck, University of London), I taught BSc and MSc level human-computer interaction (HCI), cognitive science, biometrics, IT security, and web technologies. In August 2020, I published an online course in HCI over on Udemy.
I’ve been online since1995 and blogging here since 2007. This site gets ~1.3 million hits a year. Offline, I was born in Middlesbrough and now I live in London.
Back in the last century, I lived in Lausanne for six years first working as a GUI programmer in AI software and then as a PhD student in HCI and big data for structural monitoring at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne. I speak fluent French, terrible Italian, and Duolingo Dutch, and will always have a place in my heart for the Canton Vaud and Switzerland.