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

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Welcome to Changing Academic Life. I'm Geraldine

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Fitzpatrick and this is a podcast series where academics

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and others share their stories, provide ideas and provoke

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discussions about what we can do individually and collectively to

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change academic life for the better.

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My conversation today is with Kia Höök, a professor in

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Interaction Design at KTH in Stockholm, Sweden, and Director

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of Mobile Life Center. We start off talking about her early

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research career, and then go on to talk about some of the

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experiences she's had in co-leading this large research

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center, in building cultures, and managing relationships with

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industry partners. She's also just come back from a year long

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sabbatical. And she talks about the profound effect it had on

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her, giving her time and space to reconnect to what is

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important, to reset her own rules, and to rethink how she

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wants to engage as an academic. We ended up going over the hour

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today. But it was also interesting, I didn't want to

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cut anything out. If your time is limited, you can go to the

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changing academic life webpage. And as always, there are notes

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there with rough timestamps so that you can navigate directly

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to specific sections that you might be interested in. But if

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you do have the time to listen to the whole thing, treat

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yourself, it's well worth listening to.

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Kia, thank you very much for your time, and on a Saturday.

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[Kia: Thank you]. And I've been looking forward to having this

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chat since we met in May, and you made some comment about your

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sabbatical that you're on and how it was really making you

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stop and reflect on lots of issues. So I'm really excited to

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get to those things. But maybe first, just for a bit of

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context, I see that you finished your PhD in 96. When was I? -

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98. We're around the same time. And you did it in some

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information retrieval, helping people sort of search large

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online spaces, major spaces, and then you moved into some more

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effective social navigation and more into effective computing.

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So you had lots of evolutions in your research focus.

Kia: 00:02:29

True that, true that. So my thesis was using intelligent

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user interfaces. [Geri: And this was in a computer science

Kia: 00:02:37

faculty, was it?]. Yeah, yeah, it was in a computer science

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faculty. And it was in the early days, we didn't really have

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internet. Oh, we did have internet, but we didn't have the

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massive amounts of data that we have now. So machine learning

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was around and so on. But it wasn't really possible to do the

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stuff that people do now. And a lot of AI at the time was rule

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based. And I was kind of disappointed in what it could do

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and wanted to bring a more sort of humane, human computer

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interaction, sort of angle to it. And that's what I did with

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my thesis. That work, their community, the AI community and

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intelligent user interfaces, it's a really good community in

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that they cite one another properly. So I'm still getting a

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lot of citations for that work. But personally, I got very

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disappointed in AI, very disappointed. And I felt like

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they, it's not doing what they promise that it's going to do.

Kia: 00:03:41

And so this is where I came up with ideas around social

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navigation. You have to understand this is 1996. So

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there weren't any recommenders around or there was a little bit

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of stuff like that. But I don't think we've had understood at

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the time, what it meant to have loads of people doing stuff

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leaving traces on the internet that we can harvest and use. So,

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this is why I did the social navigation stuff because I felt

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like, if you put people in there and their judgment or what they

Kia: 00:04:13

find interesting, that's the way to build proper intelligence. So

Kia: 00:04:18

this is what social navigation was to me.

Geri: 00:04:20

Did you feel brave at the time doing some of this brand

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new area, brand new approach? Or scared?

Kia: 00:04:25

I was working at the Computer Science Institute here

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in Stockholm, SICS. And there were 100, about 100 researchers

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and they're all hardcore computer science. And when I

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said 'Well, I don't care about your algorithms and your,' you

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know, 'I think that we need to put people here, because it's

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people making choices and it's their choices that we are

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interested in.'. I was, you know, they had ways of talking

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about me as 'Oh, it's the humanities people,' you know,

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with a little sneer and now of course you go like 'Wow', you

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know, that's still hardcore, if you compare to the stuff I'm

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doing today. It was still, you know, it was really computer

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science what I was doing. But at the time, yeah, I was a bit

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brave. But I think as a lot of young researchers, I was angry

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and passionate. And so I was just like, this is not working,

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we need to make it work. And looking at what people actually

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do, not what they say they're doing, but how they actually

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search for stuff. They don't search in that objective manner.

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They don't use hierarchical menus to figure out stuff. They

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actually just go to someone else and ask, 'So how did you do

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this?', and then they use that as part of their solution. So

Kia: 00:05:43

for me, that was a path into taking more seriously what it

Kia: 00:05:47

means to be human.

Geri: 00:05:49

And you continue that as well. So moving into the

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effective community, and again, at a very early time, with

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people who're looking at those issues.

Kia: 00:05:58

So it was the same in a way, the same thinking. I was

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like, okay, so it seems like people are following the advice

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of other people when they search for information or when they do

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stuff. And not only does this make them figure out what to

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find, and what to do, it also makes them feel more secure.

Kia: 00:06:15

It's an emotional process. It's like, if you're citing this and

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this author, and everybody else also seems to be citing an

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author. If I do that, then I'll be more secure, I'll feel more

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that I'm doing the right thing, that I'm not lonely and what I'm

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doing. And the same thing on the internet like I can, if I see

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that other people have been here, they've done stuff they

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seem to be doing these things, then that is what people are. We

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look for other people, for guidance and for culture and for

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rituals and for, you know, stuff. So step by step, I sort

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of saw social navigation as an emotional process also. And then

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when you read up on emotion, what that is, it's not this

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little organ in your brain that affects your thinking only. It

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is everything. It is your body. It's your movement, it's your

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hormone levels, it's your thinking, it's your sociality.

Kia: 00:07:16

It's your survival. It's also what makes life. And so step by

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step it allowed me to become more and more human. My

Kia: 00:07:26

research.

Geri: 00:07:28

And also moving more towards the design orientation

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as well in connecting with the human.

Kia: 00:07:34

But I think as a computer scientist, I was trained as a

Kia: 00:07:37

computer scientist. And as a computer scientist, the way you

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prove that something works is by building it. And so in that

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sense, most computer science researchers are designers, of

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sorts. And I was interested in interaction, and of course, I

Kia: 00:07:53

built the systems to sort of prove that social navigation

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works, and you can use it on food reps, the recipes, or you

Kia: 00:08:00

can do this, or you can do that. Affective interaction works. You

Kia: 00:08:04

can you can build this, you can build that. And so that is a

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designerly approach, but it's perhaps not, it wasn't at the

Kia: 00:08:12

beginning, it was not industrial design, it was not with a care

Kia: 00:08:16

for aesthetics, it was very much more like the computer science,

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existence proof. I can build this thing, therefore, it is

Kia: 00:08:25

possible to build this thing.

Geri: 00:08:26

Whereas now you've evolved more to bring in these other

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aspects.

Kia: 00:08:30

Yeah. Because it becomes obvious, of course, that it

Kia: 00:08:35

matters. If you care anything about bodies and emotions and

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what we are, then you know that they need to care about the

Kia: 00:08:43

whole and the aesthetics of stuff.

Geri: 00:08:47

So you're coming to the end of it, a 10 year long

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research center called Mobile Life. [Kia: Yeah]. And that was

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funded by the Swedish

Kia: 00:08:59

the government, through an organization called Vinova.

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So that seemed quite innovative for the time as well.

Geri: 00:09:08

How did that come about?

Kia: 00:09:10

So we were four research leaders, Lars Erik Holmquist,

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Oskar Juhlin, Annika Waern and myself. We were all at the time

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working with quite innovative new stuff around various topics

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around mobile apps, ubicomp, pervasive games. Always a bit

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far out. And I'm still amazed that we got the funding, because

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what we said in that proposal that we made and we started

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writing in 2004. This is a long time ago. We said, well, we

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think that the world is going to be populated with lots of mobile

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and ubiquitous services. And they're not going to be about

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work, they're going to be about fun, playfulness, enjoyment, the

Kia: 00:09:57

good life. Games and so on. And a lot of older gentlemen around

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us, and 'we can't apply for that, you're not,'. Because the

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first thing that that industry will make money out of is, of

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course, the professional applications on the mobile. But

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we persisted against the advice of a lot of people. And then we

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got the money.

Geri: 00:10:23

Before we just start chatting together and start

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realizing that there was potential here that led to the

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proposal writing.

Kia: 00:10:31

We had other funding together before. And then there

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was this guy Boster Dahlbom, he had sort of told us, 'You need

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to work together,'. He was sort of, he had, at the time, he had

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a position where he had a little bit of an overview of Sweden and

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what was going on. And so he had this idea that, if I put these

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people together, that they're going to be strong enough to

Kia: 00:10:56

survive in a world that otherwise it's very much

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computer science driven or, you know. So that was amazing for

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us. Very important.

Geri: 00:11:07

So it was a huge proposal writing effort?

Kia: 00:11:10

Yeah. So 2004, we wrote a pre-proposal, and we succeeded

Kia: 00:11:14

with that, so we got some funding to actually write the

Kia: 00:11:17

full proposal. And then we wrote the full proposal, we had to

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have industry funding in equal amounts as what we were asking

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for. [Geri: That's a big challenge.] It was really hard.

Kia: 00:11:29

So I learned quickly how to interact with industry to make

Kia: 00:11:33

them commit to a huge thinking like that. We learned together.

Kia: 00:11:39

It was an interesting journey in that sense.

Geri: 00:11:42

So what sort of arguments did you learn to make the

Geri: 00:11:44

industry.

Kia: 00:11:46

So first of all, you have to understand the company you're

Kia: 00:11:50

approaching, you have to understand what it is that they

Kia: 00:11:52

make money out of. You have to be serious about that, you know,

Kia: 00:11:55

you have to go and say, 'We're doing this research, and it's

Kia: 00:11:59

remote from what you're doing. But if we do this, and this,

Kia: 00:12:02

then you might actually have use of us in your strategies', and

Kia: 00:12:06

so on. So you have to understand what they're doing. Both at

Kia: 00:12:11

large scale, but also locally, what makes the guy you're

Kia: 00:12:15

talking to what is it that that person's success is about? So

Kia: 00:12:21

like, what would they benefit from personally in their career

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by associating themselves with you. So companies like Ericsson,

Kia: 00:12:29

for example, in Ericsson research, you need to do

Kia: 00:12:31

patterns, and you need to show off results, to have demos and

Kia: 00:12:37

so on. You're not so interested in writing papers. It's nice if

Kia: 00:12:41

you have some papers, but that's not. So what we had to do is to

Kia: 00:12:44

figure out how can we serve that purpose?

Geri: 00:12:48

So how do you find out what they need? Because if we're

Geri: 00:12:52

in academia, we don't often have insight into industry and what

Geri: 00:12:56

are their drivers? And what's important to them?

Kia: 00:12:58

Yeah, a lot of talking. So Sweden is a small country. So we

Kia: 00:13:03

do know a lot of people. So you have to talk to people a lot and

Kia: 00:13:08

try to figure out stuff. And also I remember drawing one

Kia: 00:13:12

hierarchical map after another. So this person is the boss of

Kia: 00:13:14

that person, who's the boss of that person. Therefore, I need

Kia: 00:13:17

to talk to the one on top and the one at the bottom in order

Kia: 00:13:21

to squeeze the middle management because they are tight on money.

Kia: 00:13:23

And so they want, you know, they're actually sitting on the

Kia: 00:13:26

budget.

Geri: 00:13:27

Being very strategic then?

Kia: 00:13:29

Well, I learned to, or we learned to be strategic, I don't

Kia: 00:13:33

think we were. And we also learned to be bold, and to not

Kia: 00:13:39

only be servants to them, but to say, 'Look, we think the world

Kia: 00:13:44

is turning, it's going in this direction. And we know you can't

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afford to do a lot of research in that direction. But we will

Kia: 00:13:50

do it. And we will get government funding to do it. If

Kia: 00:13:54

you engage with us in this way.'

Geri: 00:13:57

And you can benefit then in this way.

Kia: 00:14:00

We'll take the risk, we'll take high risk. Like we were

Kia: 00:14:03

saying, 'Well, there will be many, many mobile services'. You

Kia: 00:14:06

have to remember this is 2004.

Geri: 00:14:08

Yes. So three years, three years before the smartphone,

Geri: 00:14:13

first iPhone came out?

Kia: 00:14:14

Yeah, I think 2008, I think the iPhone came so it was like

Kia: 00:14:18

four years before and we were saying, well, Java is not going

Kia: 00:14:20

to work, is it? You know, and this and that so and so we said,

Kia: 00:14:25

well, let's pretend it's already happened, what then? So we were

Kia: 00:14:29

trying to be, I usually say eight years into the future for

Kia: 00:14:33

them to listen to us strategically. Or I was also

Kia: 00:14:37

talking at the time about sensors. There will be many

Kia: 00:14:39

sensors that are on your body and in the environment. And

Kia: 00:14:43

these apps will be thriving of these and you know and of course

Kia: 00:14:50

these people, you know, people at Ericsson research they know

Kia: 00:14:53

these things, they're also in the future, but they might

Kia: 00:14:56

benefit from having us do some of the stuff they wouldn't dare

Kia: 00:15:00

to do inside the organization. So, yeah, so that's how we

Kia: 00:15:06

worked.

Geri: 00:15:08

So that sounds like a big learning curve. [Kia: Yah, it

Geri: 00:15:11

was]. And then when you got the funding, and was it 10 years

Geri: 00:15:15

upfront?

Kia: 00:15:17

It was divided into contracts of first two years and

Kia: 00:15:20

three years, three years and two years.

Geri: 00:15:21

So having to show outputs at the end of those periods to

Geri: 00:15:25

get the next period. So you ended up with the center with

Geri: 00:15:29

what about 30 people and a large number of, a number of large

Geri: 00:15:33

companies?

Kia: 00:15:34

Well, you know, funding attracts funding. So we ended up

Kia: 00:15:38

being after a while, like 45-50 people actually working in the

Kia: 00:15:42

center, some of them paid by industry, sitting with us, some

Kia: 00:15:47

on other grants, some on the Mobile Life funding, you know,

Kia: 00:15:49

so it grew to be, at its peak, it was like 45-50 people maybe

Kia: 00:15:55

sitting in the

Geri: 00:15:56

So what were your other learning curves then around

Geri: 00:16:00

managing that? Because that's a huge, that's, nothing in your

Geri: 00:16:05

PhD training actually prepared you for that.

Kia: 00:16:12

Now, there's a lot of stuff you learn, and you learn the

Kia: 00:16:15

hard way. And I wish I'd figured out some of it earlier, but you

Kia: 00:16:24

have to learn everything from strange things, like doing IPR

Kia: 00:16:28

agreements. What is an IPR agreement? What is IPR? [Geri:

Kia: 00:16:31

Intellecutal property?] Yeah, intellectual property rights. So

Kia: 00:16:36

when you have a collaboration like that with industry, you

Kia: 00:16:38

have to have something regulating what happens, if we

Kia: 00:16:42

do a patent, who will own the patents and who will be able to

Kia: 00:16:45

make money on it. So stuff like that. But the management growing

Kia: 00:16:50

research group, I had, for some reason done that a couple of

Kia: 00:16:54

times before, [Geri: On a smaller scale or a similar

Kia: 00:16:57

scale?] I was, in year 2000, I was the head of a lab at SICS,

Kia: 00:17:02

there was about 25 people. So and I think my career has been

Kia: 00:17:06

like that. I start something that where I think, 'Oh, this is

Kia: 00:17:09

going to be small and lovely, will be seven people, seven is

Kia: 00:17:12

great. Seven plus minus two, that's perfect.' And then boom,

Kia: 00:17:18

something happens. And then it grows to be bigger. So I have

Kia: 00:17:21

done it before. Tried to return a couple of times to smaller

Kia: 00:17:25

groups. So with this, we grew to be a big group. And we had

Kia: 00:17:29

decided, and I don't know if that was good, and it's still

Kia: 00:17:35

difficult, we decided that the four of us would be equals. So

Kia: 00:17:40

we would work

Geri: 00:17:42

democratic, and dare I say 'Scandinavian' in its approach?

Kia: 00:17:46

Yeah. And that is, of course, not an easy decision. So

Kia: 00:17:50

we decided that we would in order to minimize conflicts

Kia: 00:17:53

between us, that we would divide the money very carefully, like

Kia: 00:17:59

equal parts. We would also, if we pulled in funding together,

Kia: 00:18:04

you know, if there was a reason that people said, well, we want

Kia: 00:18:06

to give you more funding, because you're Mobile Life, then

Kia: 00:18:08

we would also divide that funding by four, you know. So we

Kia: 00:18:12

worked according to that principle. The bad thing about

Kia: 00:18:16

that is that we then built our groups to be four groups, rather

Kia: 00:18:19

than looking for cross fertilization always between the

Kia: 00:18:23

groups.

Geri: 00:18:24

Were you're physically located together?

Kia: 00:18:26

Yeah. So what I saw, what I hoped would be happening, and

Kia: 00:18:33

what's happening is that, of course, the people further down

Kia: 00:18:36

are PhD students, and so on. They would talk to one another,

Kia: 00:18:39

and they would benefit from the fact that they were sitting in

Kia: 00:18:42

the same office, and we had seminars and intellectual

Kia: 00:18:45

discussions and so on. They also benefit from seeing us

Kia: 00:18:48

quarreling over intellectual academic topics. So that was

Kia: 00:18:53

good, but I think I don't know how we should have done it. But

Kia: 00:18:59

I think we could have benefitted a bit more, if we had borrowed

Kia: 00:19:04

methods from one another.

Geri: 00:19:06

What research methods? Have you got any specific

Geri: 00:19:10

examples or so?

Kia: 00:19:10

Oskar Juhlin was working way more from you first do some

Kia: 00:19:14

kind of ethnographic study, and then you use that as a basis for

Kia: 00:19:19

your design process. And he had a very, very interesting way of

Kia: 00:19:24

sort of figuring out who to study. So he would study ralley

Kia: 00:19:25

So you said you're not sure what you could do, could have done,

Kia: 00:19:28

drivers in the north of Sweden, or he or people driving their

Kia: 00:19:32

bikes, bikers and what they found interesting or something

Kia: 00:19:36

like that. You know, and then he used that to really carefully

Kia: 00:19:41

hone maybe a few design ideas that he would then implement. So

Kia: 00:19:45

the first part of his process I was not using. The other part, I

Kia: 00:19:50

think I had perhaps the strongest skill in the design

Kia: 00:19:54

side. So we could have worked differently. With Lars Erik,

Kia: 00:19:58

he's always been fascinated by technology. He's like, what I

Kia: 00:20:03

want is for people to come up to a demo I've done and say, 'Oh,

Kia: 00:20:07

that's cool, cool tech'. And so he had a stronger technology

Kia: 00:20:11

driven, like, you take some technology and you feel it, you

Kia: 00:20:16

touch it, you interact with it until you figure out what you

Kia: 00:20:20

can do with it. And then he also used some cool methods to

Kia: 00:20:24

combine with that technology understanding. I could have

Kia: 00:20:28

benefited from his tech savvy. And then Annika, she was

Kia: 00:20:32

interacting with these live action role playing people,

Kia: 00:20:36

strange people, very interesting people, people that would show

Kia: 00:20:41

up in the office looking like vampires, or acting in role or

Kia: 00:20:45

whatever. So that added this wonderful atmosphere to Mobile

Kia: 00:20:50

Life where it felt unpredictable, you got to your

Kia: 00:20:53

office, and there would be stuff happening. That was super

Kia: 00:20:57

interesting. And her interest in those marginal practices, are

Kia: 00:21:02

not marginal, because it's a big movement, but that was super

Kia: 00:21:06

interesting as well.

Kia: 00:21:14

but any thoughts of what you could have done? Because you're

Kia: 00:21:19

all complementary in very interesting ways.

Kia: 00:21:22

So at the time, we were younger, we needed to build our own

Kia: 00:21:28

research careers, we needed to build our own CVs, we needed to

Kia: 00:21:31

have our own research groups, our own PhD students, and so on.

Kia: 00:21:36

I think if we had reserved some of the funding for projects that

Kia: 00:21:40

were joint, and we did a little bit, but not enough. If we had

Kia: 00:21:44

had like, a little pile of money, where we said, well, you

Kia: 00:21:48

can only get this money, if you collaborate with this, you know,

Kia: 00:21:52

across the groups or something, then that would have been, you

Kia: 00:21:55

know, it's always about money, resources. It is.

Geri: 00:21:58

It is, because we need to employ people to do the work.

Geri: 00:22:01

Yeah.

Kia: 00:22:02

Yeah. So it's not like we did not influence. Of course we

Kia: 00:22:07

did, but

Geri: 00:22:08

And the very fact that you're talking about the work

Geri: 00:22:11

that they did, and appreciate what strengths and complementary

Geri: 00:22:15

areas. It's just an interesting tension, isn't it, around the

Geri: 00:22:18

ways in which we're recognized as individuals? [Kia: Yeah.].

Geri: 00:22:22

And that can work against actually maybe doing much more

Geri: 00:22:25

interesting research that isn't immediately identifiable as

Geri: 00:22:29

belonging to one person or another.

Kia: 00:22:31

Yeah. And working together has enormous benefits. But it

Kia: 00:22:35

also means compromising. And I've since then read up, and I

Kia: 00:22:39

didn't find any literature at the time. But I've since then

Kia: 00:22:43

read up on. And there's this paper by somebody, I can't

Kia: 00:22:46

remember the name of. He talks about eight mistakes you can

Kia: 00:22:50

make when you build a center. One of them is to allow

Kia: 00:22:54

professors to go off and do their own thing. You have to

Kia: 00:22:58

make them commit to working together. It's like you have to.

Kia: 00:23:02

That's the only way that they will get out of the comfort zone

Kia: 00:23:06

and do something they wouldn't have done otherwise. And I think

Kia: 00:23:10

we were committed to an extent. But maybe we could have done

Kia: 00:23:14

even more. Even more.

Geri: 00:23:16

Did people come to join seminars?

Kia: 00:23:19

Oh, yeah, yeah. We had a very, very strong culture very

Kia: 00:23:23

much like you come to the seminars, and we had the, you

Kia: 00:23:26

know, the Swedish fika. So it was coffee break. So we had one

Kia: 00:23:33

enforced fika every week on Wednesdays, where everybody had

Kia: 00:23:37

to come [Geri: And drink coffee.' and drink coffee, and

Kia: 00:23:40

sit around and socialize. We call it the enforced

Kia: 00:23:43

socializing. And it's so funny, because I would walk through the

Kia: 00:23:47

center, this is an open office landscape. I would walk through

Kia: 00:23:50

the center and say, 'Okay, now it's three o'clock, and it's

Kia: 00:23:52

Wednesday.'. It's enforced socializing, you come down, and

Kia: 00:23:56

people were 'yeah, yeah, but I just need to', you know. And

Kia: 00:23:59

then they would come. And then I couldn't make them leave,

Kia: 00:24:01

because they would like to blah, blah, blah, blah, you know,

Kia: 00:24:03

talking about their research. And so these things are super

Kia: 00:24:08

important. So we did that, we did joint trips, we would hold

Kia: 00:24:12

full day meetings at a partner location, we would hold the

Kia: 00:24:16

meeting at Ericsson or Nokia or whatever, you know, so we really

Kia: 00:24:20

worked hard on making this one center. I can tell you, if you

Kia: 00:24:26

want to, I can tell you some of the issues with being four.

Kia: 00:24:30

Research. Strong. People. What you want to do as an academic is

Kia: 00:24:38

to work with people who actually want something. You want to do

Kia: 00:24:41

something. You want to change the world. You're trying to do

Kia: 00:24:46

something. I want those strong people around. But anybody who

Kia: 00:24:50

is like that is going to be hard to work with.

Geri: 00:24:53

You said before about the fights and arguments that you

Geri: 00:24:56

have intellectually.

Kia: 00:24:57

Yeah. Which is lovely. I love that. But it's also

Kia: 00:25:00

painful, of course. But I think the mistake we made was, we

Kia: 00:25:04

assumed that the four of us would be there for 10 years. And

Kia: 00:25:08

I remember, because we had academic advisors and Tom

Kia: 00:25:12

Rodden, who I know you talked to, in your podcast. He said,

Kia: 00:25:16

'You should have written up a rule for what happens if one of

Kia: 00:25:20

you guys leave. How do you then distribute the power between you

Kia: 00:25:20

Did you have to justify to the funding body as well, any of

Kia: 00:25:25

and figure out what to do?'. And we didn't. And that was stupid.

Kia: 00:25:29

Of course, strong people with strong wills and amazing careers

Kia: 00:25:33

will at some point, maybe look for another job. So the first

Kia: 00:25:38

one to leave after five years was Lars Erik Holmquist. He got

Kia: 00:25:42

a really good job at Yahoo, Yahoo labs. And he, of course

Kia: 00:25:46

wanted to take this step, you know, to Silicon Valley, to see

Kia: 00:25:50

some of his stuff go from academia out there, you know. So

Kia: 00:25:54

that was absolutely fine. And it was good for the center to see

Kia: 00:25:59

some of our work get out, you know, so we were happy. Sort of.

Kia: 00:26:03

But of course, then we were only three, right. And then, a year

Kia: 00:26:07

or two later Annika got an offer to be, Annika Waern got an offer

Kia: 00:26:12

to be a professor in Uppsala, Uppsala University, and she had

Kia: 00:26:16

been commuting from Uppsala to here to Kista for, what, 25

Kia: 00:26:20

years or something. So she was like, I really want this and

Kia: 00:26:24

there are not that many professor's chairs that pop up.

Kia: 00:26:28

And so then she left and then there were only two of us, me

Kia: 00:26:32

and Oskar, you know. At the time, Barry Brown had joined the

Kia: 00:26:36

center. So then we included him and we tried other younger

Kia: 00:26:40

people. But that is, you know, it's, we weren't prepared for

Kia: 00:26:44

the changes in dynamics. Four people who've agreed already

Kia: 00:26:48

when they applied, versus a group of people where it's not

Kia: 00:26:53

clear why you bring in somebody new or not, you know, so that

Kia: 00:26:57

was a hassle.

Kia: 00:27:01

those changes there account?

Kia: 00:27:03

No, that was fine. And we kept being super productive. It was

Kia: 00:27:07

just that I think we were unprepared.

Geri: 00:27:12

So were there other changes that happened? Because

Geri: 00:27:14

that is a long time to be running a same overall research

Geri: 00:27:19

agenda. I know the details of the research changes all the

Geri: 00:27:21

time. What were the other big changes that happened over that

Geri: 00:27:25

time?

Kia: 00:27:26

So one of the big problematic things is that some

Kia: 00:27:29

of the companies we were working with and depending on died. Sony

Kia: 00:27:34

Ericsson.

Geri: 00:27:35

Yes. And when you have to provide matching funding.

Kia: 00:27:39

Exactly. And it's not you know, and the funding body, the

Kia: 00:27:43

government funding body Vinnova said, 'No, you have to come up

Kia: 00:27:46

to that level. So we don't care, if Sony Ericsson has left you,

Kia: 00:27:49

because they're dying, you still have to get the money'. So then

Kia: 00:27:52

we have to bring in a new partner or make the the existing

Kia: 00:27:55

partners raise their funding. So we had, we always had a little

Kia: 00:28:00

bit more than we needed from industry. So it was fine. But it

Kia: 00:28:03

was for me when I was the head of the center. This was super

Kia: 00:28:09

scary. It was like you go like 'Oh, my' [Geri: Sleepless

Kia: 00:28:11

nights?] Yes, definitely. And it's like you can feel it. Now

Kia: 00:28:16

afterwards, I know what to look for, when they stopped

Kia: 00:28:19

communicating. When they stop coming to your workshops, when

Kia: 00:28:22

they stop being super interested, then you know,

Kia: 00:28:25

something is going on, you know. Either it's a reorganization of

Kia: 00:28:28

the thing, or the company is going a bit downhill. So I

Kia: 00:28:31

learned how to follow also the media, you know, follow what is

Kia: 00:28:34

going on with these companies and which ones are rising and

Kia: 00:28:37

which ones are going down and why. So, yeah.

Geri: 00:28:41

So it also sounds like a lot of your time wasn't spent

Geri: 00:28:44

directly in research, but facilitating the research

Geri: 00:28:48

center.

Kia: 00:28:49

Yeah. So I was the head of the center for the first years

Kia: 00:28:52

and then Oskar took cover for a couple of years. And then it

Kia: 00:28:55

was, we were supposed to sort of take turns, but then as Annika

Kia: 00:28:58

and Lars Erik left, I got it back again. And so it's double,

Kia: 00:29:05

because you also get to shape a lot of things when you're a head

Kia: 00:29:09

of the, because then you interact with these companies

Kia: 00:29:12

and you can see how that makes your research more honest and

Kia: 00:29:15

more relevant. You can't go off on crazy stuff without thinking

Kia: 00:29:21

about what does this really mean for you know, are we really

Kia: 00:29:25

pointing to some relevant future here? So to me that was useful,

Kia: 00:29:29

but it was also a lot of work, a lot of work.

Geri: 00:29:32

What were some of the basic ways that you would

Geri: 00:29:35

recommend people to work with companies, if they're in

Geri: 00:29:38

research partnerships, given your experiences

Kia: 00:29:41

So we had, when you're working in industry, if you're

Kia: 00:29:46

working in a big company or a small company, interacting with

Kia: 00:29:51

researchers is your second priority always. So my

Geri: 00:29:55

Even though we think we're the center of the world,

Kia: 00:29:57

We think we have some really clever things they should

Kia: 00:30:01

be, you know, coming [Geri: Knocking at your door.] knocking

Kia: 00:30:04

at the door saying, 'Can I have it?', you know? And no, they did

Kia: 00:30:08

not always. And we're also as academics were sometimes really

Kia: 00:30:13

bad at communicating what our stuff means. Connecting the

Kia: 00:30:17

dots, if you see what I mean. So let's take Ericsson as an

Kia: 00:30:21

example. So this is a company providing the infrastructure for

Kia: 00:30:24

the net. So and we were doing applied research into user apps

Kia: 00:30:30

and stuff. Why should they care about that? What is it that we

Kia: 00:30:34

were seeing in building all these apps and interactive maths

Kia: 00:30:38

and lights and whatever? What is it that we were seeing that they

Kia: 00:30:43

should care about? Translating that, making sure that you can

Kia: 00:30:48

you somehow relate to what they're doing, without

Kia: 00:30:51

necessarily knowing exactly what they are doing, because they

Kia: 00:30:54

can't tell you. Because it's secret, some of it. So we had a

Kia: 00:30:58

bunch of ways of doing this. One was we made everybody in the

Kia: 00:31:02

center work for three months with one of the partners at some

Kia: 00:31:07

point during their

Geri: 00:31:08

As an internship or as a secondment?

Kia: 00:31:11

And that was easy with companies like Microsoft

Kia: 00:31:13

Research, because they do that. So that was no big deal. But

Kia: 00:31:17

with some of the other companies, this was a bit of a

Kia: 00:31:19

like, oh, okay, so we get somebody work with us. [Geri:

Kia: 00:31:22

What do we do with them?], you know, but that means that they

Kia: 00:31:25

sign a contract with that company, allowing them to see

Kia: 00:31:28

the inside, knowing all the secrets. They might not be able

Kia: 00:31:31

to tell you all of it when they come back. But they have that

Kia: 00:31:34

with them in their understanding. So that was one

Kia: 00:31:39

way of making sure that our contacts were close. We're also

Kia: 00:31:42

trying the other way around, you know, to get people from

Kia: 00:31:44

industry to sit with us, halftime or something like doing

Kia: 00:31:48

PhDs, and so on. So we had that a few times, which is harder,

Kia: 00:31:53

because the research process is so slow.

Geri: 00:31:55

Yeah, we operate on different time cycles.

Kia: 00:31:59

Yeah. So that was difficult, but. And then the

Kia: 00:32:02

other thing we did was make sure that we had joint workshops

Kia: 00:32:06

regularly. Then we wouldn't [Geri: What would be regularly?

Kia: 00:32:09

6 months?], like every project, and we would have seven, eight

Kia: 00:32:13

projects in the center. Every project would have one or two

Kia: 00:32:17

per year. Different smaller groups. And so and they would

Kia: 00:32:21

always have a bunch of people that from the different industry

Kia: 00:32:24

partners, who were assigned to that particular project, so that

Kia: 00:32:28

we wouldn't overload one person within the company with all of

Kia: 00:32:32

these contacts and workshops and stuff. But we tried to sort of

Kia: 00:32:35

always try to look for other people in your organization that

Kia: 00:32:39

we could work with, so. And a lot of work was done in those

Kia: 00:32:45

workshops. And then you're doing these trips together, because

Kia: 00:32:50

when you do a trip together visiting, we visited Japan,

Kia: 00:32:53

Silicon Valley, India, and now the recent trip was around

Kia: 00:32:57

Europe.

Geri: 00:32:58

And this is together with researchers and with the

Geri: 00:33:00

representatives from the companies?

Kia: 00:33:02

Yeah, exactly. So you traveled together, you see stuff

Kia: 00:33:04

together, and then you talk about it together. Then you

Kia: 00:33:08

understand a lot about our strategies, the way they talk

Kia: 00:33:12

about it, when they find something interesting, you will

Kia: 00:33:15

'Ah, so this is what they're thinking'. So you have to be

Kia: 00:33:21

super open to all of these influences. And you have to

Kia: 00:33:25

figure out how to find those people within the organization

Kia: 00:33:28

that are interested in that, interested in communicating and

Kia: 00:33:33

shaping strategies and visions for their company.

Geri: 00:33:36

And given how they're always changing, as you said,

Geri: 00:33:39

that's an ongoing process for the sounds of it then, because

Geri: 00:33:42

you're always needing to feel that who's currently there or

Geri: 00:33:45

was.

Kia: 00:33:45

Yeah. And I talk about it now as if, oh, working with

Kia: 00:33:49

companies, but it's not working with companies, it's working

Kia: 00:33:53

with certain individuals. That is what we're doing. It's the

Kia: 00:33:57

same as with academia. [Geri: Relationship building.] Yeah.

Kia: 00:34:00

There's this certain people that are open and curious and

Kia: 00:34:04

interested and questioning your thinking in interesting ways.

Kia: 00:34:10

And those are the ones you want.

Geri: 00:34:12

What about managing people within the center? That's a

Geri: 00:34:16

large number of people. What were your big lessons about

Geri: 00:34:21

people management, growing people, building a culture?

Kia: 00:34:26

So the center was always and still is extremely

Kia: 00:34:30

interdisciplinary. And that is hard work. So whenever you build

Kia: 00:34:37

something, for example, and we have built, that's been our

Kia: 00:34:40

thing that we do build stuff that actually works, and that we

Kia: 00:34:43

put it out with people. When you build something, the person

Kia: 00:34:47

being the software engineer would say, 'Well, I'm the one in

Kia: 00:34:50

charge of what we're going to build, because I know what the

Kia: 00:34:52

technology is going to be'. And then you have the industrial

Kia: 00:34:55

designer where you know, 'I'm doing the design' and then you

Kia: 00:34:57

have the behavior scientist person said 'Well I did the

Kia: 00:35:00

studies, I know what should be in the system'. And then you

Kia: 00:35:03

have, you know, so. So all of that you had, we had to learn

Kia: 00:35:06

how to be respectful without backing off entirely, you still

Kia: 00:35:10

have to do that, you know. So there was a lot of work just

Kia: 00:35:14

trying to put together these themes. Teams that would be able

Kia: 00:35:18

to build and do more than they would do individually. And that

Kia: 00:35:23

is not only about competence, it's also about personality. And

Kia: 00:35:27

it's about fostering a way of talking where you feel safe,

Kia: 00:35:33

creative and dare to be open about your little ideas that

Kia: 00:35:38

might feel like really stupid, and you're the youngest one on

Kia: 00:35:41

the team. So always been sort of encouraging and open. And

Kia: 00:35:48

helping, you know, going like, 'Oh, all of that stuff you said

Kia: 00:35:51

is no good. But this thing that oh, let's go with that. You

Kia: 00:35:54

know, that's interesting'. So, but then, of course, sometimes

Kia: 00:35:58

it doesn't work.

Geri: 00:35:59

So do you have explicit discussions about how to work

Geri: 00:36:03

together? Or is it more by role modeling?

Kia: 00:36:05

No, a lot of, I actually would, whenever there was one of

Kia: 00:36:10

those, for example, one of those interdisciplinary problems, I

Kia: 00:36:12

would look up the person who I felt was not listening to the

Kia: 00:36:16

other competencies. And I would say, 'Look, you have to try and

Kia: 00:36:19

understand where they come from. Their field, and what they're

Kia: 00:36:23

bringing. And you need to back off this part of the design

Kia: 00:36:28

work. But this part, you need to step up.' You know, so I would

Kia: 00:36:33

do that explicitly. Yeah.

Geri: 00:36:37

Good, it sounds like you've got antennas out all over

Geri: 00:36:39

the place. Antennas out into industry and what's happening

Geri: 00:36:41

there, keep track of that, antennas out internally see

Geri: 00:36:44

what's going on and where to step in?

Kia: 00:36:48

Yeah. And then you have to, because, yeah, you go from I was

Kia: 00:36:53

a researcher who had had a group and so on, but where you can

Kia: 00:36:59

control the research topic very narrowly to stepping up to

Kia: 00:37:03

having a vision of a, you know, a grand scale, like, where is

Kia: 00:37:07

the world heading? And where do I want it to head? And how can I

Kia: 00:37:10

defend that we are going to do enjoyment and playfulness. And

Kia: 00:37:14

that that is important in itself. Yeah, that this is not,

Kia: 00:37:19

it's not about doing a game so that you can learn math, it's

Kia: 00:37:22

doing a game so that you can enjoy the game. And if we don't

Kia: 00:37:25

take that seriously, we're not going to learn anything about

Kia: 00:37:28

design. And we might later use it for, you know, teaching math

Kia: 00:37:32

or whatever. But that's not what we're doing.

Kia: 00:37:34

And so being able to scale up to that kind of level, visionary

Kia: 00:37:39

level, and understand what that vision means for redrawing the

Kia: 00:37:43

map of industry, you know, the ecosystem of who, which

Kia: 00:37:47

industrial sector will thrive off, which like, I remember when

Kia: 00:37:51

we sort of say, well, look, now it's Internet of Things. And

Kia: 00:37:55

this was in 2010 / 2011. And you go like, ah, that means that we

Kia: 00:38:01

need to have slightly different partners. And this is where we

Kia: 00:38:03

brought in IKEA. We also want wanted to bring in Hennes &

Kia: 00:38:07

Mauritz, but we failed. But anyway, consumer products are

Kia: 00:38:11

going to be connected. What does that mean? Well, it means that

Kia: 00:38:14

IKEA will be looking for collaborations with Google or

Kia: 00:38:17

Samsung or something. And we have companies that are super

Kia: 00:38:22

interested in that. And so what if we, you know, so that level

Kia: 00:38:26

of reasoning, I think, again, as an academic, that there was

Kia: 00:38:32

nothing in the research methods or anything that you could use

Kia: 00:38:35

to do. But you have to do it, if you don't have a vision.

Geri: 00:38:39

Can you have a vision? Can you be operating at that level

Geri: 00:38:41

of always trying to keep track of a vision and being sensitive

Geri: 00:38:45

to where the world is heading as well as be involved in the

Geri: 00:38:48

details? Or do you need to let the details and hands on

Geri: 00:38:52

research go?

Kia: 00:38:54

I let it go a bit. And I felt in the periods when I was

Kia: 00:39:01

leading the center, I felt like it was okay for a year or two.

Kia: 00:39:05

And then I started to feel like I was losing contact with the

Kia: 00:39:10

reality.

Geri: 00:39:13

So you still need some contact with the reality of the

Geri: 00:39:15

research in order to feed the strategic vision as well?

Kia: 00:39:18

Because it's in the projects. So like, if you take

Kia: 00:39:22

for example, Internet of Things, everybody was talking about

Kia: 00:39:24

that. And we were setting up big seminars, and there was a huge

Kia: 00:39:27

interest in our research in that area. But it was not until I

Kia: 00:39:30

really worked in one of the projects and understood that

Kia: 00:39:33

this is not about how many sensors we can put up, because

Kia: 00:39:36

that's the first thing we think that says, oh, there's going to

Kia: 00:39:39

be a lot of sensors and a lot of data. No it's about the other

Kia: 00:39:42

thing. It's the actuation. What is the system doing in the

Kia: 00:39:46

world? Because the sensors you can add, if you know what you

Kia: 00:39:49

could use them for. But it's not like you have a bunch of data

Kia: 00:39:53

and it's all neutral. And you just find patterns in the data

Kia: 00:39:56

and then boof, the services will come out of that or the

Kia: 00:39:58

activation will come out of that. You have to think the

Kia: 00:40:00

other way around.

Geri: 00:40:01

So this is bringing your same sensitivities is what you

Geri: 00:40:03

brought to your PhD topic just played out in multiple ways.

Kia: 00:40:08

Yeah. And so then and that feeling I did not get until we

Kia: 00:40:12

were actually building, I was in a system where I realized that

Kia: 00:40:17

none of us is able to think backwards, you know, it's just a

Kia: 00:40:20

chicken and egg problem, none of us is really good at going the

Kia: 00:40:23

other way around, you know, from activation to what do we then

Kia: 00:40:26

need. So, stuff like that you have to be in contact with the

Kia: 00:40:31

actual physical work.

Geri: 00:40:33

So you just almost literally returned from a

Geri: 00:40:37

sabbatical just a couple of weeks ago, from a year long

Geri: 00:40:40

sabbatical. Where I imagine you had time to reconnect to some

Geri: 00:40:44

research and thinking as well, do you want to talk us through

Geri: 00:40:48

that experience?

Kia: 00:40:49

Yeah. So it was really that this feeling that I had lost

Kia: 00:40:51

contact again, entirely. And we've been doing some super

Kia: 00:40:56

interesting work in my project within the Center on some

Kia: 00:41:00

aesthetic design, designing with the body, and emotion and

Kia: 00:41:04

sociality and aesthetics. And I'd been allowed to be part of

Kia: 00:41:09

that project, like half a day a week, the rest of the time I had

Kia: 00:41:13

to do all this management stuff, but at least I've done some

Kia: 00:41:16

stuff. And I was so much longing to understand properly what is

Kia: 00:41:21

this? What is it that we've done? Why is it so interesting?

Kia: 00:41:24

And why is this theoretically and methodologically and in

Kia: 00:41:29

terms of how it addresses me as a person? Why is it so

Kia: 00:41:32

interesting? I need to become deeper and more reflective and

Kia: 00:41:38

understand this. So I was

Geri: 00:41:41

And you can't do that in half a day a week.

Kia: 00:41:43

No, can't. So then I got this opportunity and it's just

Kia: 00:41:50

amazing, I just feel so privileged that I was allowed to

Kia: 00:41:53

do it. And I still had to do work for stuff at home, you

Kia: 00:41:58

know, so I would work like two, three hours a day, maybe with

Kia: 00:42:02

stuff at home. But the rest of the time, I've been reading and

Kia: 00:42:08

writing and analyzing real data. And ah, amazing.

Geri: 00:42:17

Just seeing the difference in your face and body, it

Geri: 00:42:21

clearly is energizing. And what's exciting?

Kia: 00:42:24

Yes, it's so good. And it's also because I passionately

Kia: 00:42:29

believe that this is going to save the world. This research

Kia: 00:42:35

topic is that shit. It's what we should be doing all of us. So,

Kia: 00:42:40

no, it was really, really good. So I started my sabbatical by

Kia: 00:42:44

going to Richard Shusterman, who is a philosopher and works in

Kia: 00:42:48

Florida. And I met him before and invited him to the CHI

Kia: 00:42:52

conference to give a talk and so on. And he was really nice and

Kia: 00:42:56

said, 'Yes, yes, you're welcome'. So we would sit under

Kia: 00:42:59

a tree, at the campus talking philosophy for hours talking

Kia: 00:43:05

about, you know, knowledge and the meaning of life. And what it

Kia: 00:43:10

is. And it's just, it was so invigorating, it was just making

Kia: 00:43:16

me grasp again, why are we doing this? Because you can become a

Kia: 00:43:21

bit dirty on the inside, a bit blacking your soul when you're

Kia: 00:43:25

compromising with what you think industry wants or what the

Kia: 00:43:29

society wants or what your funder wants or whatever, that

Kia: 00:43:33

you're delivering, delivering, delivering, and then

Kia: 00:43:36

reconnecting with that. No, this is actually important. A

Kia: 00:43:39

research is important, for real, for real people.

Geri: 00:43:44

And being able to think that through more deeply as

Geri: 00:43:46

well, what that means.

Kia: 00:43:47

Yeah. That was just amazing. So I spent the spring

Kia: 00:43:51

there in Florida with him. And then I went home for the summer

Kia: 00:43:56

because I have family and I had a second granddaughter that I

Kia: 00:43:59

wanted to welcome. Yeah. But I pretended as if I was away. So

Kia: 00:44:04

I, you know. [Geri: Did you not go into the office?] No, I did

Kia: 00:44:08

not go into the office. And then during the autumn, I was in

Kia: 00:44:12

Santa Cruz with Katherine Isbister at UC Santa Cruz.

Geri: 00:44:18

When we met in May, you said things were changing or you

Geri: 00:44:24

realize some things and you want to make sure you make these

Geri: 00:44:29

changes.

Kia: 00:44:30

Yes. So also not only reconnecting with research and

Kia: 00:44:36

reading and so on, but also reconnecting with myself. And in

Kia: 00:44:40

my case, I feel like those are so tightly connected. You know,

Kia: 00:44:43

I do research on what I passionately feel myself is

Kia: 00:44:46

important to me. And so when I went to Florida, I decided I'm

Kia: 00:44:51

not going to try and socialize and get any friends. I'm going

Kia: 00:44:56

to try to be all alone so that I can meet myself, which was

Kia: 00:45:02

awful. I had a lot of anxiety attacks and yeah, and I felt

Kia: 00:45:08

lonely and so on. And I'd never lived alone. I met my husband

Kia: 00:45:11

when I was 20. So I never lived alone. So I was living alone for

Kia: 00:45:16

two months, which I know is not very long. But yeah, anyway,

Kia: 00:45:20

what that helped me do was also to unravel some of the very,

Kia: 00:45:24

very strong rules I'd set up for myself, in order to survive as a

Kia: 00:45:30

center manager, I had to set up a bunch of rules, like, you

Kia: 00:45:35

always have to go to bed at 10 o'clock in the evening, and you

Kia: 00:45:38

have to not work after nine, because otherwise you can't

Kia: 00:45:41

sleep. You have to sleep. You have to get up in the morning,

Kia: 00:45:44

you do this and that, but yeah. Or you, the other stupid rule I

Kia: 00:45:48

had was, I'm not allowed to be creative in my free time.

Kia: 00:45:52

Because then it might be used up all my creativity.

Geri: 00:45:55

All your creativity, your limited resource.

Kia: 00:46:00

And what else? I had a bunch of these things. I was

Kia: 00:46:05

also, you know, I had, since I have kids, now they're grown up,

Kia: 00:46:08

and I have grandchildren. But managing a household and

Kia: 00:46:11

working, I had set up all sorts of rules about how to be

Kia: 00:46:15

efficient, like, never go up the stairs without taking something

Kia: 00:46:18

with me and never go down the stairs without. So I had all

Kia: 00:46:21

these things.

Geri: 00:46:22

These were just implicit rules in your head or had you

Geri: 00:46:25

actually articulated them?

Kia: 00:46:26

Some of it was explicit, very explicit.

Geri: 00:46:29

Cause some of them don't sound bad, like getting enough

Geri: 00:46:32

sleep, it's [Kia: It's a good thing.] it's a good thing.

Kia: 00:46:34

But you end up in a situation where everything you

Kia: 00:46:37

do you do in order to be able to work more.

Geri: 00:46:40

Right. So it was more the orientation of the rules, or the

Geri: 00:46:44

motivation for them.

Kia: 00:46:45

That it was so, it was, I was punishing myself. And if I,

Kia: 00:46:50

for example, happen to spend a couple of hours like with you

Kia: 00:46:54

now, I could have spent these hours reading something

Kia: 00:46:58

important. And then I would punish myself for having allowed

Kia: 00:47:03

myself the luxury of a fika with Geraldine.

Geri: 00:47:08

So what would punishing be? Just in your head beating

Geri: 00:47:11

yourself?

Kia: 00:47:12

Yeah, beating myself. And that is not a good life. You

Kia: 00:47:16

don't live to constrain yourself like that. That is not helping

Kia: 00:47:21

your creativity or your ability to be a human being. So, but it

Kia: 00:47:28

took me a while to get down from this activity level where I

Kia: 00:47:32

didn't even have time to reflect on it. So I crashed landed in

Kia: 00:47:36

Florida, like 'boom', you know, no meetings. I was like, 'Oh,

Kia: 00:47:42

what do you do, then?' Oh, actually going down to the beach

Kia: 00:47:46

for a bit doing yoga. Oh, you know, stuff like that. Because I

Kia: 00:47:50

used to do yoga, but in order to survive the stress, not because

Kia: 00:47:55

I enjoyed it.

Geri: 00:47:55

Yeah. It's really interesting that things that are

Geri: 00:48:03

ostensibly good things like yoga, like sleeping, when

Geri: 00:48:07

they're framed all about being able to maintain the machine,

Geri: 00:48:10

the working machine to produce in academia. It's unbalanced.

Geri: 00:48:15

[Kia: It's unbalanced, yeah.] So how did you create such a

Geri: 00:48:20

different sense of you? And a different relationship to the

Geri: 00:48:26

rules or no rules?

Kia: 00:48:28

Yeah. So I'm not sure I've still succeeded. But I actually

Kia: 00:48:32

do believe that one can change. I know a lot of people who are

Kia: 00:48:36

like, ya, I know, you know, you have certain personality traits

Kia: 00:48:39

and those are the way they are and people would refer to

Kia: 00:48:42

themselves as extrovert or introvert or whatever. I think,

Kia: 00:48:48

yes, that might be partly true, but you can also change, you can

Kia: 00:48:52

change. But it has to start from a core emotional, subjective and

Kia: 00:49:03

intellectual experience. So it's not about setting up a different

Kia: 00:49:10

rule as, you know, it is really about recognizing the emotional

Kia: 00:49:15

state I get in when I start doing this, like, 'Oh, now I

Kia: 00:49:20

have to go to sleep. Because otherwise I won't be able',

Kia: 00:49:23

yeah. What is that state? And then what is the other emotional

Kia: 00:49:27

state that I could transport myself into?

Geri: 00:49:32

What would be an alternative to that?

Kia: 00:49:35

So for me yeah, and I don't know if I'm going to succeed. So

Kia: 00:49:41

it feels really scary to talk about this. But when I was in

Kia: 00:49:45

Florida, and later in Santa Cruz, I found a way to actually

Kia: 00:49:49

do my yoga exercises and to enjoy myself to actually spend

Kia: 00:49:53

weekends without working or and to feel very much collected and

Kia: 00:49:59

this is also because the research topic was some

Kia: 00:50:03

aesthetics, which is about slowing down and listening to

Kia: 00:50:08

very, very small signals in your body. And in your thinking, to

Kia: 00:50:15

daring to, to feel like right now I can feel I'm breathing a

Kia: 00:50:19

bit too much up in my lungs, too high up and I have a little pain

Kia: 00:50:26

here somewhere in my chest. I don't contract. You know, so you

Kia: 00:50:33

don't feel that, if you're not, if you're all up in your head

Kia: 00:50:37

and you will have to run from one thing to the other. 'Oh!' So

Kia: 00:50:43

we've been doing at work we've been doing as part of that

Kia: 00:50:46

project we've been doing Feldenkrais exercises at work,

Kia: 00:50:50

spending an hour laying out on the floor doing very, very small

Kia: 00:50:54

movements and remember

Geri: 00:50:57

To learn to read the body, reconnect to the body?

Kia: 00:51:01

Otherwise you can't design for that or with that. So you

Kia: 00:51:06

have to know yourself in order to. So those Feldenkrais

Kia: 00:51:10

exercises, sometimes I came running to them going 'aaah!'.

Geri: 00:51:17

I have to relax, [Kia: I have to relax now!] I have to

Geri: 00:51:19

relax and then I have to go.

Kia: 00:51:20

One hour, oh, my God. Let's get going! And then I would do

Kia: 00:51:25

the exercise. And then afterwards, I complete

Kia: 00:51:27

reorientation, because what do you have to remember is all of

Kia: 00:51:31

that stuff that you get worked up about. Or that is, is it

Kia: 00:51:36

really that important? Is it, you know? Or even if it is

Kia: 00:51:42

important, can I have a different attitude about it?

Geri: 00:51:46

Yeah, have a different attitude about it.

Kia: 00:51:49

And I've learned that, I think. And so I feel, I also

Kia: 00:51:53

feel like this gives, if we're talking about leadership, the

Kia: 00:51:58

other key, the worktop one, did not spread a good work

Kia: 00:52:03

environment around herself. I did not make my PhD students and

Kia: 00:52:07

others secure and happy and creative.

Geri: 00:52:10

In what way, saying you didn't do that?

Kia: 00:52:13

Because I, these are strong bodily signals that you give

Kia: 00:52:18

off, right? [Geri: So you're dripping stress around.] I'm

Kia: 00:52:20

dripping stress around myself. This other person that I tried

Kia: 00:52:27

to be now the one that is allowing herself to listen, and

Kia: 00:52:33

be collected and enjoy, [Geri: Listen to who?] To listen to the

Kia: 00:52:40

other alternative self, because I don't believe in one self, I

Kia: 00:52:43

believe that there are many different selves. And you can

Kia: 00:52:47

craft and hone the ones you like. So this one needs to be

Kia: 00:52:54

there. Because when I am, when I meet people properly with that

Kia: 00:52:59

person, then that gives them energy. And yeah, we're human.

Kia: 00:53:05

We're human. We're, it's what I say what I look like, my eyes,

Kia: 00:53:09

my face, all of that is what you pick up. You have that. It's

Kia: 00:53:16

super interesting to meet you. Because you have that calmness

Kia: 00:53:20

around you, makes people want to be with you.

Geri: 00:53:23

Thank you. It often doesn't feel like that inside. I

Geri: 00:53:27

can really relate to the, all the things going on in your

Geri: 00:53:32

head.

Kia: 00:53:32

Yeah, but there's something about you that makes me feel

Kia: 00:53:35

like, yeah, with her, I'm okay, I'm safe if I'm around her. And

Kia: 00:53:39

that's what I want to be as well. I want to be like that.

Geri: 00:53:43

And I think it's so important when we're in

Geri: 00:53:45

positions of leadership or management or working with

Geri: 00:53:48

people, that we do influence just by our presence and how we

Geri: 00:53:53

are in our bodies and our heads. And often we're too much in our

Geri: 00:53:57

heads and not. [Kia: Yeah] So it was very important to you to

Geri: 00:54:01

create the space to reconnect with that. [Kia: Yeah] Do you

Geri: 00:54:04

think you could have done it within everyday life continuing

Geri: 00:54:07

at work? Or did you really need to step out?

Kia: 00:54:10

I think I needed to step out. Yeah, I was working in that

Kia: 00:54:17

direction already before, but I needed to step out. Because the

Kia: 00:54:21

other thing that is problematic for me, I don't know how you

Kia: 00:54:25

respond to these things, but you get so flattered. As an

Kia: 00:54:29

academic, somebody comes and says, 'Well, Kia, do you want to

Kia: 00:54:33

give a keynote, in India?' And you go like 'Oh, India, yay, of

Kia: 00:54:40

course I do.' And then and then you look at your calendar, you

Kia: 00:54:44

go, 'Oh, hang on.' [Geri: What was I thinking?]. Yes. Or in my

Kia: 00:54:49

case, it's this, you know, Sweden is a very small country.

Kia: 00:54:53

So just because I enjoy giving talks and so on, and I have this

Kia: 00:54:56

political and value based strand to my work, I've been invited

Kia: 00:55:02

into political settings, I have been an advisor to the Minister

Kia: 00:55:06

of Infrastructure. And I've been in something called Almedalen.

Kia: 00:55:09

And it's a week, every year where politicians meet, and so

Kia: 00:55:13

on and so on. I've done a lot of stuff like that. And it's super

Kia: 00:55:16

flattering because it's close to the powers. And it allows me to

Kia: 00:55:23

influence.

Geri: 00:55:23

Influence, yes. It's about things you care about as well.

Kia: 00:55:26

Yeah. But I can't do all of it. I have to make choices. And

Kia: 00:55:30

same thing with media. And because, again, because it's a

Kia: 00:55:32

small country, I'm female, and professor at KTH. They have, I

Kia: 00:55:37

would say, one person per week contacting me, wanted an

Kia: 00:55:41

interview. And so I had to make up rules and say, 'No'.

Geri: 00:55:46

So these are good rules. [Kia: I hope so.]. So this is

Geri: 00:55:50

how will you decide, which things you will say 'yes', to

Geri: 00:55:54

which things not?

Kia: 00:55:55

So maybe again, I put up a bit too strict rules again, but

Kia: 00:55:59

so I'm saying 'no' to everything to do with media. Unless they

Kia: 00:56:03

interviewed me about some aesthetic design. I say 'no' to

Kia: 00:56:06

giving talks to industry, and keynotes, and unless it is about

Kia: 00:56:14

some aesthetic design. I tried to focus only on academic

Kia: 00:56:19

settings for a while. I'm sure I will get back to working with

Kia: 00:56:23

industry, but I've done it for 10 years, it's time for me to

Kia: 00:56:27

take a step back and become more academic again.

Geri: 00:56:30

And you can only do so much. As you said, when you can

Geri: 00:56:32

say 'yes' and then you look at your calendar. 'Oh, how do I

Geri: 00:56:35

squeeze that?' [Kia: Yes.] Because it's not just the travel

Geri: 00:56:37

to India, and being there to do the talk. It's the preparation

Geri: 00:56:41

beforehand, it's the, you know.

Kia: 00:56:43

You have to know why you're doing it. And so if you do it,

Kia: 00:56:46

because you're flattered and because it's a notch in your

Kia: 00:56:49

belt. Or are you doing it because you're actually learning

Kia: 00:56:53

something important in India, or you are communicating your

Kia: 00:56:57

research in a good way, you know, whatever, you know, so I

Kia: 00:56:59

have to think about that. So I make people who phoned me, I

Kia: 00:57:03

make them email me so that I can think before I answer.

Geri: 00:57:06

That's nice. So you create that pause. [Kia: Yes.] That's

Geri: 00:57:11

very good.

Kia: 00:57:12

Sometimes I don't even answer my mobile phone, I have a

Kia: 00:57:14

message where I say, email me.

Geri: 00:57:18

So that you don't, you're less likely to react, you can

Geri: 00:57:22

actually respond, you can take some time to think.

Geri: 00:57:28

I like the very thought through reasons for why you wouldn't do

Geri: 00:57:32

things and recognizing that it could change.

Kia: 00:57:34

Yeah. It will change. I know it will change.

Geri: 00:57:36

Rolling it back and making more reasonable choices. What

Geri: 00:57:39

other changes are you making? Or have you made?

Kia: 00:57:42

So going deeper into this academic, during my sabbatical

Kia: 00:57:46

what I did was, I wrote this book, which is not yet finished,

Kia: 00:57:50

but anyway. Yeah, so I need to work on that and I need to put

Kia: 00:57:55

some effort into that I'm not so sure. I'm going to write that

Kia: 00:57:57

many books. It's a big thing for me. I'm Swedish and my English

Kia: 00:58:01

skills are okay, but they're not, you know, it's hard for me

Kia: 00:58:04

to do these things. So some thinking that I need to put some

Kia: 00:58:08

effort into this book, because it might be the only one I

Kia: 00:58:10

write. And so keeping my eyes on that and making sure that that

Kia: 00:58:16

is also accompanied with the kind of exercises like

Kia: 00:58:18

Feldenkrais and yoga, whatever that reconnects me with what I'm

Kia: 00:58:22

writing about.

Geri: 00:58:23

So you're scheduling particular times that are

Geri: 00:58:26

designated book writing or how are you managing that?

Kia: 00:58:29

Yeah. Now, people are sort of putting stuff in my calendar

Kia: 00:58:35

that is squeezing those weeks. [Geri: Cause now you're back.]

Kia: 00:58:39

Yeah. No. But yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. And also

Kia: 00:58:46

trying to keep, you know, do the stuff that I enjoy, like

Kia: 00:58:49

horseback riding and yoga, whatever. Yeah.

Geri: 00:58:52

So are then in your diaries explicit things that you

Geri: 00:58:55

block out? [Kia: Yeah, there are.] So I hear the little

Geri: 00:59:01

tension between having created the space for yourself while

Geri: 00:59:06

you're on sabbatical to think and to be and to do the things

Geri: 00:59:09

that you want to do for different motivations, and then

Geri: 00:59:12

coming slipping back into everyday work.

Kia: 00:59:17

So the big conflict for me has always been that I care

Kia: 00:59:20

about other people, and that they get what they need from me.

Kia: 00:59:24

So my PhD students and my colleagues and so on, if they

Kia: 00:59:27

asked me for stuff then I need to deliver, and I always

Kia: 00:59:30

deliver. That's another sort of ethical rule that I've always

Kia: 00:59:33

had. Like, if I promised to do something, I will do that. No

Kia: 00:59:38

matter what. And me, myself has always been lost on that list of

Kia: 00:59:44

priorities. And I don't think I can change all of it, because I

Kia: 00:59:47

enjoy being with other people. And I enjoy delivering when I've

Kia: 00:59:51

said that I'm going to deliver. So the only thing I can do is

Kia: 00:59:54

promise less, right?

Geri: 00:59:55

Yes. But also you've talked about putting yourself

Geri: 01:00:00

last on the list of priorities. But you also talked before about

Geri: 01:00:04

if you're not looking after yourself well, other people are

Geri: 01:00:08

affected. So in some ways that's actually saying you need to put

Geri: 01:00:12

yourself first on your list of priorities so that you can be

Geri: 01:00:16

there for the other people.

Kia: 01:00:16

Yes. And I'm a little bit better at it now, maybe. But the

Kia: 01:00:21

other thing is this, I think as academics, we have to think a

Kia: 01:00:25

little bit about what the organization tells us that we

Kia: 01:00:29

need to do, and then take a stance on whether we're going to

Kia: 01:00:32

do that or not. So we were traveling with the Mobile Life

Kia: 01:00:37

Center now last week across Europe, and we saw different

Kia: 01:00:40

research groups. And it was just so interesting to see how

Kia: 01:00:43

they're all fulfilling these requirements that everybody puts

Kia: 01:00:46

on us, like, you need to pull in funding, you need to build

Kia: 01:00:49

stuff, you need to have PhD students, a certain number of

Kia: 01:00:52

PhD students, the more you have, the better, you need to do this,

Kia: 01:00:56

you need to do that, in order to be a successful research leader.

Kia: 01:01:03

And there are a lot of duties that sort of are hinted at me

Kia: 01:01:06

now that I'm back, like, maybe Kia, you need to be there, you

Kia: 01:01:11

know, taking care of this team, or you need to be the department

Kia: 01:01:15

head at some point or whatever. And I know that this is true,

Kia: 01:01:20

the organization demands it. But I don't think honestly, in my

Kia: 01:01:24

heart, I don't believe that that's the best use of me. That

Kia: 01:01:31

they could do. I'm sure, I can do it. And I will do it. If I

Kia: 01:01:35

say yes, I will do it carefully,

Geri: 01:01:38

I'm sure, you would.

Kia: 01:01:39

But there are things I can do that are important, really

Kia: 01:01:44

important.

Geri: 01:01:46

This sounds like an occasion to bring in the same

Geri: 01:01:48

strategies as working with industry to work with the

Geri: 01:01:51

internal people to say, what do they need? What other things do

Geri: 01:01:54

they need that I can argue, that I can deliver for them?

Kia: 01:01:58

Yes. And that I know, [Geri: It's different to what

Kia: 01:02:02

they think that they want to do.] Yes. And that I know what

Kia: 01:02:04

sort of comes together into a whole. And not dividing myself.

Geri: 01:02:13

That centering that you found on the sabbatical, keeping

Geri: 01:02:18

that protected.

Kia: 01:02:20

Yes, exactly. Exactly. And, yeah. It's, yeah, it is very

Kia: 01:02:30

hard. And I think you can only change so much in a short while.

Kia: 01:02:39

And you can do, the way I think about it now is I managed to

Kia: 01:02:42

secure funding together with Barry Brown and others, Ylva

Kia: 01:02:45

Fernaeus and so. We secured funding now. So we have funding

Kia: 01:02:47

for five years. [Geri: You're great at getting money.] Yeah,

Kia: 01:02:50

money is my thing. I'm such a good scientist. So that's my

Kia: 01:02:58

forte. It's one of the things I do really well. But there's this

Kia: 01:03:03

thing where, as I said before, funding attract more funding. So

Kia: 01:03:07

for me, it's now very important to say 'I have now exactly what

Kia: 01:03:10

I need. I don't want any more. I don't want any more funding now.

Kia: 01:03:14

This is what I want. And I'm going to stick to this for these

Kia: 01:03:16

five years.' And if the others want to pull in funding, they

Kia: 01:03:19

can do that, fine, and increase the group, but this is what I'm

Kia: 01:03:22

doing.

Geri: 01:03:23

It's a similar flattery argument there, isn't it, that,

Geri: 01:03:25

you know, I could get in more funding and then yes, I've got

Geri: 01:03:28

more ticks. But at what cost?

Kia: 01:03:30

Yes. Because then you get all of this attention, right.

Kia: 01:03:33

You get the rector of KTH sending you a congratulation

Kia: 01:03:38

email. And you go 'I'm so good!'.

Geri: 01:03:42

So we have to guard against ourselves in some ways,

Geri: 01:03:44

don't we?

Kia: 01:03:45

Definitely. Definitely. And there are these prizes that we

Kia: 01:03:51

get, right. Like, I think you're also distinguished speaker. So

Kia: 01:03:56

these regalia, what do you call these?

Geri: 01:03:59

This is the ACM distinguished sign.

Kia: 01:04:00

Yes, that one for example. No, but just as an example,

Kia: 01:04:03

there's a bunch of these things where it's recognition for your

Kia: 01:04:08

work, and it helps you to spread the core, the things that

Kia: 01:04:12

matter. But if you don't have a core, if you don't know, why am

Kia: 01:04:16

I doing this research? What is it that I'm changing in the

Kia: 01:04:20

world that I actually believe is good? So for me, during the

Kia: 01:04:24

autumn being in the US with Trump winning, I had to go I'm

Kia: 01:04:28

sitting here writing a book, what on earth is that? Am I

Kia: 01:04:32

really contributing to society in a good way? And I had to go

Kia: 01:04:36

back and say, well, some aesthetics to me is about

Kia: 01:04:40

finding your core, knowing yourself, slowing down and being

Kia: 01:04:44

more empathic with other people. So this is what I really do

Kia: 01:04:48

believe that the world needs. It is a much slower way to success.

Kia: 01:04:52

It's not the same thing as going in one of those, like the

Kia: 01:04:57

Women's March, you know, and so on. It is a different process.

Kia: 01:05:01

But it's one that I do believe in, and therefore I need to take

Kia: 01:05:05

this seriously. You know, so stuff like that. It's you have

Kia: 01:05:09

to have your core. If you don't have a core, then it doesn't

Kia: 01:05:13

matter if you get to be the ACM distinguished whatever. That's

Kia: 01:05:18

just shallow.

Geri: 01:05:19

And scattered. I mean, like some of the things you've

Geri: 01:05:21

talked about for about just being scattered is the word that

Geri: 01:05:24

you use. So scattered versus being centered and having, being

Geri: 01:05:27

connected to that core. And the choices that come with it.

Kia: 01:05:30

Yeah. But of course, it's like, the issue has been for me.

Kia: 01:05:37

It's like when you're in Sweden, and you're a researcher, is

Kia: 01:05:40

really hard to get recognized internationally. And I feel

Kia: 01:05:44

like, if I were to complain a bit that we've done research

Kia: 01:05:49

really early on, that does not get cited. And then some

Kia: 01:05:53

American does exactly the same thing. And they get cited. And

Kia: 01:05:58

so I have been longing for that recognition. I have been, and I

Kia: 01:06:04

know, it's just a social system. It is a, you know, you have to

Kia: 01:06:08

pop up and be visible and then you get these recognition things

Kia: 01:06:11

and you have to know the right people and so on. I know, it's

Kia: 01:06:13

all about that. But it also matters to whether my research

Kia: 01:06:17

gets spread or not. And

Geri: 01:06:22

Because you believe in the idea, isn't it?

Kia: 01:06:25

Yeah. So that I have been struggling with. Now I've

Kia: 01:06:30

decided to stop caring about it. But it's been annoying. We know,

Kia: 01:06:34

we did some work on social navigation extremely early.

Geri: 01:06:37

And there's a whole culture of citation practices

Geri: 01:06:41

that we could discuss. We should probably look at just wrapping

Geri: 01:06:48

up. Are there any things that you've thought of that you would

Geri: 01:06:53

like to share that we haven't touched upon? Or any final

Geri: 01:06:57

thoughts?

Kia: 01:07:02

Yeah. So there were a couple of things I was thinking

Kia: 01:07:06

about before I met with you. One of those is, I know people in

Kia: 01:07:12

Sweden think that I'm successful, and that we were

Kia: 01:07:16

able to pull in all of that funding and so on. But that was

Kia: 01:07:22

not without a lot of struggle. And I've met a lot of resistance

Kia: 01:07:27

and really damaging once I've even been on sick leave due to

Kia: 01:07:31

stress. Stress stuff, because people have been nasty to me.

Kia: 01:07:38

Because when you do something that goes across, it goes

Kia: 01:07:40

against it's a different form of organization or a different way

Kia: 01:07:44

of doing research. As I said before, you're sticking your

Kia: 01:07:48

head out, you know, and of course, you'll be hit.

Geri: 01:07:52

So it takes bravery in all sorts of ways.

Kia: 01:07:56

Yeah, bravery, true that. And I am brave. I'm not so

Kia: 01:08:00

scared of stuff. But I wasn't prepared for how nasty some of

Kia: 01:08:04

that can be.

Geri: 01:08:07

Perhaps because it's unexpected as well.

Kia: 01:08:10

You sort of think that people around you will think,

Kia: 01:08:14

oh, that's excellent that she's pulling on all of this will be

Kia: 01:08:19

good for the department for the fame and glory of you know,

Kia: 01:08:23

everything. Yes, I'm sure they do at some level, but it's also

Kia: 01:08:27

a bloody hassle to have somebody like me around saying, 'No, I

Kia: 01:08:32

want my office to be an open office office, and I want this

Kia: 01:08:36

and I want that. And I really, we need to do stuff this way.

Kia: 01:08:40

And it's going to be different, because we need to be

Kia: 01:08:44

different.' And that is annoying for people, too. And I might

Kia: 01:08:48

seem like I'm stronger than I am. I'm not that strong. So,

Kia: 01:08:53

even though I'm brave, and I'm sort of driven by these visions,

Kia: 01:08:57

values, and ethics and so on. I'm also fragile, very fragile.

Kia: 01:09:01

And, yeah, so I'd really wanted to say that.

Geri: 01:09:05

It talks to the importance of collegiality, empathy, being

Geri: 01:09:11

happy for one another, supporting one another. Yet

Geri: 01:09:14

there's something about the culture that sets up the

Geri: 01:09:16

opposite about competition. Just the fact that the four of you,

Geri: 01:09:19

as leaders set up your individual groups reflected

Geri: 01:09:22

those aspects of the culture about the individual needing to

Kia: 01:09:25

Yes, of course. And it is also the case, yeah. Different

Kia: 01:09:25

shine.

Kia: 01:09:32

organizations will be different good at, you know, different. So

Kia: 01:09:36

SICS was such that if I put in funding, then the all the other

Kia: 01:09:40

ones were happy, because they knew that this took off some of

Kia: 01:09:42

the pressure of the joint funding that I would, you know,

Kia: 01:09:44

that there would be more joint funding for the rest of them.

Kia: 01:09:48

Not the university. It's so big. So that is not always the case.

Kia: 01:09:52

It's more like you're competing for attention. You're competing

Kia: 01:09:57

for the internal funding to be co-funding to your projects and

Kia: 01:10:00

stuff like that. So of course, they, sometimes they feel

Kia: 01:10:03

different about this. So moving from SICS to the university, and

Kia: 01:10:08

so on was a big cultural shock to me in that I thought that

Kia: 01:10:11

people would be happy for me. And they weren't always.

Geri: 01:10:16

Sometimes there's a term called horizontal violence, that

Geri: 01:10:20

reflects some of that sort of peer to peer empathy.

Kia: 01:10:23

And also, you know, at the time, when we got this funding,

Kia: 01:10:26

I was young, and we were all young, and I was female. And so

Kia: 01:10:31

I got to be in the media, and, you know, what, you know, the

Kia: 01:10:35

king was visiting, and then they asked me to give a talk, you

Kia: 01:10:38

know, and I, you know, so all of this stuff, right. And, of

Kia: 01:10:42

course, to some people who've been struggling for years and

Kia: 01:10:45

years and years and doing really good research, you get this,

Kia: 01:10:48

this young woman suddenly getting all of his attention

Kia: 01:10:52

because of her boobs. Annoying!

Geri: 01:10:55

But it's not, it's because of your work and your, [Kia: As

Geri: 01:10:58

well.] your innovation and vision.

Kia: 01:10:59

But also my gender. Yeah. And I can see how that is

Kia: 01:11:05

annoying, you know. Very annoying. Especially I was also,

Kia: 01:11:08

you know, strong and cocky and

Geri: 01:11:15

And that's something I'd love to talk more at another

Geri: 01:11:17

time about as well about gender and computer science and how

Geri: 01:11:23

that plays out.

Kia: 01:11:25

Now, it's a complex, complex issue.

Geri: 01:11:27

It is. They are complex issues.

Geri: 01:11:30

So thank you so much for time, openness, and I really hope that

Geri: 01:11:36

you can find a way to keep that centering going on [Kia: Now

Geri: 01:11:42

I've said it publicly.], making those choices and keeping space

Geri: 01:11:47

for yourself. And all the best with the book look forward to

Geri: 01:11:52

seeing it coming out. [Kia: Oh, yeah, if it ever.] I'm sure. So

Geri: 01:11:58

thanks, Kia.

Kia: 01:11:59

Thank you.

Geri: 01:12:03

You can find the summary notes and the related links for

Geri: 01:12:05

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Geri: 01:12:10

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Geri: 01:12:15

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Geri: 01:12:19

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