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 areas

8:57 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 to

15:57 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 groups

19:07 Reflections on wishing they had shared research methods across the groups more and thoughts on what they could have done instead

23:17 Strong culture based on seminars, the Swedish Fika – the ‘enforced socializing’ every week -, joint trips

25:07 The challenges when some of the four leaders leave and the changes in dynamics

27:28 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 agendas

29:32 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 workshops

34:12 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 spaces

36:40 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 important

44:22 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 household and work

46:35 “You end up in a situation where everything you do you do in order to be able to work more”

47:09 “And that is not a good life, you don’t live to constrain yourself in this way. It is not helping your creativity.” But taking time to get down from this, crash landing in Florida

48:27 “I actually do believe that one can change” - now recognising the emotional state and what might be an alternative emotional state she could transfer herself into … feeling collected, slowing down, listening to very small signals in your body, the benefit of Feldenkrais at work

51: 27 “What you have to remember is that 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”

52:00 Being leader, the worked-up Kia did not spread a good work environment around herself – strong bodily signals you give off – so trying to listen to the alternative self that is more collected

54:21 Being flattered as an academic with invitations, awards etc but not being able to do all of it, needing to make choices, have new rules now about what to say yes and no to

56:39 “You have to know why you are doing it so if you do it because you are flattered and because it’s a notch on your belt or are you doing it because you are actually learning something important or you are communicating your research or whatever. So I have to think about that.” Making people email her so that she think first before replying/agreeing or not

57:42 Other changes – putting effort into the book she is writing, accompanied with the kind of exercises that connects her to what she is writing about, trying to do things she enjoys

59:00 Conflict of caring for students, keeping promises and looking after her needs, needing to promise less

1:00:21 Also needing to think about what the organization tells us we need to do to be a success and taking a stance about what is important, and what is enough funding

1:03:19 Risk of being flattered by recognition for your work, by prizes, “but if you don’t have a core, if you don’t know why am I doing this research, what is it that I am changing in the world that I actually believe is good” … “it is about finding your core, knowing yourself, slowing down, and being more empathic with other people ... it is a much slower way to success but one I do believe in … If you don't have your core, then it doesn’t matter if you get to be the ACM distinguished whatever, that is just shallow”

1:06:02 Hard to get recognized internationally when you are in Sweden, longing for that recognition, now not taking that so seriously

1:07:27 The struggle that comes along with the success, the sick leave because of stress, the colleagues who aren’t always supportive or happy for successes, the gender aspects

1:12:28 End

Related Links

Mobile Life Centre http://www.mobilelifecentre.org

The first iphone was released June 29 2007.

Fika: https://sweden.se/culture-traditions/fika/

Lars Erik Holmquist http://blog.siggraph.org/2012/07/qa-with-siggraph-2012-mobile-chair-lars-erik-holmquist.html/

Oskar Juhlin http://www.mobilelifecentre.org/people#oskar-juhlin-

Annika Waern https://katalog.uu.se/empinfo/?id=N13-228

Barry Brown http://www.mobilelifecentre.org/people#barry-brown

 

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

Geri: 00:00:06

Welcome to Changing Academic Life. I'm Geraldine

Geri: 00:00:10

Fitzpatrick and this is a podcast series where academics

Geri: 00:00:14

and others share their stories, provide ideas and provoke

Geri: 00:00:17

discussions about what we can do individually and collectively to

Geri: 00:00:22

change academic life for the better.

Geri: 00:00:30

My conversation today is with Kia Höök, a professor in

Geri: 00:00:33

Interaction Design at KTH in Stockholm, Sweden, and Director

Geri: 00:00:37

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

Geri: 00:00:41

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

Geri: 00:00:44

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

Geri: 00:00:47

center, in building cultures, and managing relationships with

Geri: 00:00:51

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

Geri: 00:00:55

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

Geri: 00:00:59

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

Geri: 00:01:03

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

Geri: 00:01:07

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

Geri: 00:01:13

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

Geri: 00:01:16

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

Geri: 00:01:20

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

Geri: 00:01:24

there with rough timestamps so that you can navigate directly

Geri: 00:01:28

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

Geri: 00:01:32

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

Geri: 00:01:35

yourself, it's well worth listening to.

Geri: 00:01:37

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

Geri: 00:01:40

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

Geri: 00:01:43

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

Geri: 00:01:47

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

Geri: 00:01:50

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

Geri: 00:01:54

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

Geri: 00:01:56

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

Geri: 00:02:04

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

Geri: 00:02:10

information retrieval, helping people sort of search large

Geri: 00:02:14

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

Geri: 00:02:18

effective social navigation and more into effective computing.

Geri: 00:02:23

So you had lots of evolutions in your research focus.

Kia: 00:02:29

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

Kia: 00:02:34

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

Kia: 00:02:39

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

Kia: 00:02:43

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

Kia: 00:02:47

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

Kia: 00:02:52

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

Kia: 00:02:55

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

Kia: 00:02:59

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

Kia: 00:03:04

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

Kia: 00:03:07

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

Kia: 00:03:12

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

Kia: 00:03:19

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

Kia: 00:03:22

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

Kia: 00:03:25

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

Kia: 00:03:30

disappointed in AI, very disappointed. And I felt like

Kia: 00:03:36

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

Kia: 00:03:44

navigation. You have to understand this is 1996. So

Kia: 00:03:48

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

Kia: 00:03:53

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

Kia: 00:03:56

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

Kia: 00:04:00

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

Kia: 00:04:05

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

Kia: 00:04:08

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

Geri: 00:04:23

new area, brand new approach? Or scared?

Kia: 00:04:25

I was working at the Computer Science Institute here

Kia: 00:04:28

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

Kia: 00:04:32

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

Kia: 00:04:36

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

Kia: 00:04:40

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

Kia: 00:04:44

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

Kia: 00:04:48

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

Kia: 00:04:52

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

Kia: 00:04:55

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

Kia: 00:04:59

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

Kia: 00:05:03

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

Kia: 00:05:07

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

Kia: 00:05:11

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

Kia: 00:05:15

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

Kia: 00:05:19

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

Kia: 00:05:23

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

Kia: 00:05:27

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

Kia: 00:05:31

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

Kia: 00:05:35

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

Kia: 00:05:39

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

Geri: 00:05:51

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

Geri: 00:05:56

people who're looking at those issues.

Kia: 00:05:58

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

Kia: 00:06:02

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

Kia: 00:06:06

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

Kia: 00:06:08

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

Kia: 00:06:12

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

Kia: 00:06:19

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

Kia: 00:06:23

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

Kia: 00:06:28

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

Kia: 00:06:31

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

Kia: 00:06:37

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

Kia: 00:06:39

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

Kia: 00:06:43

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

Kia: 00:06:47

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

Kia: 00:06:51

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

Kia: 00:06:56

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

Kia: 00:07:01

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

Kia: 00:07:07

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

Kia: 00:07:11

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

Kia: 00:07:20

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

Geri: 00:07:30

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

Kia: 00:07:40

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

Kia: 00:07:44

sense, most computer science researchers are designers, of

Kia: 00:07:49

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

Kia: 00:07:57

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

Kia: 00:08:08

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,

Kia: 00:08:21

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

Geri: 00:08:29

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

Kia: 00:08:38

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

Geri: 00:08:52

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

Geri: 00:08:56

funded by the Swedish

Kia: 00:08:59

the government, through an organization called Vinova.

Geri: 00:09:04

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,

Kia: 00:09:14

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

Kia: 00:09:19

working with quite innovative new stuff around various topics

Kia: 00:09:25

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

Kia: 00:09:32

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

Kia: 00:09:38

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

Kia: 00:09:41

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

Kia: 00:09:46

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

Kia: 00:09:49

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

Kia: 00:09:53

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

Kia: 00:10:06

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

Kia: 00:10:09

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

Kia: 00:10:12

course, the professional applications on the mobile. But

Kia: 00:10:16

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

Kia: 00:10:21

got the money.

Geri: 00:10:23

Before we just start chatting together and start

Geri: 00:10:27

realizing that there was potential here that led to the

Geri: 00:10:30

proposal writing.

Kia: 00:10:31

We had other funding together before. And then there

Kia: 00:10:36

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

Kia: 00:10:41

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

Kia: 00:10:46

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

Kia: 00:10:48

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

Kia: 00:10:52

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

Kia: 00:10:59

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

Kia: 00:11:05

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

Kia: 00:11:21

have industry funding in equal amounts as what we were asking

Kia: 00:11:25

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

Kia: 00:12:24

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

Kia: 00:13:47

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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