Role
Professor of Design and Innovation
Career overview
Lars Erik Holmquist is Professor of Design and Innovation at Nottingham University. He is an internationally leading researcher in human-computer interaction (HCI), interaction design and ubiquitous computing (ubicomp). He has published over 100 articles in fields such as HCI, design methods and mobile applications. His work has been presented at major scientific conferences including ACM CHI, SIGGRAPH, UIST, UbiComp, Mobile HCI, InfoVis and ECSCW. He is the author of 6 granted US patents and 1 granted UK patent. When working in industry, he developed features that were included in Yahoo, Inc’s flagship Yahoo! Search app, reaching millions of users. His book, Grounded Innovation: Strategies for Creating Digital Products, was published by Morgan Kaufman in 2012, and provides a practical guide to the design-driven innovation process, with many examples drawn from his own research and elsewhere.
Before joining NTU he was most recently Professor of Innovation at NorthumbriaUniversity, School of Design, where he was the recipient of a Royal SocietyWolfson Research Merit Award and led the Connected Experiences Lab. Previous appointments include Full Professor in Media Technology at Södertörn University; Lab Leader at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science; Group Leader at the Viktoria Institute; Studio Director at the Interactive Institute; and GuestResearcher at Tokyo University in the Human Augmentation Group.
Research areas
Holmquist’s current research interest includes immersive technologies, in particular augmented reality, where he collaborates with industry and public sector actors including the PROTO Emerging Technologies Centre, the Immex City innovation delivery partnership, and the Digital Catapult, as well as multiple local and national games and immersive companies. He has secured funding for and led a number of major research projects, funded by national and international agencies including the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, The Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems, several large European Union projects, and two collaborative grants with Stanford University from the Wallenberg Global Learning Network. He was awarded an Individual Grant for the Advancement of Young Research Leaders (INGVAR) from the Foundation for Strategic Research, one of the most prestigious personal grants for researchers in Sweden.
He has served on many technical program committees, including ACM CHI, UBICOMP, UIST, DIS, NordiCHI, SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH Asia and Mobile HCI. He was general chair for UBICOMP 2002 and chaired the SIGGRAPH Mobile program and SIGGRAPH AsiaEmerging Technologies. He has been an associate editor for journals in personal technologies, robotics and multimedia. He has supervised four PhD students to completion, and was Director of Post Graduate Studies at Northumbria University for 2 years,
External activity
Holmquist's research often sits on the border between industry and academia, and he has worked at industry research institutes and universities as well as in the commercial sector, in Europe, USA and Asia. At Northumbria University, he supported the university’s main strategy goals in developing the research area of human-digital design by forming the Digital Disruption research network(digitaldisruption.org.uk), which includes partners from industry as well as the public sector.
He spent 2 years in Silicon Valley, where he worked as a principal scientist at Yahoo Labs in Sunnyvale, CA, doing product-oriented research in areas such as location-based search, interactive television and augmented reality. He was Co-Founder and Research Leader of the Mobile Life VINN Excellence Research Centre in Sweden, a 10-year industry collaborative research centre on mobile services.
Sponsors and collaborators
Recent research project collaborations include:
- Newcastle City Council
- Sunderland City Council
- PROTO The Emerging Technologies Centre
- James Cook University Hospital
- Home Group
- Immersive Interactive
- Pocketmoney Games
- MAAD Digital
- Santander
- Northumberland National Parks
- Northern Dance
Publications
2023
Tor Alexander Bruce, Linda Lightley, Clive Wright, Annessa Rebair, and Lars Erik Holmquist.2023. The Intuitive Jacket: Creating A Wearable Interface Acknowledging the Role of the Body in Trauma Mental Health. In Proceedings of the Augmented Humans International Conference 2023 (AHs '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 310–313.
Lars Erik Holmquist. 2023. Object Tracking. UK patent GB2576878.
Lars Erik Holmquist. 2023. Bits are Cheap, Atoms are Expensive: Critiquing the Turn TowardsTangibility in HCI. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’23), April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New York,NY, USA.
Lars Erik Holmquist and Jo Briggs. 2023. Projection-Mapping in the City: Co-creating PublicDigital Installations for Climate Awareness with Animation and Interaction DesignUndergraduates. In EduCHI 2023: 5th Annual Symposium on HCI Education (EduCHI’23), April 28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA.
Ana-Maria Salai, Glenda Cook, and Lars Erik Holmquist. 2023. “The Relief is Amazing”: An In-situ Short Field Evaluation of a Personal Voice Assistive Technology for a User Living with Dementia. In Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2023: 19th IFIP TC13 International Conference, York, UK, August 28 – September 1, 2023, Proceedings, Part I. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 165–175.
2022
Tor Alexander Bruce, Annessa Rebair, and Lars Erik Holmquist. 2022. The Timeline: A Qualitative Study Exploring Therapeutic Experiences in an Immersive Interactive Virtual Environment (IIVE) for Trauma Mental Healthcare. In Nordic Human-Computer InteractionConference (NordiCHI '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 2, 1–16.
Suzanne Kobeisse and Lars Erik Holmquist. 2022. “I Can Feel It in My Hand”: Exploring Design Opportunities for Tangible Interfaces to Manipulate Artefacts in AR. In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM'22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 28–36.
Ana-Maria Salai, Alexandra Kirton, Glenda Cook, Lars Erik Holmquist. Views and experiences on the use of voice assistants by family and professionals supporting people with cognitive impairments. Frontiers in Dementia, Vol. 1, 2022. p. 1049464. ISSN 2813-3919.
2021
Ana-Maria Salai, Glenda Cook, and Lars Erik Holmquist. 2021. Situated Buttons: A User Interface to Support Users with Complex Needs and Promote Independent Living. In Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 389, 1–7.
Belén Barros Pena, Rachel E Clarke, Lars Erik Holmquist, and John Vines. 2021. Circumspect Users: Older Adults as Critical Adopters and Resistors of Technology. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 84, 1–14.
Derianna Thomas and Lars Erik Holmquist. 2021. Is Functionality All That Matters? Examining Everyday User Opinions of Augmented Reality Devices. 2021 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), Lisbon, Portugal, 2021, pp. 232-237.
Ana-Maria Salai, Glenda Cook, Lars Erik Holmquist. 2001. Re-purposing everyday digital technology for marginalised groups. Connected Living: international and interdisciplinary conference, Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, October 8th, 2021.
Ana-Maria Salai, Glenda Cook, Lars Erik Holmquist. (2021). IntraVox: A Personalized Human Voice to Support Users with Complex Needs in Smart Homes. In: Ardito, C., et al. Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021.INTERACT 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12932. Springer, Cham.
2020
Glenda Cook, Lars Erik Holmquist, Ana-Maria Salai, Lindsay Courtney, and Nichola Stefanou. 2020. Technology in care. Nursing and Residential Care 2020 22:5, 1-2.
Craig Green, Lars Erik Holmquist, Steven Gibson. 2020. Towards the Emergent Theatre: A Novel Approach for Creating Live Emergent Narratives Using Finite State Machines. In: Bosser, AG., Millard, D.E., Hargood, C. (eds) Interactive Storytelling. ICIDS 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12497.
Springer, Cham. Suzanne Kobeisse and Lars Erik Holmquist. 2020. ARcheoBox: Engaging with Historical Artefacts Through Augmented Reality and Tangible Interactions. In Adjunct Publication of the 33rd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '20 Adjunct). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 22–24.
Derianna Thomas and Lars Erik Holmquist. 2020. WristAR: A Wrist-Mounted Augmented Reality Interface. In 19th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM 2020). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 312–314.
2019
Lars Erik Holmquist. 2019. The future of tangible user interfaces. Interactions 26, 5 (September-October 2019), 82–85.
Lars Erik Holmquist, Oren Zuckerman, Rafael Ballagas, Hiroshi Ishii, Kimiko Ryokai, and Haiyan Zhang. 2019. The Future of Tangible User Interfaces. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper panel02, 1–6.
2018
Holmquist, L.E. and Dayal, Y. Cross Device Information Exchange Using Gestures and Locations. US 10,136,289. Granted November 20, 2018.
Buchner, K., Lisserman, R. and Holmquist, L.E. Interaction With Multiple Connected Devices. US 9,986,296. Granted May 29, 2018.
Holmquist, L.E. and Chapiewski, G. Localized Selectable Location and/or Time for Search Queries and/or Search Query Results. US 9,870,425. Granted January 16, 2018.
2017 Holmquist, L.E. Intelligence on tap: artificial intelligence as a new design material.Interactions 24, 4 (June 2017), 28-33. ACM Press, 2017.
Holmquist, L.E. 3-Dimensional Augmented Reality Markers. US 9,721,389. Granted August 1, 2017.
Holmquist, L.E. and Dayal, Y. Secure Information Exchange Between Devices Using Location and Unique Codes. US 9,794,614. Granted October 17, 2017.
Holmquist, L.E., Buchner, K., Urrabazo, R. and Lisserman, R. Gestures for Sharing Content Between Multiple Devices. US 9,729,591. Granted August 8, 2017.