Kenton O'Hara
Microsoft Research
Kenton is Director of the Social Devices Experience team at Microsoft Research, and a Visiting Professor in the Bristol Interaction and Graphics Group at the University of Bristol. He is also Principal Fellow at the University of Melbourne where is is on the Advisory Board for the Microsoft Centre…
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Kenton is Director of the Social Devices Experience team at Microsoft Research, and a Visiting Professor in the Bristol Interaction and Graphics Group at the University of Bristol. He is also Principal Fellow at the University of Melbourne where is is on the Advisory Board for the Microsoft Centre for Social Natural User Interfaces (Social NUI). He has been a long time collaborator with the Pervasive Media Studio since its inception working closely on their early artist-in-residence programme and being an advisory mentor on their series of innovative sandbox initiatives such as Future Theatre, Future Documentary and Future Books and Print.
Through understanding of everyday behaviours with technology he designs and develops new technologies that enrich social and collaborative practices. Currently he is developing new cross-device communication experiences that are enabled when technologies have greater sentience of other nearby people and devices.
Prior to this his worked focused on innovative interaction experiences based on sensing the form, posture and movement of the human body in a variety of areas such as surgery, urban displays, play and everyday desktop computing.
Over the years, his research has investigated new technologies in a variety of domains including the home, mobile environments, urban settings and the workplace. Kenton has authored over 90 publications and three books on body-tracking, healthcare, public displays and music consumption. He has previously worked as a Senior Principal Scientist at CSIRO and as Director of the HxI Initiative in Australia as well as being a Senior Researcher at Xerox EuroPARC, HP Labs and the Appliance Studio.