A smartphone and an app aren’t enough: Susanne Boll, a Computing Science researcher from Oldenburg, and her team are developing mobile assistive devices that people actually want – because they fit seamlessly into everyday life, because they’re helpful, and because they look good. A profile
By Tim Schröder
Susanne Boll arrives just in time, at the very same moment as the postman. She’s just managed to drop her children off – her son at nursery and her daughter at the crèche. “You really ought to replace the nameplate on your letterbox; it’s completely faded,” says the postman. “Oh, yes, I’ve already noticed. I’ll have a go at getting an engraved one. But please don’t be surprised if it takes a while,” she replies. She’s brought some bread rolls with her. The sun is shining. She sets the table outside on the terrace for a late breakfast. Last night she picked a few strawberries from the garden. Now she’s sprinkling vanilla sugar over them and placing the bowl on the table. “I hope you like them like this?” She’s wearing a pink T-shirt and light-coloured trousers. She looks fresh and fit, even though she worked until after midnight yesterday.
At the moment, her desk is piled high with expert reports for academic articles and for the Federal Ministry of Research. The sign on the letterbox will have to wait, as Susanne Boll’s working days are packed. She is a professor of media informatics and multimedia systems at the University of Oldenburg and heads a research group comprising twelve doctoral candidates. She is a member of the Executive Board at the OFFIS Institute for Computing Science, an affiliated institute of the University of Oldenburg, where she also chairs the Health Division.
Human-centred design: her work is at the heart of everyday life
The topics she deals with sound abstract – human-centred design, multimodality. Yet her work is at the very heart of everyday life. Susanne Boll researches, for example, how smartphones can help people stay healthy. “It takes more than just an app,” she says. “Today there are hundreds of apps that count steps whilst you’re jogging or calories whilst you’re eating – and thousands of dissatisfied people who realise that the apps haven’t helped them at all.” A smartphone plus an app isn’t enough, because developers haven’t really understood what a mobile health tool should be like to ensure people enjoy using it regularly.
Susanne Boll wants to do better. Together with her team, she develops technology for people who want to make a difference, for people with cardiovascular problems who are advised to drink regularly. Other devices help people to exercise more often. “It takes a long time for a new, healthy behaviour to become ingrained,” says Susanne Boll. “It takes dozens of repetitions. If the mobile app doesn’t fit well into everyday life, people simply stop using it.”
Some people in Computing Science work exclusively on computers. At OFFIS, Susanne Boll has set up a workshop with a laser cutter and an electronics lab, where she and her research group build mobile assistive devices; WaterJewel, for example, a wristband fitted with light-emitting diodes. It reminds a person to drink regularly. The bracelet is fitted with eight LEDs, representing eight glasses of water. Once you’ve drunk a glass of water, you confirm this by pressing the bracelet. The more glasses you’ve drunk, the more LEDs light up. By the end of the day, they should all be lit up. A ninth LED serves as a reminder to drink. It changes colour over the course of two hours and, without an alarm tone or frantic flashing, indicates when it is time for the next glass.
“We need to listen to what people want, rather than presenting ready-made technologies.”
A wristband with LEDs: compared to a multifunctional smartphone, it looks almost trivial. Yet there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. Susanne Boll and her research team invest a great deal of time in studies to find out what the technology needs to be like for people to accept it. The technology must be aesthetically pleasing, and it must fit in with its surroundings. A device that sits on a table at home all day, for example, needs to be less robust than one that’s carried in a trouser pocket. “Some of our colleagues are surprised when we tell them that we have to ask people on the street,” says Susanne Boll. “We have to listen to what people want, rather than simply presenting ready-made technologies.”
Over the past two years, she has read through a whole stack of specialist psychology articles that focus primarily on when and how people change their behaviour. Only with this knowledge, she says, can she find good solutions. The development of the WaterJewels, for example, was preceded by studies into user behaviour. You could also send a reminder to someone via their smartphone. But a wristband is always there, unobtrusive, and it looks good, provided the design is right. Some experts are wary of this subtle, psychological dimension between humans and computers. For Susanne Boll, however, this ‘human-centred computing’ is the key to truly effective assistive functions. There are many such ideas in her research group: systems that support people during running training, that have previously collapsed in the event of a heart attack, or smartphones with a direction indicator for blind people that vibrates differently depending on whether the user should turn left or right. There are many channels through which people and technology can communicate. Susanne Boll makes creative use of these channels – and has, as a result, gained international recognition. “We’re now receiving more and more enquiries from young researchers who want to work with us. People are taking notice of us.”
, an expert in internet technologies, was recruited to Oldenburg Susanne Boll has always been determined, a bit of a high-achiever, she says, and quickly adds: “But not at the expense of others. I simply liked to put my hand up, liked sitting at the front, and liked getting involved.” Back then, she’d already spent the Christmas holidays revising for her written A-level exam, jotting down all the key facts in a notebook. By the time her teacher began going over the material in January, she already knew it all. She smiles: “I wasn’t the best, though – there were two or three others who were.” The Abitur went brilliantly. Yet at first she didn’t know what to do next. Her father – a physicist with a PhD and a skilled handyman – had passed on both his mathematical aptitude and his technical curiosity to her. Her mother came from a farm in Bavaria and was the go-getter – including when it came to money. “That shaped me. I would have made a good housekeeper. I was good at sewing. My clothes weren’t perfect, but they were good enough.” At the time, Susanne Boll wondered whether she should do an apprenticeship as a dressmaker – despite having top marks in advanced maths. Her mother would have liked to have a doctor in the family, not least for the prestige.
Susanne Boll has three older siblings, none of whom became doctors. Nor did Susanne want to. Eventually, she went with her mother to a career guidance centre, where the counsellor suggested an apprenticeship as a mathematical and technical assistant. “During my training, I discovered that there are people who clock in at seven in the morning and then spend the next half an hour reading the newspaper.” For the dedicated Susanne, this was something of a culture shock.
But the training was fun. She became friends with three other apprentices. The group called themselves “The 4 Chicks”. The four of them still meet up every year. Together with one of her friends, she decided to study Computing Science at Darmstadt Technical University after her apprenticeship – the best place for Computing Science in the Rhine-Main area. “The foundation year was a bit of a let-down; the written exams were tough. It wasn’t much fun, and I wasn’t particularly good at it.” It wasn’t until her main degree programme that she really came into her own. This was partly thanks to her two minor subjects, sport and English studies. “The English department had an Erasmus exchange programme that hardly anyone took advantage of – so I went on a six-month exchange to the University of Surrey in Guildford, near London.” As well as improving her English, this gave her the chance to attend Shakespeare sessions with actors.
Later, whilst working on her Diplom thesis in Computing Science, she followed her supervisor, the computer scientist Wolfgang Klas, to the University of Ulm. At the time, she had specialised in multimedia information systems and was exploring how database systems could not only store individual media files but also represent, store and interactively reproduce entire multimedia presentations. She met her husband in Ulm. The couple then followed the professor to the University of Vienna, where Susanne Boll completed her PhD and worked as a post-doc. That was until Hans-Jürgen Appelrath, a professor of computer science and director of OFFIS, brought her to Oldenburg in 2002 as an expert in databases and internet technologies for a junior professorship he had secured for her during retention negotiations.
Susanne Boll’s main area of work has changed significantly over the past twelve years. And a lot has happened in her private life too. She has had two children and, by building her own house, has forged even stronger ties with Oldenburg. Some time ago, she received an offer from the University of Hamburg. The University of Oldenburg and OFFIS managed to retain her. Susanne Boll stayed.
“I don’t understand mothers who tell their daughters that they were bad at maths themselves.”
Over breakfast on the terrace, she drinks from a mug bearing the words ‘Home – Oldenburg’. “I bought that at the tourist information centre when it became clear that I was staying.” There are plastic toys leaning against the wall of the house. In the afternoons, her children are with the childminder. She takes over at around five o’clock. As her husband works in Hamburg on weekdays, Susanne Boll manages family life on her own then. “It works out fine,” she says. “I enjoy working in the garden; the children can run about with me there.” She joins in when there are no neighbour’s children around. “Lego’s a no-go, though.” Once the children are in bed, she often carries on working. But it all fits together well.
Susanne Boll doesn’t necessarily see herself as a role model for others, but she would like to see more women have the courage to pursue both – a technical career and a family. “I don’t understand mums who tell their daughters that they themselves were bad at maths too. That’s no way to get girls excited about technical and maths subjects.” She says she certainly sees herself as a “feminist” – a woman who knows what it’s like to be on her own in a room full of men and sometimes have to put up with crude remarks. She has fought her way through – and in doing so has done some pioneering work. She looks serious when she asks why women still earn less than men, why the number of women in leadership roles is often still so low. “Yes, I’m in favour of gender quotas, because if there’s a requirement to fill posts with women, that puts pressure further down the line – on schools and training programmes – to support girls and women. It’s a long chain stretching from school right through to the workplace.”
Susanne Boll has forged her own path and established herself in academia. Sometimes her husband says that they could have had children earlier, rather than waiting until their early 40s. “I actually wanted to have four children. Now we have two, and that’s fine. The children are wonderful, we have no financial worries and my work offers me tremendous freedom.” And so, all things considered, she may well end up being a role model for some young female researchers after all.