NASA’s Steve Hillenius will present in 2015

Steve will talk about UX in the context of space exploration at CanUX 2015.

Designing Interfaces for Astronaut Autonomy in Space
Nov 7, 2015   3:35pm / 30 MINUTES

As we move towards human deep space missions, astronauts will no longer be able to say, “Houston, we have a problem.” The restricted contact with mission control because of the incredible distance from Earth will require astronauts to make autonomous decisions. How will astronauts take on the roles of mission control? This is an area of active research that has far reaching implications for the future of distant spaceflight. Come to this talk to hear how we are using design and user research to come up with innovative solutions for astronauts to effectively explore the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Speaker Bio: Steve Hillenius

Steve Hillenius is a UX Manager and Designer in the Human Systems Integration Division at NASA’s Ames Research Center (ARC) at Moffett Federal Airfield in Mountain View, California. He has a passion for understanding the complex world of space flight and distilling it down into minimalist usable interfaces.

In his current role at NASA, Steve leads a team that has designed software for astronauts, scientists, and engineers to control the International Space Station, the Curiosity Mars Rover, LADEE (a cool little lunar orbiter that’s currently studying the Moon’s exosphere) and NEEMO ( the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations project, an analog mission that sends groups of astronauts, engineers and scientists to live in Aquarius, the world’s only undersea research station, for up to three weeks at a time).

These days his work involves designing and building software for astronauts to plan and run their own missions in deep space where connectivity back to Earth is limited and researching ways to build usable technology to make training and space operations more efficient. In addition to space flight he enjoys film photography, car design, and wearable computers. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon with a Masters in HCI and a B.S. in Information Systems and HCI, Steve has also previously spoken about UX at NASA at SxSW.

You can follow Steve on Twitter @hillenius

*Image credit: CanUX & Elida Arrizza