September NCSA Colloquium: Jessica Saw

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is hosting its monthly colloquium series and invites everyone to participate in the September session. 

Bio: 

Jessica Saw is Assistant Teaching Professor at Carle Illinois College of Medicine and Affiliate Faculty at NCSA. She was previously Senior Research Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications with the Visual Analytics Group, where she helped design software and apps for science and healthcare contexts. Shout out to Matt Berry and Lisa Gatzke. Her current research interest is in designing digital technologies that teaches basic and clinical sciences through flourishing-centered approaches. In this work, which is rooted from the Aristotle’s philosophical concept of eudaimonia, she aims to integrate the arts and humanities into medicine. 

Talk Title:
Designing for Human Flourishing: A Philosophy Primer and How it Applies to the Technology We Create 

Abstract:

What does it mean to live a good life? Can the technology we create help us live a good life? This talk explores how Aristotle's account of human flourishing can inform the design of digital technologies. Through my work on MedTerms, a web platform prototype that teaches medical students basic and clinical sciences, I will show how we can use user experience and interface (UIX) design to help learners develop intellectual virtue and related character traits that shape intelligence. I will discuss how intelligence impacts our well-being and human flourishing. I will then apply these ideas more broadly, where together, we will discuss how the philosophical concepts of flourishing and intelligence can apply to AI technologies.