Janet Wesson

From IRF 2008

Prof. Janet Wesson

Janet Wesson is Head of Department and Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Professor Wesson is also Head of the NMMU/Telkom Centre of Excellence in Distributed Multimedia Applications, which is funded by Telkom SA, Dimension Data and the Technology for Human Resources in Industry Programme (THRIP). She is also employed on a part-time basis as a Principal Researcher with SAP Research CEC Pretoria.

Prof. Wesson completed her PhD with a title “An Investigation into Design Methodologies for Usability” at the University of Port Elizabeth in 1997. She has published widely in local and international conferences and journals on user-centred design, user interface design and usability evaluation. Her current research areas include information visualization, intelligent and adaptive interfaces and mobile computing.

Prof. Wesson is South Africa’s national representative on IFIP TC.13 Technical Committee on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), vice-chair of IFIP TC.13 and secretary of WG13.2 (User-centred Design Methodologies). Prof. Wesson has been a THRIP grantholder since 2003 and was selected as a THRIP Excellence Awards Finalist for 2004. Her current THRIP project was initiated in 2006 and is entitled “An Investigation into Intelligent User Interfaces for Contact Centre Management”.

Prof. Wesson is a South African National Research Foundation (NRF) rated researcher and is acknowledged internationally as an expert in HCI education and research.