Mind the gap: Modelling the human in human-centric computing

The topic of Human-Adaptive Socio-Technical Systems - requiring human-centered concepts, languages and methods to specify system behavior and to model human behavior - is increasingly important as these systems become complexly entangled in everyday lives and contexts. However, the extent to which we achieve `good' systems is very much shaped by what gets specified and modelled about the human in the system. Using the case of older people and care, I will draw attention to the gaps between modelling of behaviours for building systems and negotiating the lived realities of those behaviours, pointing to tensions around whose voice(s) count, what conceptualisations of `old' and `care' dominate, how competing values are negotiated or not, and who defines what adaptations are appropriate. At an application level I want to argue for enabling older people to become active co-contributors to care networks rather than passive recipients of care, and designing for living not aging. More generally though I want to argue for the critical importance of growing our own social and emotional competencies to more sensitively engage with the complexities Human-Adaptive Socio-Technical Systems and embrace an explicit concern for the values we are modelling into our systems.