Brown Bag Lunch Schedule: Difference between revisions

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The HCIL has an open semi-organized weekly "brown bag lunch (BBL)" on every <span style='color:red; font-weight:800'>Thursdays from 12:30-1:30pm in HCIL (2105 Hornbake, South Wing)</span>.  The topics range from someone's work, current interest to the HCIL, a software demo/review, a study design, a proposed research topic, an introduction to a new person, etc.  The BBL is the one hour a week where we all come together--thus, it’s a unique time for HCIL members with unique opportunities to help build collaborations, increase awareness of each other’s activities, and generally just have a bit of fun together with <span style='color:red; font-weight:800'>free food every week</span>.   
= THIS PAGE IS NOT UPDATED ANYMORE=


To sign up for a session, send an email to BBL student co-coordinator '''Arunesh Mathur  (amathur@umd.edu)''' or '''Daniel Pauw (dpauw@umd.edu)'''. In the email, briefly describe the topic and preferred dates.
'''Instead see this new page about the [https://hcil.umd.edu/bbl-speaker-series/ BBL Lecture series]'''


To get notified about upcoming events, please subscribe one of [[BBL mailing lists|these mailing lists]].  
OLD TEXT:  The HCIL has an open, semi-organized weekly "Guest Speaker & Pizza Series" every <span style='color:green; font-weight:800'>Thursday from 12:30-1:30pm in HCIL (2119 Hornbake, South Wing)</span>.  The topics range from someone's work, current interests in the HCIL, software demos/reviews, study design, proposed research topics, introductions to new people, etc. The BBL is the one hour a week where we all come together--thus, it’s a unique time for HCIL members with unique opportunities to help build collaborations, increase awareness of each other’s activities, and generally just have a bit of fun together. There is no RSVP; simply show up!


We thank YAHOO for its sponsorship of the HCIL Brown Bag Lunches
If you would like to give or suggest a talk, presentation, workshop, etc., send an email to BBL student co-coordinators '''Teja Maddali (hmaddali@umd.edu)''' or '''Aravind JR (aravind@umd.edu)'''. In the email, briefly describe the topic and preferred dates.
[[File:Yahoo.jpg|60px]].


= Fall 2014 Schedule =
To be notified about upcoming events, please subscribe to one of [[BBL mailing lists|these mailing lists]].
 
<br>
 
== Spring 2020 Guest Speaker Series Schedule ==
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| 02/06/2020
|   
<b>Dr. Joel Chan, Dr. Amanda Lazar and Dr. Catherine Plaisant</b> University of Maryland
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Panel discussion "What does a successful process for an HCI researcher look like?</b>
<br>
We'll be kicking off this semester with a panel discussion. Dr. Joel Chan, Dr. Amanda Lazar, and Dr. Catherine Plaisant will engage in a conversation with us about what successful processes for an HCI researcher look like in terms of personal development, week to week / day to day workflow, moving ideas forward, etc. 
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|-
|-
| 09/04/2014
| 02/13/2020
| '''Niklas Elmqvist'''<br> New iSchool Professor in Infovis ([https://engineering.purdue.edu/~elm/ link])
|    
<b>Christian Vogler,</b> Gallaudet University
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Ubiquitous Analytics: Interacting with Big Data Anywhere, Anytime
<b>The User Experience of Viewing Captioned Content</b>
<br>
Much has been made of the ability of automatic speech recognition (ASR) to supplement or replace human captioners both for video content and for live meetings. While the word error rate of ASR has been steadily improving, and on some types of content can even beat out human captioners, these improvements do not automatically in a good user experience for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. In this talk we will examine the reasons why this is so, and provide an overview of current efforts to develop human-centered caption quality metrics that are more closely aligned with meeting the needs of people who depend on captions to consume content.
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<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<br> Abstract: Computing is becoming increasingly embedded in our everyday lives: mobile devices are growing smaller yet more powerful, large displays are getting cheaper, and our physical environments are turning intelligent and are integrating an increasing number of digital processors. Meanwhile, data is everywhere, and people need to leverage all of this digital infrastructure to turn it into actionable information about their hobbies, health, and personal interest. In this talk, I will present the concept of ubiquitous analytics that is staking out a new digital future of ever-present, always-on computing; one that can support manipulating, thinking about, and interacting with data anytime, anywhere.
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Bio: Niklas Elmqvist is an associate professor in the College of Information Studies at University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. He is also a member of the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies. He received his Ph.D. in 2006 from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. Prior to joining UMD in 2014, he was an faculty member in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University from 2008, a postdoctoral researcher at INRIA in France from 2007, and a visiting scholar at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2006. His research areas are information visualization, human-computer interaction, and visual analytics. Prof. Elmqvist is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award in 2013, the Purdue ECE Chicago Alumni New Faculty in 2010, Google research awards in 2009 and 2010, the Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Teacher Award in 2012, and three best paper awards in premier venues in his field. His work has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as well as by Google, Microsoft, and NVidia. He is a senior member of ACM, IEEE, and IEEE Computer Society.
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|-
|-
| 09/11/2014
| 02/20/2020
| '''All new students!'''<br>  
|    
<b>Wei Ai</b> University of Maryland
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
New student introductions!
<b>Promoting Pro-social Behavior with End-to-End Data Science</b>
<br>
The recent development of data science methods, including large-scale machine learning and causal inference, has presented a game-changing opportunity for social good provision through the effort of the crowd. In this talk, I introduce an end-to-end data science pipeline to promote behavioral change for pro-social benefits. More specifically, this involves conducting causal data analysis on empirical data for actionable insights and robust prediction models, incorporating the insights and predictions in designing recommender systems for individual actions, and evaluating the effectiveness of the recommender systems in promoting behavioral changes with randomized field experiments. I will present two applications of the end-to-end pipeline, where we designed and deployed team recommender systems on an online microfinance platform (Kiva.org) and a ride-sharing platform (DiDi). We evaluated the recommender systems through large-scale field experiments, which show significant increases in user participation. The recommender system has been deployed in DiDi and has impacted millions of users in practice.
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<br> Much like last year, this BBL is for new students to introduce themselves, talk briefly about their projects and interests and bounce their ideas off the HCIL members. The purpose of these informal and participatory talks is to help connect new students with professors and other students sharing the same interests.
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The students presenting are: Chris Musialek, Deok Gun Park, Seokbin Kang, Jonggi Hong, Sriram Karthik Badam and Majeed Kazemitabaar.
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|-
|-
| 09/18/2014
| 02/27/2019
| '''Moving the cubes!'''<br>
|    
| Resisting the cookies is futile.
<b>B Prabhakaran</b> University of Texas, Dallas
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Quantifying Human Performance and the Quality of Immersive Experiences</b>
<br>
Psychometric evaluations are generally used to understand the Quality of Experience (QoE) of immersive environments produced using augmented/mixed/virtual reality. Typically, these subjective evaluations are done from an end-user point-of-view, but these are limited by the subjective observations due to a number of factors. The objective approach consists of measuring the QoE by monitoring the network technical parameters or the network Quality of Service (QoS), such as throughput, delay, and packet loss. Most of the research on objective approaches for QoS-QoE mapping have focused on video streaming. Such objective QoS-QoE mapping strategies cannot be directly applied for immersive environments.
Hence, in this talk, we address two related questions: (1) Can we identify metrics that can objectively quantify the performance of an immersive environment? (2) Can we use the above objective performance metrics to understand the possible user QoE without the need for subjective user study or with minimal user study? We start with different examples of immersive environments such as haptic-enabled applications, mirror therapy, and games. We discuss what metrics are influenced by different system parameters such as processing power, and network QoS. Then, we present some of our preliminary work on understanding users’ QoE through these metrics.
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|-
|-
| 09/25/2014
| 03/05/2020
| '''Kotaro Hara'''<br> CS PhD Student: ([http://kotarohara.com/ link])
|    
<b>Dr. Joel Chan</b> University of Maryland
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| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
UIST2014 Practice Talk: Tohme: Detecting Curb Ramps in Google Street View Using Crowdsourcing, Computer Vision, and Machine Learning
<b>What does a successful process for an HCI researcher look like? Part 2</b>
<br>
TBA
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<br> Building on recent prior work that combines Google Street View (GSV) and crowdsourcing to remotely collect information on physical world accessibility, we present the first “smart” system, Tohme, that combines machine learning, computer vision (CV), and custom crowd interfaces to find curb ramps remotely in GSV scenes. Tohme consists of two workflows, a human labeling pipeline and a CV pipeline with human verification, which are scheduled dynamically based on predicted performance. Using 1,086 GSV scenes (street intersections) from four North American cities and data from 403 crowd workers, we show that Tohme performs similarly in detecting curb ramps compared to a manual labeling approach alone (F-measure: 84% vs. 86% baseline) but at a 13% reduction in time cost. Our work contributes the first CV-based curb ramp detection system, a custom machine-learning based workflow controller, a validation of GSV as a viable curb ramp data source, and a detailed examination of why curb ramp detection is a hard problem along with steps forward.
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|}
== Fall 2019 HCIL Guest Speaker Series Schedule ==
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|-
|-
| 10/02/2014
| 08/29/2019
| '''Michelle Mazurek''' <br> Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science ([http://tintin.pdl.cmu.edu/ link])
|    
<b>Hack-a-thon</b>
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-expand">
<b>HCIL Website Hack-a-thon.</b>
<br>
We are kick starting this semester's BBL with a Hack-a-thon event. You will be tasked to update the HCIL website by checking for broken links, updating faculty information, checking for spelling and grammar errors and also improving the accessibility of the images in the website.
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|-
| 09/05/2019
|   
<b>Prof. Jun-Dong Cho</b> Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Measuring Password Guessability for an Entire University
<b>Celestial: Color Patterns for improving Color Perception for blind people.</b>
<br>
It is relatively difficult to recreate the abstract three-dimensional shape with only the tactile sense. Gibson said "These abilities can be improved through practice." "When you touch something, You may have no idea about it at first touch, but as you continue touching, you soon will know vaguely what it is" , Kojiro Hirose said. 
 
Recently, we developed "Blind-touch" to aid the visually impaired to appreciate greater painter’s work of art. This work is a reproduction of an existing masterpiece by means of a 3D printer and haptic electronics. It recognizes the pattern by touching the object in the artwork with a fingertip, and voice explanation and sound effect are provided through the voice user interface.  Color is an equaling lens through which we experience the natural and digital realities. Now, we are exploring the tactile-color association based on semiotics  to represent colors  with fingertip tactile sensation. In this way, audio  and touch contribute information to the non-visual perception of color in an complementary manner. In this talk, we review the related works and  introduce a so-called “Celestial color tactile pattern”  built based on the concept of both pictogram and ideogram and its variants.
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<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<br> Despite considerable research on passwords, empirical studies of password strength have been limited by lack of access to plaintext passwords, small data sets, and password sets specifically collected for a research study or from low-value accounts. Properties of passwords used for high-value accounts thus remain poorly understood.
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We fill this gap by studying the single-sign-on passwords used by over 25,000 faculty, staff, and students at a research university with a complex password policy. Key aspects of our contributions rest on our (indirect) access to plaintext passwords. We describe our data collection methodology, particularly the many precautions we took to minimize risks to users. We then analyze how guessable the collected passwords would be during an offline attack by subjecting them to a state-of-the-art password cracking algorithm. We discover significant correlations between a number of demographic and behavioral factors and password strength.  
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|-
| 09/12/2019
|   
<b>Prof. Niklas Elmqvist, Prof. Amanda Lazar, and Prof. Joel Chan</b> University of Maryland
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b> A panel discussion on approaches to reviewing research papers.</b>
<br>
In light of the approaching deadline for SIGCHI 2020, Professors Niklas Elmqvist, Amanda Lazar, and Joel Chan will discuss the why/how of giving feedback on drafts of research papers. This would be helpful for anyone (Undergrad, Masters, or PhD students) who might be thinking of volunteering to review for conferences, ACM SIGCHI, or even for other lab members in the HCIL’s very own CHI clinic. Reviewers of all levels of expertise, even if you’ve never reviewed a research paper, are encouraged to participate and ask questions during the discussion. ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdpW6sU2b9Y link to video])
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We also compare the guessability and other characteristics of the passwords we analyzed to sets previously collected in controlled experiments or leaked from low-value accounts. We find more consistent similarities between the university passwords and passwords collected for research studies under similar composition policies than we do between the university passwords and subsets of passwords leaked from low-value accounts that happen to comply with the same policies.
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|-
|-
| 10/09/2014<br>'''(room 2119)'''
| 09/19/2019
| '''m.c. schraefel'''<br> Professor, University of Southampton ([http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mc/ link])
|   
<b>Ben Shneiderman</b> University of Maryland
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Exploring the role of HCI as an agent of cultural change: from health as a medical condition to health as shared, social aspiration.
<b> Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence: Designing Next Generation User Experiences</b>
<br>
The next generation of user experiences will produce 1000-fold improvements in human capabilities. These new tools will amplify, augment, enhance, and empower people, just as the Web, email, search, navigation, digital photography, and many other applications have already done. These new human-centered tools will produce comprehensible, predictable, and controllable applications that promote self-efficacy and social participation at scale. The goal is to ensure human control, while increasing the level of automation. In short, the next generation of tools will make more people, more creative, more often.
<br>
Improved designs will give billions of users comprehensible interfaces that hide the underlying complexity of advanced algorithms. Users will see familiar visual strategies based on direct manipulation to provide informative feedback about the machine’s state and what they can do. Every use will build confidence that users can reliably accomplish their goals and increase the trust that the machine is under their control.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<br>Abstract: What is the role of HCI in supporting a better normal for our health, creativity, quality of life - especially if we think about health outside a medical context. I have been thinking about the concept of “make better normal” and Ben Shneiderman has challenged me to ask isn’t that the role of design in general? And most of us would agree, so what’s different when we talk about health, not as a medical condition, but as a paradigm shift, where health is a shared and supported social aspiration? In such a discussion, HCI becomes an agent not necessarily for change, but for cultural shift - assuming we might agree on what proactive health looks like in practice - so we can design to support it. As part of this discussion i’ll offer in5 as a design model for proactive health and look forward to your feedback.
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|-
| 09/26/2019
|   
<b>Tom Ball</b> Microsoft Research
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>MakeCode and CODAL: intuitive and efficient embedded systems programming for education</b>
<br>
<br>
Across the globe, it is now commonplace for educators to engage in the making (design and development) of embedded systems in the classroom to motivate and excite their students. This new domain brings its own set of unique requirements. Historically, embedded systems development requires knowledge of low-level programming languages, local installation of compilation toolchains, device drivers, and applications. For students and educators, these requirements can introduce insurmountable barriers.<br>
We present the motivation, requirements, implementation, and evaluation of a new programming platform that enables novice users to create software for embedded systems. The platform has two major components: <br>1) Microsoft MakeCode (www.makecode.com), a web app that encapsulates an entire beginner IDE for microcontrollers; and <br>2) CODAL, an efficient component-oriented C++ runtime for microcontrollers.<br> We show how MakeCode and CODAL provide an accessible, cross-platform, installation-free programming experience for the BBC micro:bit and other embedded devices.
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|-
| 10/3/2019
|   
<b>Naeemul Hassan</b> University of Maryland
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b> Towards Automated Fact Discovery and Ranking</b>
<br>
<br>
Also, we might consider how the role of HCI would change in this dynamic over time. Initially, proactive health design is likely design against the status quo. For example, if the status quo is sedentary knowledge work, and the research shows that more movement during the day is better for us cognitively, physiologically, socially, then what does HCI do to help support this transition individually and culturally? What is the role and perhaps responsibility of our collaborative work with, for instance, visualisation and big data? Likewise, what is the map of this territory for us? where are the important research questions? how would we know them? Do we ourselves need to evolve a new disciplinary expertise from nutrition to neurology for proactive health tech design? I have some thoughts/experiences in this space i’d like to share to hear your insights. Also, in particular, I would also like to present the related outcomes from a Dagstuhl Workshop that happened in June to consider Grand Challenges for Interactive Technology Design for Proactive Health, and to invite you to participate in and contribute to shaping these Challenges. This exchange, i hope, will act as both this invitation and a call to action - to say that if we see the opportunities to make a real and credible difference for proactive health, do we not need to find, fundamentally, ways to better support each others’ work to have effects at scale, to model a path for others to trust and to follow?
In this talk, I present the work of finding new, prominent situational facts, which are emerging statements about objects that stand out within certain contexts. Many such facts
are newsworthy—e.g., an athlete’s outstanding performance in a game, or a viral video’s impressive popularity. Effective and efficient identification of these facts assists journalists in reporting,
one of the main goals of computational journalism. A situational fact can be modeled as a “contextual” tuple that stands out against historical tuples in a context, specified by a conjunctive constraint involving dimension attributes when a set of measure attributes are compared. New tuples are constantly added to the table, reflecting events happening in the real world. Our goal is to discover constraint-measure pairs that qualify a new tuple as a contextual significant tuple, and discover them quickly before the event becomes yesterday’s news.
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|-
| 10/10/2019
|   
<b>John Dickerson</b> University of Maryland
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-expand">
<b> Diversity in Matching Markets</b>
<br>
<br>
In bipartite matching problems, vertices on one side of a bipartite graph are paired with those on the other. In its offline variant, both sides of the graph are known a priori; in its online variant, one side of the graph is available offline, while vertices on the other arrive online and are irrevocably and immediately matched (or ignored) by an algorithm. Examples of such problems include matching workers to firms, advertisers to keywords, organs to patients, and riders to rideshare drivers. Much of the literature focuses on maximizing the total relevance---modeled via total weight---of the matching. However, in many real-world problems, it is also important to consider the contribution of diversity: hiring a diverse pool of candidates, displaying a relevant but diverse set of ads, and so on.
In this talk, we model the promotion of diversity in matching markets via maximization of a submodular function over the set of matched edges. We present new results in a generalization of traditional offline matching, b-matching, where vertices have both lower and upper bounds on the number of adjacent matched edges. We also present new theoretical results in online submodular bipartite matching. Finally, we conclude with ongoing work that approaches the problem of hiring a diverse cohort of workers through the lens of combinatorial pure exploration (CPE) in the multiarmed bandit setting, and discuss an ongoing experiment in this space at a large research university.
This talk will cover joint work with Saba Ahmadi, Faez Ahmed, Samsara Counts, Jeff Foster, Mark Fuge, Samir Khuller, Zhi Lang, Nicholas Mattei, Karthik A. Sankararaman, Candice Schumann, Aravind Srinivasan, and Pan Xu.
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|-
| 10/17/2019
|   
<b>Prof. Caro Williams-Pierce</b> University of Maryland
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Designing for Mathematical Play: Failure and Feedback</b>
<br>
<br>
Bio: m.c. schraefel, ph.d, f.bcs, c.eng, cscs, @mcphoo holds the post Professor of Computer Science and Human Performance in the Agents, Interaction and Complexity Group of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK (http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~mc). mc also holds a Research Chair sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering and Microsoft Research to investigate how to design interactive technology to better support creativity, innovation and discovery. As part of that research, schraefel utilises her works with athletes as a professional strength and conditioning, movement and nutrition coach for design insights into real people's longitudinal experience of and challenges with wellbeing practice (http://begin2dig.com). mc directs the Human Systems Interaction Lab at Southampton where the vision is to make better normal; make normal better, and the mission is to explore how ICT can support the brain/body connexion to enhance innovation, creativity and improved Quality of Life for all.
Prof. Caro will share her analysis of three types of microworld (videogame, simulation, and cognitive tutor), and how each constrain and afford mathematical play differently through their feedback and failure mechanisms. In doing so, she will also introduce her framework for youth and adult mathematical play, and describe how different design approaches influence different ways of mathematical learning. Anyone interested in designing digital learning environments is particularly encouraged to come - Prof. Caro promises that it'll be interesting even if you don't research math learning!
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|-
|-
| 10/16/2014
| 10/24/2019
| '''Uran Oh''' <br> CS PhD Student
|    
<b>Karen Holtzblatt</b> Incontext Design
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
ASSETS 2014 Practice Talk: Design of and Subjective Response to On-body Input for People With Visual Impairments
<b> What is Valuing vs “Jerk” Behavior? How behavior impacts a positive working experience</b>
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<br>
For users with visual impairments, who do not necessarily need the visual display of a mobile device, non-visual on-body interaction (e.g., Imaginary Interfaces) could provide accessible input in a mobile context. Such interaction provides the potential advantages of an always-available input surface, and increased tactile and proprioceptive feedback compared to a smooth touchscreen. To investigate preferences for and design of accessible on-body interaction, we conducted a study with 12 visually impaired participants. Participants evaluated five locations for on-body input and compared on-phone to on-hand interaction with one versus two hands. Our findings show that the least preferred areas were the face/neck and the forearm, while locations on the hands were considered to be more discreet and natural. The findings also suggest that participants may prioritize social acceptability over ease of use and physical comfort when assessing the feasibility of input at different locations of the body. Finally, tradeoffs were seen in preferences for touchscreen versus on-body input, with on-body input considered useful for contexts where one hand is busy (e.g., holding a cane or dog leash). We provide implications for the design of accessible on-body input.  
Women in tech leave the field at twice the quit rate as men. Women often state, and research confirms, that women don’t feel valued. They point to the culture of the organization and how they are treated as a contributing factor. They say that men are “bro’s” or “jerks.” In 2018, we launched the Valuing &amp; Jerk Project as one WITops initiative (https://www.witops.org). This talk
</div></div>
will present our findings and perspective.
Behavior creates or undermines connection and value. The Valuing and Jerk Project focuses on understanding which behaviors are experienced as valuing in everyday work and which result in
naming the other as a “jerk”. Using Contextual Inquiry, we have uncovered core valuing behaviors, what devaluing means, and where behavior crosses the line to become “jerk” behavior. Armed with this understanding our next step is to generate and test interventions and solutions. The talk will introduce the Valuing and Jerk Project.
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|-
|-
| 10/23/2014
| 10/31/2019
| '''Andrea Wiggins'''<br> Assistant Professor, iSchool ([http://andreawiggins.com link])
|    
| Citizen Science at Scale: Human Computation for Science, Education, and Sustainability
<b>Rachael Bradley Montgomery</b><br> University of Maryland
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Designing to Support People with Cognitive and Learning Disabilities</b>
<br>
Have you ever wondered how to create websites, applications, and content that support individuals with cognitive and learning disabilities; individuals who are aging; or individuals who are tired, overworked, and distracted?  The W3C
Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility (COGA) Task Force has been working on a design guide that goes beyond WCAG 2.2 to support individuals with cognitive and learning disabilities. The resulting design patterns and guidance bridges accessibility and usability and support a much wider audience than just those with disabilities.  Rachael will present her perspectives as an invited expert on this work. Please come learn about the design patterns and how to provide input on this evolving document.
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|-
|-
| 10/30/2014
| 11/7/2019
| '''Nicholas Diakopoulos'''<br> Assistant Professor, UMD College of Journalism ([http://www.nickdiakopoulos.com/ link])
|    
<b>Dr. Gregg Vanderheiden</b><br>TRACE center
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Computational Journalism: From Tools to Algorithmic Accountability
<b>Underestimating the challenge of cognitive disabilities (and digital literacy). Directions to explore in short, medium and long term.
</b>
<br>
Recent work has caused us to question our understanding of the challenge of digital access by people with cognitive disabilities.  Our underestimation may, in part, help explain our difficulties as a field to date. In part, it has exposed what may be a much wider problem than we understood, and one that goes beyond those we have thought of as having cognitive disabilities. It intersects with digital literacy but also has implications for those with other disabilities as well. The concept of Technology Quotient (TQ) will be discussed and approaches for addressing access by people with cognitive disabilities and low digital literacy today, tomorrow and in the future will be explored in this talk.
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<br> Abstract: Computational Journalism was initially conceived of as an application of computing technologies to enable journalism across information tasks such as information gathering, organization and sensemaking, storytelling, and dissemination. But computing and algorithms can also become the object of journalism. Algorithms adjudicate a large array of decisions in our lives: not just search engines and personalized online news systems, but educational evaluations, markets and political campaigns, and the management of social services like welfare and public safety. A new form of computational journalism that I call “Algorithmic Accountability Reporting” is emerging to apply the core journalistic functions of watchdogging and accountability reporting to algorithms. In this talk I will provide some perspective on the tool-oriented roots of computational journalism, and then discuss how algorithmic accountability reporting is emerging as a mechanism for elucidating and articulating the power structures, biases, and influences that computational artifacts play in society.
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|-
| 11/14/2019
|   
<b>Adam Aviv</b> George Washington
University
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b> Human Factors in Mobile Authentication</b>
<br>
<br>
Mobile authentication is a crucial component of authentication more broadly,
especially as mobile devices become evermore connected to the broader computer
security ecosystem. The overarching goal of my research is to improve the
current state of mobile authentication by taking a holistic approach to
measuring mobile authentication and its impacts that intersect directly with the
user experience. In this talk, I will present a narrative of contributions to
mobile authentication over the last 10 years, focusing on how human factors
impact the security, from attacks, choices, and perceptions. I will particularly
focus on one form of mobile authentication, Android's graphical pattern unlock,
which may be the most heavily used graphical authentication system, ever. Based
on my experience, I will also present some new directions and methods that can
improve the security of mobile authentication and some new results on PINs and
LG's graphical Knock Code Authentication.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<!-- row end -->
<!-- row start -->
|-
| 11/21/2019
|   
<b>Whitney Quesenbery</b> Co-Director, Center for Civic Design
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b> Storytelling makes research data come to life </b>
<br>
<br>
Bio: Nicholas Diakopoulos is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland College of Journalism. His research is in computational and data journalism with an emphasis on algorithmic accountability, narrative data visualization, and social computing in the news. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech where he co-founded the program in Computational Journalism. Before UMD he worked as a researcher at Columbia University, Rutgers University, and CUNY studying the intersections of information science, innovation, and journalism. Nick can be contacted via email at nad@umd.edu, and is online at @ndiakopoulos and http://www.nickdiakopoulos.com.
We all love our user research data…but why is it such a struggle to use the insights we uncover to create direction for a project?  Storytelling is the missing link, getting past charts and graphs to dig into what the data means for meeting human needs and making something usable and useful. Whitney will show how stories put research insights into context, communicate the entire user journey, show problems through the eyes of your users, and help you ask better questions (and run better usability tests) to gain deeper insights. Whitney is the co-founder of the Center for Civic Design, approaching democracy as a design problem, so there will be examples from the challenges of designing elections as well as stories from her work in theatre.  
</div></div>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<!-- row end -->
 
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| 11/06/2014
| 11/28/2019
|'''Susan Winter & Diane Travis'''<br> <!--Affiliation with URL-->
|    
| BS HCI specialization: Emerging undergraduate program
<b>Happy Thanksgiving Day</b>
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b> No BBL. Time to catch up with families and friends :) </b>
<br>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| 11/13/2014
| 12/05/2019
| <!--'''Person Name or Activity Name'''<br> Affiliation with URL-->
|    
| <!--Talk Info-->
<b>TBA</b>  
|-
| 11/20/2014
| '''Beverly Harrison''' <br> Principal Scientist & Director Mobile Research, Yahoo!
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Yahoo Labs – Mobile Research
<b> TBA</b>
<br>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<br>In this talk, Beverly will describe key areas that the Yahoo Labs Mobile Research team is actively working on (and hiring for!). Several recent research projects will be presented including a study of teens' use of smartphones and mobile apps, a study about people’s understanding of what “personalized ads” means, some prototypes of speech related mobile interfaces, and some highlights of watches, buttons, and hardware prototyping efforts.
<!-- row end -->
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>
<br>
<br>
Bio: Beverly Harrison is currently a Principal Scientist and Director of Mobile Research at Yahoo Labs.  Her expertise and passion over the last 20 years is creating, building and evaluating innovative user interface technologies and in inferring user behavior patterns from various types of sensor data. She has previously worked at Xerox PARC, IBM Research, Intel Research, and Amazon/Lab126 as well as doing startups. Beverly has 80+ publications, holds over 50 patents, and held 3 affiliate faculty positions in CSE, iSchool, Design (Univ of Washington). She has a B.  Mathematics (Waterloo) and a M.Sc. and PhD in Human Factors Engineering (Toronto).
<br>
</div></div>
</div></div>
|- style="background-color: darkgray;" |
| 11/27/2014
| colspan="2" | No Brown Bag for Thanksgiving break.
|-
| 12/04/2014
| <!--'''Person Name or Activity Name'''<br> Affiliation with URL-->
| <!--Talk Info-->
|-
| 12/11/2014
| <!--'''Person Name or Activity Name'''<br> Affiliation with URL-->
| <!--Talk Info-->
|-
| 12/18/2014
| <!--'''Person Name or Activity Name'''<br> Affiliation with URL-->
| <!--Talk Info-->
|}
|}
<p></p><br/>
== Spring 2019 Schedule ==
 
= Past Brown Bags =
 
The following are the past Brown Bag schedules.
 
== Spring 2014 ==
 
{| class="wikitable" border="1"
{| class="wikitable" border="1"
|-
|-
Line 144: Line 308:
! width="150px" | Leader
! width="150px" | Leader
! Topic
! Topic
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| Jan 30
| 01/31/2019
| '''Helena Mentis'''<br> New UMBC HCI faculty member<br>[http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/hm429/Welcome.html bio]
|    
<b>Faculty Only BBL</b>
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Tracking the Body in Healthcare
Regular BBLs will start from 7th Feb, 2019.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<br> New gesture and movement tracking technologies are offering rich possibilities for our everyday computing experiences. More than simply intuitive and non-intrusive forms of interaction these technologies can provide ways to transform behavioral practices in particular contexts. Within these contexts, there are important challenges in how we take the opportunities provided by body/movement sensing systems and design them in ways that are attuned to the demands and circumstances of a particular setting. In this talk I will explore these issues in the context of the particular setting of healthcare. I will present prior work on a Kinect-based system that uses gesture and voice recognition capabilities to enable clinicians to interact with images during surgery without compromising sterility as well as new work on sensing a Parkinson's patient's movement ability for clinical decision-making and patient empowerment.
<!-- row end -->
</div></div>
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| Feb 6
| 02/07/2019
| Catherine Plaisant and Michael Gubbels
|    
| Reviewing CHI '13 best videos
<b>Faez Ahmed,</b> University of Maryland
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Design Democratization in the Age of Machine Learning.</b>
<br>
Design democratization can transform the way we think about designing products. However, to enable design democratization, we need machine learning and computing methods to enable organizations to process a large amount of information efficiently. Using the example of online design contests, we will discuss three problems which organizations face in conducting design contests: a) How does one form teams to evaluate design ideas? b) How does one filter high quality and diverse ideas out of hundreds of submissions? and c) How does one reliably measure the creativity of ideas? We will discuss how matching, ranking, and novelty estimation methods developed in our work address these issues and what challenges remain for the field.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| Feb 13
| 02/14/2019
| '''Beverly Harrison'''<br>Yahoo Research
|    
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Huaishu Peng,</b> University of Maryland
Research at Yahoo Labs
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Interactive Fabrication and Fabrication for Interaction.</b>
<br>
3D printing technology has been widely applied to produce well-designed objects. There is a hope to make both the modeling process and printing outputs more interactive, so that designers can get in-situ tangible feedback to fabricate objects with rich functionalities. To date, however, knowledge accumulated to realize this hope remains limited. In this talk, I will present two lines of research. The first line of work aims at facilitating an interactive process of fabrication. I demonstrate novel interactive fabrication systems that allow the designer to create 3D models in AR with a robotic arm to print the model in real time and on-site. The second line of work concerns the fabrication of 3D printed objects that are interactive. I report new techniques for 3D printing with novel materials such as fabric sheet, and how to print one-off functional objects such as sensor and motor. I will conclude the talk by outlining future research directions built upon my current work.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<br> In this talk, Beverly will highlight strategic research areas and directions for Yahoo Labs overall, and then describe key areas the Mobile Research team is actively working on (and hiring for!). Several recent research projects will be presented including a study of teens use of smartphones and mobile apps, a study about people’s understanding of what “personalized ads” means, a social TV prototype app, and some highlights of wearables and hardware prototyping efforts. <br><br>Beverly Harrison is currently a Principal Scientist and Director of Mobile Research at Yahoo Labs.  Her expertise and passion over the last 20 years is creating, building and evaluating innovative user interface technologies and in inferring user behavior patterns from various types of sensor data. She has previously worked at Xerox PARC, IBM Research, Intel Research, and Amazon/Lab126 as well as doing startups. Beverly has 80+ publications, holds over 50 patents, and held 3 affiliate faculty positions in CSE, iSchool, Design (Univ of Washington). She has a B.  Mathematics (Waterloo) and a M.Sc. and PhD in Human Factors Engineering (Toronto).
<!-- row end -->
</div></div>
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| Feb 20
| 02/21/2019
| '''Karyn Moffatt'''<br>HCI Professor at McGill Univ.<br/>[http://act.mcgill.ca/karyn/ bio]
|    
<b>Niklas Elmqvist</b> University of Maryland
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Accessible Social Technology
<b>Everyone a Data Scientist: Empowering Casual Users to Understand Complex Data.</b>
<br>
Understanding data is quickly becoming the new digital divide. Merely having access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) is no longer sufficient when our society is overflowing with massive volumes of raw, complex, and heterogeneous data. Since best-practice data science workflows are still only available through esoteric software libraries, typically accessed using the Python and R languages, leveraging this data to its full potential often requires significant programming expertise. Even commercial point-and-click analytics tools such as Tableau, Spotfire, and QlikView require training and assume significant prior knowledge of mathematical, statistical, and sometimes even machine learning concepts. This means that currently only people who have the appropriate data and technology literacy can harness the ready availability of data in our society.
 
In this work-in-progress talk, I will discuss our efforts for shrinking or outright eliminating this new digital data divide through interactive visualization, explainable machine learning, and collaborative technologies. More specifically, I will talk about several past, current, or planned projects on this topic, including (1) the use of mixed-initiative interaction, which combines both human and computational efforts in the analytical process; (2) the use of attention for computational steering; (3) recommender systems for automatically suggesting the next analytical step in a workflow; (4) direct manipulation methods for interacting with machine learning models; and (5) "team-first" collaborative mechanisms that reduce the barrier to synchronizing and sharing work to facilitate emergent collaboration. This is ongoing research, so your feedback on these efforts is welcome.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<br>For better and worse, technology has changed how we connect with one another, potentially excluding those who have not kept up with changing social norms. To provide one common example: grandparents who have not adopted Facebook often find themselves excluded from family photo sharing practices. In this talk, Karyn will informally discuss recent projects targeted at drawing marginalized individuals into online social forums, with a focus on bridging diverse preferences and accommodating competing needs.<br><br>Karyn Moffatt is an assistant professor in the School of Information Studies at McGill University. Currently, her work focuses on designing tools that are sensitive to the social context in which they will be used and that seek to leverage and support those relationships. Prior to joining McGill University, Karyn was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto supported by awards from NSERC and CIHR’s Health Care, Technology, and Place strategic initiative. She received her doctorate in computer science from the University of British Columbia in 2010.
<!-- row end -->
</div></div>
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| Feb 27
| 02/28/2019
| Romain Vuillemot
|    
|  
<b>Townhall</b>
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Research Speed Dating</b>
<br>
This week everyone is a speaker. We want everyone to talk about what is keeping you busy these days. This is a great way to recruiting participants, get feedback on your research questions, your data collection methods or anything concerning your research. We want you to share your research to the rest of HCIL group.
 
Faculty members, Ph.D. students, Masters students, and Bachelors students, we strongly encourage you to share your work so that everyone is aware of what’s happening inside HCIL.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|- style="background-color: lightgreen;" |
| 03/07/2019
| colspan="2" | <b>HCIL Spring Cleaning</b><br>Join and help spruce up the HCIL and be a part of a larger conversation of what the lab space should look like. We start at noon (12 pm) and there is free food for anyone who joins!
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| March 6
| 03/14/2019
| '''Megan Monroe'''<br>PhD Student<br/>[http://www.madeyjay.com homepage]
|    
<b>Stories from the HCIL</b>
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
The Talk Talk
Come and tell your favorite stories about the HCIL and the iSchool in this new format that we're trying for the BBL. It's like a casual fireside chat where you get to learn about the rich history of the HCIL from the people who know it best! And there is pizza, of course.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<br>So you have to give a talk, now what? Well, it's probably too late to run, and nobody likes a hider, so your best bet is to just suck it up, and start prepping your talk. But how? What should you do first? What are you even trying to accomplish here? Prepping a talk is not only a daunting prospect, but it's really easy to get lost in the details and lose sight of the big picture. In this brown bag, I'll be laying out that big picture, and providing a step-by-step roadmap of how to get there. The goal is to give rookie talk-givers a better sense of direction as they navigate the shadowy abyss of prepping a talk. I'm also hoping that some of the more experienced talk-givers can chime in with some of their best tips and tricks for building a slammin' talk.<br><br>Megan Monroe is a fifth year PhD student in the Computer Science Department who feels super awkward writing about herself in the third person. That being said, she has given a lot of talks, and is loosely presumed to proficient in this area.
<!-- row end -->
</div></div>
 
<!-- row start -->
|- style="background-color: lightgray;" |
| 03/21/2019
| colspan="2" | No Brown Bag, Spring Break.
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|- style="background-color: lightgreen;" |
| 03/28/2019
| colspan="2" | <b>HCIL Symposium Practice Talks</b><br>All speakers are invited to come rehearse their talk. Please shoot an email to the BBL coordinators and add your name to the schedule: <b>[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17E6g3SgnnNdJIFFnGjkOVDWCETR7DXnBUh29s0kMYnY/edit#gid=0 HERE]</b>.
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|- style="background-color: lightgreen;" |
| 04/04/2019
| colspan="2" | <b>HCIL Symposium In Session</b><br>No BBL, instead we encourage you to join us at the <b>[http://hcil.umd.edu/events/event/hcil-annual-symposium/ HCIL Symposium]</b>.
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| March 13
| 04/11/2019
| cancelled
|    
|  
<b>Wayne Lutters,</b> University of Maryland
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Supporting service work in information infrastructure</b>
<br>
An introduction to Wayne’s lab via a high-level overview of some key historical projects and an active discussion of what we are wrestling with this particular week – representing maps of belief space (w/ Phil Feldman).
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| March 20
| 04/18/2019
|  
|    
| No Brown Bag. Spring Break.
<b>Zheng Yao,</b> Carnegie Mellon University
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Join, Stay or Go? Members’ Life Cycles in Online Health Communities</b>
<br>
This talk discusses temporal changes in members’ participation in online health community (OHC), focusing on their motivations for joining and changes in their motivations as they transition to other roles or ultimately leave the community. We use mixed methods, combining behavioral log analysis, automated content analysis, surveys and interviews. We found that members started participating in OHCs for a common set of reasons, mainly to acquire support and to perform social comparisons. When their need for support decreased, most members quit the site. The motivations of those who stayed shifted to providing support and helping other members in the community. Oldtimers also established social ties with others members, which motivated them to stay in the community. These oldtimers, who contributed the majority of content, encountered challenges that threatened their commitment to the community, including negative emotion related to other members’ deaths. These challenges led them to take leaves of absence from the community or to drop out permanently. Our findings shed light on the changing motivations of OHC members, which provide implications for better designing OHCs.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| March 27
| 04/25/2019
| '''Jessica Vitak'''<br/>Assistant Professor in iSchool<br>HCIL faculty member<br/>[http://jessicavitak.com/ bio]
|    
<b>TBA</b>
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Privacy Management in the Digital Age
<b> Aravind will run a workshop on how to make PDF documents accessible</b>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
While regularly used for interpersonal communication, relationship maintenance, and information sharing, newer communication technologies such as Facebook and Twitter have also created significant tension between individuals’ desire to maintain privacy and to be engaged participants in online communities. Problems arise due to the increasing diversity of users on these sites, a lack of privacy management knowledge and/or skills, and the often-changing privacy standards of the sites themselves. Rather than proactively engaging this complexity, many users employ reactive privacy management strategies—until something bad happens to me, I won’t worry about the information I’m sharing.
<!-- row end -->
Understanding how people conceptualize privacy and how that conceptualization influences behavior is increasingly important in today’s networked world, as individuals—and information—are now connected in more ways than ever before. The affordances of social media distinguish them from other communication channels, both on- and offline, with content being easier to search and archive, while people and content are more highly linked within systems. Thus, the consequences of employing more reactive strategies are far-reaching, with potential impacts on personal relationships, financials, work, and beyond. In this talk, I’ll highlight some of my recent findings on this topic as well as overview my expected research trajectory for the next few years in this very active space.
 
</div></div>
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| April 3
| 05/02/2019
| '''Chris Imbriano'''<br />CS Ph.D. Student<br />Inclusive Design Lab
|    
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Yue Jiang,</b> University of Maryland, College Park
Talk and discussion about GitHub and why the HCIL may want to adopt it.
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>ORC Layout: Adaptive GUI Layout with OR-Constraints</b>
<p>We propose a novel approach for constraint-based graphical user interface (GUI) layout based on OR-constraints (ORC) in standard soft/hard linear constraint systems. ORC layout unifies grid layout and flow layout, supporting both their features as well as cases where grid and flow layouts individually fail. We describe ORC design patterns that enable designers to safely create flexible layouts that work across different screen sizes and orientations. We also present the ORC Editor, a GUI editor that enables designers to apply ORC in a safe and effective manner, mixing grid, flow and new ORC layout features as appropriate. We demonstrate that our prototype can adapt layouts to screens with different aspect ratios with only a single layout specification, easing the burden of GUI maintenance. Finally, we show that ORC specifications can be modified interactively and solved efficiently at runtime.</p>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
In this talk, Chris (and others) will lead a talk and discussion about GitHub. Generally, Chris will give an overview of GitHub and facilitate a discussion about why the HCIL might want to adopt GitHub in some way, perhaps by making an "Organization" entity under which projects can be created and students, faculty, and others in the HCIL can check in their code.
<!-- row end -->
</div></div>
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| April 10
| 05/09/2019
| '''Vanessa Frias-Martinez'''<br>Assistant Professor in iSchool<br/>[http://www.vanessafriasmartinez.org/ bio]
|    
<b>TBA</b>
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
From Digital Footprints to Social Insights
TBA
<br><br><b>Note:</b> CHI 2019 will be in session during this time. Everyone is still invited, but many people might be away for the conference.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
The pervasiveness of cell phones, mobile applications and social media is generating vast amounts of information that can reveal a wide range of human behavior. From mobility patterns to social connections, these signals expose insights about how humans behave and interact with their environment. While a lot of work has focused on analyzing behaviors, relatively little effort has been dedicated to understanding ways in which such findings could be useful to decision makers in areas like smart cities or public health. In this talk I will discuss two projects: (1) AlertImpact, an agent-based framework that uses geo-referenced cell phone data to model the impact of the preventive actions implemented by the Mexican government during the H1N1 flu outbreak and (2) TweetLand, a method to automatically identify urban land uses and landmarks (point of interest) using tweeting patterns.
<!-- row end -->
</div></div>
 
|-
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| April 17
| 05/16/2019
| '''Alex Pompe''' <br> Senior Technical Advisor at IREX
|    
<b>Adil Yalcin,</b> Founder and CEO at Keshif
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Bridging ICT4D lessons from the NGO sector towards academia ([https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2618031/Alex%20Pompe%20UMD%20Presentation.pptx Slides])
<b>It's all about creating new possibilities for people: A journey from the lab to a startup</b>
 
One of the most valuable parts of the DNA of HCIL is its focus on "human", and how our mentors guide us to connect our work with people (users). As a student of this school of thought, I had found my purpose to help the 95% by identifying, questioning, and removing barriers (creating opportunities) in visual analytics. Two years ago, with results baked in lab, and the same driving purpose, I stepped into a world unknown to me: creating, running, and growing a business, one customer at a time.
 
I am back to share some of the surprises, new perspectives, and validations from this journey so far. What I missed can help you realize the opportunities you already have. What I wish I knew may reveal some gaps. And, what remained constant may hint that research in university and what comes after may not be so different after all. I also will touch on the subtle and dynamic balance between your elevator pitch, your audience, the value you provide, and crossing the finish line.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
Abstract: ICT4D professionals in both the academic and NGO areas stand to benefit from greater collaboration, awareness, and transparency of experiences. However, often at conferences both groups are frustrated due to a lack of common understanding and misconceptions. This talk will present a number of case studies from IREX's ICT work in a variety of regions focused on providing open discussion and discourse so that lessons from all development practitioners can be lent towards improving processes on both sides of the table. The talk will also include discussion of internships and job skills in the ICT4D sector from an NGO employer's perspective.
<!-- row end -->
<br> As a Senior Technical Advisor at IREX, Alex Pompe is a lead member of the Center for Collaborative Technology managing the NGO's ICT4D consulting portfolio. Clients come for a range of countries such as Sri Lanka, Malaysia, India, Nepal, Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, and Bhutan. This work focuses on public access to information barriers and community assessment methodologies. He oversees the Libraries for Development program in Namibia, the Tech Age Teachers program in Tunisia, and the New Education Technology program in Kazakhstan. He splits time between the IREX DC and Namibia offices.
 
Alex holds a BS in physics from the University of Illinois, and an MSI from the University of Michigan School of Information. He focused on information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D).
<!-- row start -->
</div></div>
|-
| April 24
| '''Matt Mauriello'''<br>HCI CS Grad Student
| CHI2014 Practice Talk: Social Fabric Fitness
|-
| May 1
|
| No Brown Bag.  CHI 2014 from April 26 to May 1.
|-
|-
| May 8
| 05/23/2019
| '''Michael Gubbels''', Human-Computer Interaction Master's Student<br />'''Jon Gluck''', Computer Science Ph.D. Student<br />'''Kent Wills''', Computer Science Master's Student
|    
<b>TBA</b>
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Introduction to 3D Printing in the HCIL ([https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/18cU3fX03aLDUEKWtyydUESn_zNcT57O-JAUwSWo1yUs/edit?usp=sharing Slides])
TBA
<br><br><b>Note:</b> This slot may be cancelled since it is right at this end of the semester.  
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
Graduate students will lead an interactive discussion of 3D printing and a tutorial on how to use the printers in the Human-Computer Interaction Lab.
<!-- row end -->
 
<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>
<br>
<br>
</div></div>
</div></div>
|}
|}
== Spring 2013 ==


== Fall 2018 Schedule ==
{| class="wikitable" border="1"
{| class="wikitable" border="1"
|-
|-
! Date
! Date
! Leader
! width="150px" | Leader
! Topic
! Topic
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| Jan 24
| 08/30/2018
|  
|    
|  
<b>Student Townhall</b>
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Instead of the regular BBL, there will be an internal HCIL-students-only townhall meeting instead.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
.
<br>
<!-- row end -->
 
</div></div>
 
|-
|-
| Jan 31
| 09/06/2018
| John Gomez
|    
|  
<b>BBL Student Co-coordinators</b>
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Come, network, make introductions, and share what you are working on.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| Feb 7
| 09/13/2018
| Ben Bederson
|    
| Tools for synchronous crowdsourcing
<b>Joel Chan, Tammy Clegg</b><br>
University of Maryland, College Park
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
TBA
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
.
<br>
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| Feb 14
| 09/20/2018
|  
|    
|  
<b>Joel Zhang</b><br>
University of Maryland, College Park
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Research proposal centered around pain tracking and sharing.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
.
<br>
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|- style="background-color: darkgray;" |
| 03/22/2017
| colspan="2" | No Brown Bag, Cancelled.
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| Feb 21
| 10/4/2018
|  
|    
|  
<b>Brian Ondov, Sriram Karthik Badam</b><br>
University of Maryland, College Park
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Brian’s paper talks about Evaluating Visual Comparison and seeks to understand how different encodings of data can drastically affect how we perceive quantities. More information about this project is available at http://hcil.umd.edu/visualcomparison/.
<br> <br>
Karthik’s paper is about a computing platform called Vistrates which seeks to unify the fragmented analytical workflows employed by users to analyze a group of visualizations created in different tools.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
.
<br>
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| Feb 28
| 10/11/2018
| Lisa Anthony (Host: Leah Findlater)
|    
| Gestural Interaction for Children
<b>Polly Lee O'Rourke</b><br>
University of Maryland, College Park
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Improving language learning using brain simulation.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
.
<br>
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| March 7
| 10/18/2018
| Awalin Sopan
|    
| Wrong Patient Selection Problem
<b>Andrea Batch</b><br>
University of Maryland, College Park
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Information Olfactation: Harnessing Scent to Convey Data</b><br>
Olfactory feedback for analytical tasks is a virtually unexplored area in spite of the advantages it offers for information recall, feature identification, and location detection. We have introduced the concept of information olfactation as the fragrant sibling of information visualization, and this talk will cover our theoretical model of how scent can be used to convey data. Building on a review of the human olfactory system and mirroring common visualization practice, we propose olfactory marks, the substrate in which they exist, and their olfactory channels that are available to designers. To exemplify this idea, we present viScent: A six-scent stereo olfactory display capable of conveying olfactory glyphs of varying temperature and direction, as well as a corresponding software system that integrates the display with a traditional visualization display, along with three applications that make use of the viScent system.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
.
<br>
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| March 14
| 10/25/2018
| Michael Smith-Welch? (Host Jon Froehlich)
|    
| Kids, Programming, and Makerspaces
<b>Student Townhall</b>
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Research speed-dating
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
.
<br>
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| March 21
| 11/01/2018
| Spring Break (No BBL)
|    
|
<b>Joohee Choi</b> <br>
University of Maryland, College Park
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Will Too Many Editors Spoil The Tag? Conflicts and Alignment in Q&A Categorization (CSCW Practice Talk)
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
.
<br>
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| March 28
| 11/08/2018
|  
|    
|  
<b>Alina Striner</b> <br>
University of Maryland, College Park
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Learning in the Holodeck: the Role of Multisensory Cues on Pattern Recognition in VR</b><br>
Designing for multiple senses has the capacity to improve virtual realism, extend our ability to process information, and more easily transfer knowledge between physical and digital environments. HCI researchers are beginning to explore the viability of integrating multisensory media (“multimedia”) into virtual experiences, however research has yet to consider whether mulsemedia truly enhances pattern recognition in virtual reality (VR). In the context of citizen science watershed habitat training, our research asks, how does realism affect observation skills in VR? Within this domain, we build a multisensory system that allows users to feel (wind, thermal, humidity) and smell landscape and environmental conditions. We then compare and report on how users make observations and infer patterns between 2 stream habitats in VR, with and without the multisensory information. Our findings reveal that multisensory information improved the number of high-level, mid-level and low-level observations participants made, and positively impacted engagement and immersion.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
.
<br>
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| April 4
| 11/15/2018
| Ben Bederson, Jon Froehlich, Leah Findlater
|    
| HCIL Discussion: Activities, BBL, email lists, etc.
<b>Student Townhall</b>
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
Research speed dating.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
.
<br>
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|- style="background-color: darkgray;" |
| 03/22/2017
| colspan="2" | No Brown Bag, Thanksgiving Break.
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| April 11
| 11/29/2018
| Urah Oh, Anne Bowser
|    
| CHI Practice Talks: (1) Urah Oh (full paper) and (2) Anne Bowser (full paper)
<b>Lelani Battle</b><br>
University of Maryland, College Park
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
A Characterization Study of Exploratory Analysis Behaviors in Tableau <br>
Exploratory visual analysis (EVA) is an interactive process comprising both focused tasks and more open-ended exploration. Visual analysis tools aim to facilitate this process by enabling rapid specification of both data transformations and visualizations, using a combination of direct manipulation and automated design. With a better understanding of users’ analysis behavior, we might improve the design of these visualization tools to promote effective outcomes. <br>
 
In this talk, I will present our recent work on characterizing the EVA process. We contribute a consistent definition of EVA through review of the relevant literature, and an empirical evaluation of existing assumptions regarding how analysts perform EVA. We present the results of a study where 27 Tableau users answered various analysis questions across 3 datasets. We measure task performance, identify recurring patterns across participants’ analyses, and assess variance from task specificity and dataset. We find striking differences between existing assumptions and the collected data. Participants successfully completed a variety of tasks, with over 80% accuracy across focused tasks with measurably correct answers. The observed cadence of analyses is surprisingly slow compared to popular assumptions from the database community. We find significant overlap in analyses across participants, showing that EVA behaviors can be predictable. Furthermore, we find few structural differences between open-ended and more focused analysis tasks. Finally, I will discuss the implications of our findings for the design of effective data analytics systems, and highlight several promising directions for future study.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
.
<br>
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| April 18
| 12/06/2018
| Megan Monroe, Kotaro Hara
|    
| CHI Practice Talks: (1) Megan Monroe (full paper) and (2) Kotaro Hara (full paper)
<b>Student Townhall</b>
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
TBA
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
.
<br>
<!-- row end -->
 
<!-- row start -->
|-
|-
| April 25
| 12/13/2018
|  
|    
|
<b>Cookie Exchange</b>
|-
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| May 2
We encourage you to make/buy cookies (or some related treat) and create individual bags (about six cookies in each bag, and about 4-6 bags). Then bring them in labeled on 12/13 and you can pick bags from other people to take home or eat on the spot. However, you do not need to make cookies to attend! All are welcome to come and hang out.
| CHI 2013 (No BBL)
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
|
.
|-
<br>
| May 9
<!-- row end -->
|
 
|
<br>
<br>
<b>
<br>
<br>
</div></div>
 
 
|}
|}


== Fall 2013 ==
== Spring 2018 Schedule ==
 
{| class="wikitable" border="1"
{| class="wikitable" border="1"
|-
|-
! Date style="width: 80px;" |
! Date
! Who
! width="150px" | Leader
! Type
! Topic
! Topic
|- style="background-color: darkgray;" |
 
| Th, Sept 5
| colspan="3" | No Brown Bag. Rosh Hashanah.
|-
|-
| Th, Sept 12
| 01/25/2018
| '''Jon Froehlich'''<br/>Assistant Professor in CS and HCIL faculty member<br/>http://www.cs.umd.edu/~jonf/
|   
| Talk/Discussion
Kickoff to a new Semester!
| HCIL Hackerspace
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Come, network, make introductions, and share what you are working on</b>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
Please come to our first BBL of the Spring 2018 semester to introduce yourself and share what you're working on in the coming semester. The first BBL will be for us to network with each other and kickoff a great new semester.
<br>
</div></div>
 
|-
|-
| Th, Sept 19
| 02/01/2018
| '''HCIL/HCI Graduate Students''' facilitated by Michael Gubbels and Tak Yeon Lee
|    
| Talk/Discussion
'''Bahador Saket'''
|  
<br> Georgia Tech, Atlanta
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
The goal of this session is to provide several students at various points in their academic programs
<b>Visualization by Demonstration</b>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
, but especially new students, with a chance to talk about (1) their interests, (2) the projects to which they've contributed, and (3) those they'd like to do. Our hope is that this will allow new students to introduce themselves and convey their interests in a way that helps them find others with shared interests and form working relationships on projects with professors and other students. Students will have 5–8 minutes to introduce themselves and their interests, their previous and current projects, skills and expertise, and their future interests in HCI and the HCIL. Hopefully, this will help new students connect with professors and other students with whom they share interests and can work together on research projects. Following talks will be about 10 minutes for discussion with the presenting students (perhaps for asking them to join a project team).
<b>Abstract:</b> A commonly used interaction paradigm in most visualization tools is manual view specification. Tools implementing manual view specification often require users to manually specify visual properties through GUI operations on collections of visual properties and data attributes that are presented visually on control panels. To interact with tools implementing manual view specification users need to understand the potentially complex system parameters being controlled. Additionally, in such tools, users need to constantly shift their attention from the visual features of interest when interacting.
 
In this talk, I present an alternative interaction paradigm for visualization construction and data exploration called visualization by demonstration. This paradigm advocates for a different process of visualization construction. I will also discuss the trade-offs between these interaction paradigms based on the data collected from an empirical study. I will then discuss applications of the "by demonstration’" paradigm in other areas in data visualization.
<br>
<br>
<b>Bio:</b> Bahador Saket is a third-year Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech, where he works with Dr. Alex Endert. His current research focuses on the design of interaction techniques for visualization construction and visual data exploration. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Bahador worked at different research labs including Microsoft Research, CNS Research Center, and NUS-HCI Lab. He has published over 12 peer-reviewed articles in the leading journals and conferences in the field of human-computer interaction and data visualization such as IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), Computer Graphics Forum, CSCW, UIST, and MobileHCI.  
<br>
<br>
</div></div>
</div></div>
|-
|-
| <span style='color:red'>Wed, Sept 25</span>
| 02/08/2018
| '''Jonathan Donner'''
|    
| External Speaker
'''Elissa Redmiles'''
|
<br> University of Maryland, College Park
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Dancing Pigs or Security? Measuring the Rationality of End-User Security Behavior</b>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<b>Abstract:</b> Accurately modeling human decision-making in security is critical to think about when, why, and how to recommend that users adopt certain secure behaviors. We used behavioral economics experiments to model the rationality of end-user security decision-making in a realistic online experimental system simulating a bank account. We ask participants to make a financially impactful security choice, in the face of transparent risks of account compromise and benefits offered by an optional security behavior (two-factor authentication). We find that more than 50% of our participants made rational (e.g., utility optimal) decisions, and we find that participants are more likely to behave rationally in the face of higher risk. Additionally, we confirm that users are boundedly rational: they make decisions based on some risks and context, but not others, and we can model their behavior well as a function of these factors. Finally, we show that a “one-size-fits-all” emphasis on security can lead to market losses, but that adoption by a subset of users with higher risks or lower costs can lead to market gains.
<br>
<b>Bio:</b> Elissa Redmiles is a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland in Computer Science. Her research focuses on using computational and social science methodologies to understand and improve users' privacy and security learning processes, behavior, and perceptions. She is the recipient of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a National Science Defense and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, and a Facebook Fellowship. Prior to pursuing her Ph.D., Elissa held Marketing Management and Software Engineering roles at IBM and was a Data Science for Social Good Fellow at the University of Chicago.
<br>
</div></div>
 


<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
|-
Everybody’s internet? :Designing for mobile-centric internet users in the developing world
| 02/15/2018
|   
'''Erin Peters-Burton'''
<br> George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Building Student Self-Awareness of Learning to Enhance Diversity in the Sciences</b>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
Within 5 years, wireless broadband services will cover 85% of the world’s population,  
<b>Abstract:</b> Many students are being left out of pursuing further studies in science because the current system of science education values students who learn via completion in an isolated, rather than collaborative way (Tobias, 1990). The stereotype of students who excel in science tend to be the ones who can conform to the institutional structure where the teacher is the sole source of knowledge (Friere, 2000). Through the idea of “Education as the Practice of Freedom” (hooks, 1994), the presentation will explain investigations that explore tangible ways to break down that stereotype. This research begins with the assumption that if teachers taught the ways science operates as a discipline, then students gain more power to construct their own scientific knowledge because they understand the “rules” of knowledge validation (Duschl, 1990). Learning how scientific knowledge is constructed and being self-aware of one’s own learning in science can help level the playing field so that students can do inquiry well (NRC, 1996; AAAS, 1993) and the science classroom will be a more inclusive, positive environment rather than relying on isolated competition for teaching. In this presentation, I will present an overview of research I have done over the past 10 years that focuses on helping students to become self-aware of their learning in science and how scientific knowledge is constructed. The work involves 8th grade students, undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals. The studies include constructs such as self-efficacy, motivation, metacognition, self-regulated learning, and visualization. Findings of the studies are synthesized into self-awareness priorities and how those constructs will ultimately impact social justice by providing more opportunities to see alternative perspectives and learn the “rules” of knowledge validation in science. As a result, students develop a sense of agency and an identity where anything is possible because they can learn independently in any situation.
and data-enabled mobile (cellular) devices will outnumber personal computers and
<br>
tablets. This talk, taken from a book in preparation, details the growing importance
<b>Bio:</b> Erin E. Peters-Burton is the Donna R. and David E. Sterling Endowed Professor in the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University. She has a B.S. in Physics from the University of Illinois, a M.Ed. in Educational Psychology and Social Foundations of Education from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. from George Mason University (VA) in Educational Psychology and Educational Research Methods.
of ‘mobile-centric internet use’ in the developing world, raising questions and  
She has taught middle school and high school science and mathematics for 15 years prior to her academic work and was a National Board Certified Teacher in Early Adolescence Science.  
challenges for design.
She has published in science education, teacher education, educational psychology, marine biology, geology education, history and philosophy of science, technology, educational leadership, and learning disability journals. Her book, Thinking Like Scientists: Using Metacognitive Prompts to Develop Nature of Science Knowledge, and her edited book, The STEM Road Map: A Framework for Integrated STEM Education have led to the curriculum series books from the National Science Teacher Association entitled, STEM Road Map for Elementary School, STEM Road Map for Middle School, and STEM Road Map for High School.
A breathlessly optimistic narrative has proclaimed the mobile phone the device
In 2016 she was awarded the Association of Science Teacher Educators Outstanding Science Teacher of the Year in recognition of her work with the professional development of secondary science teachers.
which will finally close the ‘digital divide’, but the digital world does not run
<br>
exclusively on mobile handsets. To guide policy and technical investments in
<br>
socioeconomic development— I argue that it is better to reframe and view the
mobile handset as one piece of a person’s digital repertoire, which also might include  
PCs, telecentres, TVs, tablets, and other devices.  
In the talk and in the book I revisit some of my previous studies in three domains of  
socioeconomic development: microenterprises and livelihoods, citizen journalism,
and secondary education. Across each, I celebrate the transformational potential of  
the mobile phone. Yet, in each case, I use the “digital repertoires” lens to raise
concerns, identifying how the capacity to generate, produce, and curate information
may remain concentrated among those with better resources to secure digital tools,
and the skills and incentives to use them. The person with $30 basic data-enabled
phone and the person with a smartphone and a state-of-the-art $1000 desktop
computer both can connect to the internet; however, it is not the same internet.
Yet these persistent digital stratifications can be reduced if technologists,  
researchers, practitioners, and policymakers work to ensure that constrained digital
repertoires enable not only coordination and consumption (which phones already do
well), but also contribution (which they do less well). From natural user interfaces to
language support to bandwidth pricing, there are concrete ways in which more
empathetic design and policy can help a greater proportion of the world’s
inhabitants be more productive with their ICTs.
</div></div>
</div></div>
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
 
Jonathan Donner - Researcher, Technology for Emerging Markets, Microsoft Research
 
|-
| 02/22/2018
|   
'''Norman Su'''
<br> Indiana University
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>The Problem of Designing for Subcultures</b>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
Jonathan Donner is a researcher in the Technology for Emerging
<b>Abstract:</b> Members of subcultures speak about and act with pervasive technologies in service to their distinct traditions. I will describe how outwardly subcultures maintain a unified front, yet inwardly are rich sites for compromise and confrontation over technology. I will highlight findings from work we have done with subcultures and, in particular, my own fieldwork with Irish traditional musicians. I will close by describing new design opportunities for technologies that acknowledge the remarkable solidarity and discord of subcultures.
Markets Group (TEM) at Microsoft Research. For the last decade,  
<br>
Jonathan has published research on the remarkable growth in mobile
<b>Bio:</b> Norman Makoto Su is an Assistant Professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington. His research interests lie in human–computer interaction (HCI) and computer–supported cooperative work (CSCW). His Authentic User Experience (AUX) lab characterizes the relationship of technology with subcultures and designs systems to support their notion of authenticity. He received his Ph.D. in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine and a B.A. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Information and Library Studies at University College Dublin, Ireland. He has done internships at IBM, The Aerospace Corporation, and PARC.
telephony in the developing world, focusing on its implications for  
<br>
socioeconomic development and inclusion in the informational
society, as well as its uses in everyday life. His projects at TEM include
Microenterprise Development, Mobile Banking, Citizen Journalism,
Mobile Health, and Youth and New Media. His research provides rare
perspective on design and mobile HCI issues for those who want to
build applications for the fastest growing group of internet users in the
world: “mobile centric” internet users.  
Prior to Joining Microsoft Research, he was a Post-Doctoral Research
Fellow at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and worked with
Monitor Company and the OTF Group, consultancies in Boston, MA. He
is the author, with Richard Ling, of Mobile Communication (Polity,
2009), and co-editor, with Patricia Mechael, of mHealth in Practice:
Mobile Technology for Health Promotion in the Developing world
(Bloomsbury Academic, 2012). His research also appears in the Journal
of Computer-Mediated Communication, The Information Society,
Information Technologies and International Development, The Journal of  
International Development, and Innovations: Technology, Governance,
Globalization. His Ph.D. is from Stanford University in Communication
Research.
Jonathan is based in South Africa and is a visiting academic at the  
University of Cape Town’s Centre in ICT4D. He is currently working on a  
new book, provisionally titled After Access: Mobile Internet in the  
Developing World. Further details on Jonathan’s research are at  
www.jonathandonner.com and via twitter as @jcdonner
</div></div>
</div></div>
|-
|-
| Th, Oct 3
| 03/01/2018
| '''Ed Cutrell'''
|    
| External Speaker
'''Ya-Wei Li'''
|  
<br> Center for Conservation Innovation, Defenders of Wildlife
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"> Technology for Emerging Markets (TEM) group at Microsoft Research
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Using Data and Technology to Save Endangered Species.</b>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
The Technology for Emerging Markets (TEM) group at Microsoft Research India seeks to address the needs and aspirations of people in the world's developing communities. Our research targets people who are just beginning to use computing technologies and services as well as those for whom access to computing still remains largely out of reach. Most of our work falls under the rubric of the relatively young field of Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD or ICT4D). By combining a variety of backgrounds and training, we are able to engage deeply with some of the complex problems associated with poverty and scarce resources. Our goal is to study, design, build, and evaluate technologies and systems that are useful for people living in underserved rural and urban communities around the world. In this talk, I will give an overview of some of the recent work in the group, focusing on projects that explore modalities and interactions specifically designed for the unique contexts and users we’re working with:<br>
<b>Abstract: </b>We will discuss how Defenders of Wildlife, a nonprofit wildlife conservation organization, is expanding its use of technology and data analytics to conserve endangered species. We will summarize our projects involving remote-sensing data to monitor wildlife habitat and compliance with conservation agreements; data mining of federal government decisions to build the largest public repository of text-searchable documents on the U.S. Endangered Species Act; natural language processing of those documents to improve public understanding of how our government conserves endangered species; use of data visualization tools to reveal patterns in large datasets; and other initiatives. We invite the audience to actively engage with us about how we can improve our work and offer ideas for future projects and potential collaborations.
1) VideoKheti: A prototype multimodal system to help low-literate farmers search for agricultural extension videos on smart phones.<br>
<br><br>  
2) IVR Junction: A platform for building scalable and distributed voice forums for users with low-end phones.<br>
<b>Bio: </b>Ya-Wei (Jake) specializes in endangered species law, policy, and science.  He leads the Center for Conservation Innovation at Defenders of Wildlife, which focuses on developing innovative and pragmatic strategies to conserve endangered and at-risk species.  Before joining Defenders in 2010, Jake practiced environmental law in the private sector.  Jake holds a B.S. from Drexel University and a J.D. from Cornell University Law School.  At Cornell, Jake also completed graduate coursework in conservation biology and herpetology.
3) Massively Empowered Classrooms (MEC): A project to explore how innovations in MOOCs and blended learning can be applied to second-tier, large-scale engineering education in India.<br>
<br><br>
4) Maybe something else, depending on the interests of the audience<br><br>
Jacob works on linking science to Endangered Species Act policy. He works with others inside and outside of Defenders to make ESA-related data available and easily interpretable, so that policy makers and the public can make informed decisions about conservation. Before joining Defenders, Jacob was a postdoctoral fellow at University of Connecticut, and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2013. From 2000-2008, Jacob was a field biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in New Mexico and Arizona, during which time he completed his Bachelor's degree in Conservation Ecology at Prescott College.
Bio: <br>
Ed Cutrell manages the Technology for Emerging Markets (TEM) group at Microsoft Research India. Ed has been working in the field of human-computer interaction since 2000, studying everything from novel interaction techniques to interfaces for search and information retrieval. His current research focuses on Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D). The goal of this work is to understand how people in the world's poor and developing communities interact with information technologies and to invent new ways for technology to meet their needs and aspirations. He is trained in cognitive neuropsychology, with a PhD from the University of Oregon.
http://research.microsoft.com/~cutrell
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/tem/
</div></div>
</div></div>
|-
|-
| Th, Oct 10
| 03/08/2018
| '''Marshini Chetty'''<br/>Assistant Professor in iSchool and HCIL faculty member<br/>http://marshini.net
|    
| Talk
'''Deok Gun Park'''
|  
<br> University of Maryland, College Park
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"> HCI and Networking - Taming the Internet One Bit at a Time
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Thinking, Autism and AGI</b>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
Abstract:<br>
As we become more dependent on high speed Internet, we increasingly have to deal with making sure our devices are connected properly, that we're getting the speeds we need, and that we're making efficient use of our data. Yet often, Internet connections break or do not work as planned, causing us endless headaches. We also have to juggle constraints such as slow speeds, limited bandwidth, and high data costs depending on our location and use. My research focuses on helping users manage Internet connectivity in their homes, the workplace, and on the go, particularly under constraints of low resources and high costs. In this talk, I'll go over how I use HCI and networking to reach the goal of taming the Internet for everyday users and talk about future directions.
<br>
<br>
Bio:<br>
<b>Abstract:</b> Despite recent advances in deep learning, we do not know yet how we can combine these application-specific models to build an artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Marshini Chetty is an Assistant Professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland specializing in human computer interaction and ubiquitous computing. Marshini's research focuses on making information about infrastructure technologies more readily available to everyday users to help them manage complex systems such as broadband networks. She has a Ph.D. in Human-Centered Computing from Georgia Institute of Technology, USA and a Masters and Bachelors in Computer Science from University of Cape Town, South Africa. Prior to joining the iSchool, she completed post-doctoral fellowships at ResearchICTAfrica assessing the quality of broadband in South Africa and Georgia Institute of Technology in the College of Computing creating novel home networking tools. She has completed internships at technology giants IBM Research in New York, and with Microsoft Research in Seattle, Cambridge, U.K., and Cape Town. Her awards include a Fulbright Scholarship, a Google Anita Borg Scholarship, and an Intel PhD fellowship during her graduate career. Marshini’s work has also been featured in popular technology blogs, notably Slashdot, Ars Technical, Network World, and BoingBoing!
Furthermore, the data is becoming the bottleneck to scale these approaches for the multiple tasks.  In this talk, I propose a theory of the thinking and a neural algorithm that can bootstrap intelligence with limited computational resources and data.  This neural algorithm approximates the O(n3) parameter space of the thinking theory into the O(1) parameters to make learning tractable for the biological intelligent agents. I will explain this proposal by cognitive phenomenons that are observed in a human, such as infant language acquisition, visual and verbal thinking, personality, creativity, exploit-exploration trade off, dreaming, one-shot learning, abstract language.
</div>
<br><br>
</div>
<b>Bio:</b> Deokgun Park is a Ph.D. candidate in the HCILab of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, College Park, being advised by Prof. Niklas Elmqvist. His research focuses on the computational methods for open-ended tasks. He completed M.S. in Interdisciplinary Engineering at Purdue University and M.S. in Biomedical Engineering at Seoul National University, where he obtained B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering at Seoul National University. He worked at the government research institute, industry research labs, and startups. He has published and licensed his patents to companies including Samsung Electronics.
</div></div>


|-
| 03/15/2018
|   
'''Clemens Klokmose'''
<br> Aarhus University, Denmark
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Shareable Dynamic Media: A revisit of the fundamentals of interactive computing</b>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<b>Abstract:</b> Developing interactive systems that support collaboration between people, distribution across heterogeneous devices and user appropriation is notoriously difficult. Today’s software rests on a foundation built for personal computing, and to properly support the aforementioned qualities we need to revisit this foundation. In this talk, I will present you with a vision called Shareable Dynamic Media, inspired by Alan Kay’s seminal vision of Personal Dynamic Media. I will present a prototype implementation of the vision called Webstrates, and demonstrate how it enables the development of software where distribution across devices, collaboration between people, and malleability and reprogrammability are the norm rather than the exception. I will show our latest project, Codestrates, that combines Webstrates with the literate computing approach of interactive notebooks.
<br><br>
<b>Bio:</b> Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose is an associate professor in the development of advanced interactive systems at the Department of Digital Design and Information Studies, at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University. He co-directs the Digital Creativity Lab that is part of the Center for Advanced Visualisation and Interaction (CAVI). Clemens has worked as a postdoc at Computer Science, Aarhus University and at Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique, Université Paris-Sud. He has furthermore spent a year as a user interface specialist in the industry. Clemens received his PhD in Computer Science in 2009 from Aarhus University supervised by prof. Susanne Bødker. Clemens’ main interest is the fundamentals of interactive computing, particularly to support and understanding computing with multiple devices and multiple people. Many of his ideas are crystallised into the Webstrates platform (webstrates.net), which he leads the development of.
</div></div>


|- style="background-color: darkgray;" |
| 03/22/2017
| colspan="2" | No Brown Bag, Spring Break.


|-
|-
| Th, Oct 17
| 03/29/2018
| '''Kotaro Hara'''<br/>CS PhD Student<br/>http://kotarohara.com/<br/><br/>'''Uran Oh'''<br/>CS PhD Student<br/>
|  
| [http://www.sigaccess.org/assets13/ ASSETS'13] Practice Talks
'''Wei Bai'''
| Talk 1: ''Improving Public Transit Accessibility for Blind Riders by Crowdsourcing Bus Stop Landmark Locations With Google Street View''<br/><br/>Talk 2: ''Follow That Sound: Using Sonification and Corrective Verbal Feedback to Teach Touchscreen Gestures''
<br> University of Maryland, College Park
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Understanding User Tradeoffs for Search in Encrypted Communication</b>
<br>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
Abstract: End-to-end message encryption is the only way to achieve absolute message privacy. However, searching over
end-to-end encrypted messages is complicated. Several popular instant messaging tools (e.g., WhatsApp, iMessage) circumvent this inconvenience by storing the search index locally on the devices. Another approach, called searchable encryption, allows users to search encrypted messages without storing the search index locally. These approaches have inherent tradeoffs between usability and security properties, yet little is known about how general users value these tradeoffs, especially in the context of email rather than instant messaging. In this paper, we systematize these tradeoffs in order to identify key feature differences. We use these differences as the basis for a choice-based conjoint analysis experiment focused on email (n=160), in which participants make a series of choices between email services with competing features. The results allow us to quantify the relative importance of each feature. We find that users indicate high relative importance for increasing privacy and minimizing local storage requirements. While privacy is more important overall, local storage is more important than adding additional marginal privacy after an initial improvement. These results suggest that local indexing, which provides more privacy, may often be appropriate for encrypted email, but that searchable encryption, which limits local storage, may also hold promise for some users.
<br><br>
Bio: Wei Bai is a PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, advised by Prof. Michelle L. Mazurek. His research interests include network security and privacy with an emphasis on human factors, and his dissertation is about user perceptions of and attitudes toward encrypted communication. He obtained his MS in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Maryland. Contact him at wbai@umd.edu.
</div></div>
 
|-
|-
| Th, Oct 24
| 04/05/2018
| '''Makeability Lab'''<br/>Jon Froehlich's research group in the HCIL
|  
| Discussion
'''Eun-Kyoung Choe'''
| Reflective discussion of experience exhibiting projects at [http://makerfairesilverspring.com/ Silver Spring Mini-Maker Faire].
<br> University of Maryland, College Park
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Designing A Flexible Personal Data Tracking Tool</b>
<br>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<b>Abstract:</b> We now see an increasing number of self-tracking apps and wearable devices. Despite the vast number of available tools, however, it is still challenging for self-trackers to find apps that suit their unique tracking needs, preferences, and commitments. In this talk, I will present OmniTrack, a mobile self-tracking system, which enables self-trackers to construct their own trackers and customize tracking items to meet their individual tracking needs. OmniTrack leverages a semi-automated tracking approach that combines manual and automated tracking methods. From a deployment study, we showed how participants used OmniTrack to create, revise, and appropriate trackers—ranging from a simple mood tracker to a sophisticated daily activity tracker. I will discuss how to further improve OmniTrack by incorporating multimodal interactions, providing more appropriate visualizations on a mobile device, and supporting researchers' unique data collection needs.
<br><br>
<b>Bio:</b> Eun Kyoung Choe (http://eunkyoungchoe.com) is an Assistant Professor in the College of Information Studies at University of Maryland, College Park. Her primary research areas are in the fields of Human-Computer Interaction and Health Informatics. She examines the design and evaluation of personal informatics tools to empower individuals—including patients, caregivers, clinicians, and those who wish to engage in self-tracking—to make positive behavior changes through fully leveraging their personal data. She explores this topic in various contexts, including sleep and productivity, patient-clinician communication and data sharing, and personal data insights and visualization. Her past and current research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Microsoft Research, and the Google Anita Borg Scholarship. She received her PhD in Information Science from University of Washington, MS in Information Management and Systems from University of California, Berkeley, and BS in Industrial Design from KAIST, Korea.
</div></div>
 
|-
|-
| Th, Oct 31
| 04/12/2018
| '''Jen Golbeck'''<br/>Associate Professor in the College of Information Studies, Affiliate Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department, Affiliate in the Center for the Advanced Study of Language, and HCIL Director<br/>http://www.cs.umd.edu/~golbeck/
|    
| Work In Progress Discussion
'''CHI practice talks'''
| HCI and Cybersecurity
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Combining smartwatches with large displays for visual data exploration by Karthik Badam and Tom Horak</b>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
TBD
<br>
</div></div>
 
|-
|-
| Th, Nov 7
| 04/19/2018
| '''Bryan Sivak'''<br/>Chief Technology Officer at U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
|    
| External Speaker
'''Hernisa Kacorri'''
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"> Bryan Sivak's bio
<br> University of Maryland, College Park
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Accessibility and Assistive Technologies at the Intersection of Users and Data</b>
<br>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
Bryan Sivak joined HHS as the Chief Technology Officer in July 2011. In this role, he is responsible for helping HHS leadership harness the power of data, technology, and innovation to improve the health and welfare of the nation. Previously, Bryan served as the Chief Innovation Officer to Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, where he has led Maryland’s efforts to embed concepts of innovation into the DNA of state government. He has distinguished himself in this role as someone who can work creatively across a large government organization to identify and implement the best opportunities for improving the way the government works. Prior to his time with Governor O’Malley, Bryan served as Chief Technology Officer for the District of Columbia, where he created a technology infrastructure that enhanced communication between the District’s residents and their government, and implemented organizational reforms that improved efficiency, program controls, and customer service. Bryan previously worked in the private sector, co-founding InQuira, Inc., a multi-national software company, in 2002, and Electric Knowledge LLC, which provided one of the world's first Natural Language Search engines available on the web in 1998.
<b>Abstract</b>: Advances in artificial intelligence enable us to address key social issues. However, to see the benefit of this technology in many real-world applications, an integrative approach is necessary; effective solutions consist of a pipeline of processes or tasks involving both humans and machines. My research has integrated human computer interaction (HCI) techniques and data-driven methods applied to human data to steer technological innovations for people with visual impairments and for people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. In this talk, I will provide an overview of my research program, and I will demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating machine learning and HCI methodologies with two concrete examples: i) teachable object recognizers trained by blind users, and ii) facial expression synthesis in sign language animations.  
</div>
<br><br>
</div>
<b>Bio</b>: Hernisa Kacorri is an Assistant Professor in the College of Information Studies and holds an affiliate appointment in the Computer Science and the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at University of Maryland, College Park. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2016 from The Graduate Center at City University of New York, and has conducted research at National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, IBM Research-Tokyo, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on data-driven technologies that address human challenges, faced due to health or disability, with an emphasis on rigorous, user-based experimental methodologies to assess impact. Hernisa is a recipient of a Mina Rees Dissertation Fellowship in the Sciences, an ACM ASSETS best paper finalist, and an CHI honorable mention award. She has been recognized by the Rising Stars in EECS program of CMU/MIT.
</div></div>


|-
| 04/26/2018
|   
'''Chi-Young Oh'''
<br> University of Maryland, College Park
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Small Worlds in a Distant Land: International Newcomer Students' Local Information Behavior in Unfamiliar Environments</b>
<br>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<b>Abstract</b>: International students are a rapidly growing sub-population of students, and the United States, as a top destination, has hosted students from 218 different countries. However, as with other international newcomers, these students face various types of challenges in a new country. Studies have reported the challenges this population faces in regard to cultures, academic systems, and general adjustments, but research is less clear about the challenges they face in terms of information behaviors during adjustment to a new country. This study addresses the information behaviors of international newcomer students in the context of adjustment to new local environments; that is, their local information behavior (LIB). Specifically, drawing on prior work and theories, this research conceptualizes the idea of "socio-national context," the degree to which there are individuals from the same country available in one's local environment, as a factor influencing international newcomer students’ information behavior. Through the findings from this longitudinal mixed-method study of international and U.S. graduate students in different socio-national contexts, it is argued that information behavior theories and models need to account for people's socio-national contexts if they are to inform research involving international newcomer students and provide insights on designing systems and services for all international newcomer students, especially those from countries that tend to be less well-represented among international students in a host country.
<br><br>
<b>Bio</b>: Chi Young Oh is a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park's College of Information Studies. His areas of research span information behavior, human-computer interaction, health informatics, and community informatics, and his dissertation research examines international newcomer students' information behaviors during adjustment to a host country. Chi Young holds an MS in Information Science (with a concentration in Human-Computer Interaction) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as a BA in Psychology, a BA in Library and Information Science, and a BBA in Business Administration from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. Prior to joining University of Maryland, he was a user experience researcher in the UX Lab of internet search portal Daum in South Korea and a new product planner and assistant marketing manager at LG Electronics.
</div></div>




|-
|-
| Th, Nov 14
| 05/03/2018
| '''Erica Estrada''' <br>Lecturer, Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship<br>
|    
(Tammy Clegg, contact)
'''Amanda Lazar'''
|External Speaker/Design Charette
<br> University of Maryland, College Park
| Design Thinking
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>Rethinking technology for dementia</b>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<b>Abstract</b>: As the population ages, research is increasingly focused on conditions associated with growing older, such as cognitive and physical impairment. Technology is often presented as a solution for managing or treating these changes. This framing can position health conditions as problems to address through design and can neglect the complexity and positive aspects of older adulthood. In this talk, I draw on critical perspectives from Human-Computer Interaction and Gerontology. I describe ways in which technology can help us understand and challenge stereotypes around aging as well as cognitive impairment, and my ongoing and future work in this area. I will argue for a view of aging that takes into account the ways that technologies position older individuals and, in turn, the way that this view can inform the design of new technologies to enrich the experience of growing older.
<br><br>
<b>Bio</b>: Amanda Lazar is an Assistant Professor in the College of Information studies at the University of
Maryland, College Park. Her research is in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction and Health
Informatics. She studies how technologies designed for health and wellbeing position and support
marginalized populations. She received her PhD from the University of Washington in the Biomedical and Health Informatics program and her undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of California, San Diego.
</div></div>
 
 
|-
|-
| Th, Nov 21
| 05/10/2018
| '''June Ahn'''<br/>Assistant Professor in the College of Information Studies and College of Education (joint appointment), and HCIL faculty member<br/>http://www.ahnjune.com/
|    
| Work In Progress Discussion
'''Joel Chan'''
| Video Games, Blended Learning, and Large-scale Education Reform
<br> University of Maryland, College Park
|- style="background-color: darkgray;" |
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
| Th, Nov 28
<b>Back to the Future: How people construct new creative ideas from old knowledge, and how technology can help</b>
| colspan="3" | No Brown Bag. Happy Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<b>Abstract:</b> Where do good ideas come from? One answer is that they come from prior knowledge: for example, Thomas Edison leveraged his knowledge of phonographs to “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. Yet, much research on human creativity demonstrates that prior knowledge often constrains creativity. How do people construct new creative ideas from old knowledge? And (how) can technology help? In the first part of my talk, I will summarize empirical work I have done that advances theories of the conditions under which people successfully construct new creative ideas from prior knowledge. This empirical work shows that prior knowledge can inspire creativity when it is analogically related to the current problem. This insight informs the ongoing work I will discuss in the second part of my talk: developing information technologies that combine human and machine intelligence to more effectively support analogical reasoning over prior knowledge.
<br><br>
<b>Bio: </b>Joel Chan is an Assistant Professor in the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies (iSchool), and Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL). His research and teaching focus on the intersection of people, information, and creativity. He wants to know how they (can best) combine to enable us to design the future(s) we want to live in. His work has been recognized with a Best Paper Award at the ASME Design Theory and Methodology conference, the Design Studies Award 2015, and supported by an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Project Scientist in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his PhD in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh.
</div></div>
 
 
|-
|-
| Th, Dec 5
| 05/17/2018
| '''Shannon Collis'''<br/>Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Maryland<br/>http://shannoncollis.ca/
|    
| Talk/Discussion
'''Rachel Kramer'''
|  
<br> World Wildlife Fund
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">Discussion of creative work in digital media and computational arts.
| <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<b>WILDLABS.NET: the conservation technology network</b>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
Shannon Collis is a Canadian artist currently residing in Baltimore, MD. A graduate of the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Collis is also completing research at Concordia University in Montreal in the area of Digital Media and Computation Arts (Fall 2013). Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Maryland, where she teaches Digital Foundations and Print Media. Her studio practice focuses on creating installations and interactive environments that explore various ways in which digital technologies can transform our perception of audio and visual stimuli. Her work has been exhibited across North America as well as in Europe, Asia and Australia.
<b>Abstract: </b> WILDLABS.NET: the conservation technology network is a collaboration across organizations that provides online infrastructure to connect wildlife conservationists directly to technologists to support the informed integration of technology tools in conservation practice. Since 2015, WILDLABS has evolved into a thriving online community of over 2,300 experts around the globe who crowd-source ideas and information, share case studies and co-develop solutions to pressing conservation and research challenges. WILDLABS community members range from academics to tech sector professionals, NGO staff, field-based practitioners and makers. On our platform, ideas are shared in over 25 technology and conservation challenge-specific groups with over 450 active discussion threads. The community is also a hub for posting grant and job opportunities to enhance the uptake of technical expertise into wildlife conservation initiatives. In this talk, we’ll explore the latest happenings on WILDLABS and empower those with engineering and related expertise to share their abilities to help save species.
</div>
<br><br>
</div>
<b>Bio: </b> Rachel Kramer is a wildlife crime expert at World Wildlife Fund with a decade of experience in field-based conservation, wildlife and natural resource trade monitoring, policy and technology solutions. With TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network that is a strategic alliance of WWF and IUCN, Rachel has overseen projects in Africa and Asia and manages wildlife trade assessments—including in the United States—to support enforcement action and policy change. Through WWF’s Wildlife Crime Technology Project supported by a Google Global Impact Award, Rachel joined United for Wildlife partners in 2015 in founding WILDLABS.NET: the conservation technology network. Rachel got her start in conservation serving in the Peace Corps in Madagascar from 2006-2009, leading community-based monitoring and conservation projects until her evacuation in the coup. Her graduate research at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies focused on surveying wild species consumption and natural resource dependence in Park-bordering communities in Madagascar’s northeastern rainforest. Rachel is committed to harnessing the power of communities and technology to advance the sustainable use of natural resources for future generations.
|-
</div></div>
| Th, Dec 12
 
|
|
|
|}
|}


Learn more about the [[Brown Bag Lunch Coordinators|BBL student (co-)coordinator]] position.
== Past Brown Bags ==
 
View the [[Past Brown Bag Lunch Schedules]] to learn more about prior talks.
 
__FORCETOC__

Latest revision as of 20:51, 1 February 2021

THIS PAGE IS NOT UPDATED ANYMORE

Instead see this new page about the BBL Lecture series

OLD TEXT: The HCIL has an open, semi-organized weekly "Guest Speaker & Pizza Series" every Thursday from 12:30-1:30pm in HCIL (2119 Hornbake, South Wing). The topics range from someone's work, current interests in the HCIL, software demos/reviews, study design, proposed research topics, introductions to new people, etc. The BBL is the one hour a week where we all come together--thus, it’s a unique time for HCIL members with unique opportunities to help build collaborations, increase awareness of each other’s activities, and generally just have a bit of fun together. There is no RSVP; simply show up!

If you would like to give or suggest a talk, presentation, workshop, etc., send an email to BBL student co-coordinators Teja Maddali (hmaddali@umd.edu) or Aravind JR (aravind@umd.edu). In the email, briefly describe the topic and preferred dates.

To be notified about upcoming events, please subscribe to one of these mailing lists.


Spring 2020 Guest Speaker Series Schedule

Date Leader Topic
02/06/2020

Dr. Joel Chan, Dr. Amanda Lazar and Dr. Catherine Plaisant University of Maryland

Panel discussion "What does a successful process for an HCI researcher look like?
We'll be kicking off this semester with a panel discussion. Dr. Joel Chan, Dr. Amanda Lazar, and Dr. Catherine Plaisant will engage in a conversation with us about what successful processes for an HCI researcher look like in terms of personal development, week to week / day to day workflow, moving ideas forward, etc.

02/13/2020

Christian Vogler, Gallaudet University

The User Experience of Viewing Captioned Content
Much has been made of the ability of automatic speech recognition (ASR) to supplement or replace human captioners both for video content and for live meetings. While the word error rate of ASR has been steadily improving, and on some types of content can even beat out human captioners, these improvements do not automatically in a good user experience for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. In this talk we will examine the reasons why this is so, and provide an overview of current efforts to develop human-centered caption quality metrics that are more closely aligned with meeting the needs of people who depend on captions to consume content.

02/20/2020

Wei Ai University of Maryland

Promoting Pro-social Behavior with End-to-End Data Science
The recent development of data science methods, including large-scale machine learning and causal inference, has presented a game-changing opportunity for social good provision through the effort of the crowd. In this talk, I introduce an end-to-end data science pipeline to promote behavioral change for pro-social benefits. More specifically, this involves conducting causal data analysis on empirical data for actionable insights and robust prediction models, incorporating the insights and predictions in designing recommender systems for individual actions, and evaluating the effectiveness of the recommender systems in promoting behavioral changes with randomized field experiments. I will present two applications of the end-to-end pipeline, where we designed and deployed team recommender systems on an online microfinance platform (Kiva.org) and a ride-sharing platform (DiDi). We evaluated the recommender systems through large-scale field experiments, which show significant increases in user participation. The recommender system has been deployed in DiDi and has impacted millions of users in practice.

02/27/2019

B Prabhakaran University of Texas, Dallas

Quantifying Human Performance and the Quality of Immersive Experiences
Psychometric evaluations are generally used to understand the Quality of Experience (QoE) of immersive environments produced using augmented/mixed/virtual reality. Typically, these subjective evaluations are done from an end-user point-of-view, but these are limited by the subjective observations due to a number of factors. The objective approach consists of measuring the QoE by monitoring the network technical parameters or the network Quality of Service (QoS), such as throughput, delay, and packet loss. Most of the research on objective approaches for QoS-QoE mapping have focused on video streaming. Such objective QoS-QoE mapping strategies cannot be directly applied for immersive environments. Hence, in this talk, we address two related questions: (1) Can we identify metrics that can objectively quantify the performance of an immersive environment? (2) Can we use the above objective performance metrics to understand the possible user QoE without the need for subjective user study or with minimal user study? We start with different examples of immersive environments such as haptic-enabled applications, mirror therapy, and games. We discuss what metrics are influenced by different system parameters such as processing power, and network QoS. Then, we present some of our preliminary work on understanding users’ QoE through these metrics.

03/05/2020

Dr. Joel Chan University of Maryland

What does a successful process for an HCI researcher look like? Part 2
TBA

Fall 2019 HCIL Guest Speaker Series Schedule

Date Leader Topic
08/29/2019

Hack-a-thon

HCIL Website Hack-a-thon.
We are kick starting this semester's BBL with a Hack-a-thon event. You will be tasked to update the HCIL website by checking for broken links, updating faculty information, checking for spelling and grammar errors and also improving the accessibility of the images in the website.


09/05/2019

Prof. Jun-Dong Cho Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea

Celestial: Color Patterns for improving Color Perception for blind people.
It is relatively difficult to recreate the abstract three-dimensional shape with only the tactile sense. Gibson said "These abilities can be improved through practice." "When you touch something, You may have no idea about it at first touch, but as you continue touching, you soon will know vaguely what it is" , Kojiro Hirose said.

Recently, we developed "Blind-touch" to aid the visually impaired to appreciate greater painter’s work of art. This work is a reproduction of an existing masterpiece by means of a 3D printer and haptic electronics. It recognizes the pattern by touching the object in the artwork with a fingertip, and voice explanation and sound effect are provided through the voice user interface. Color is an equaling lens through which we experience the natural and digital realities. Now, we are exploring the tactile-color association based on semiotics to represent colors with fingertip tactile sensation. In this way, audio and touch contribute information to the non-visual perception of color in an complementary manner. In this talk, we review the related works and introduce a so-called “Celestial color tactile pattern” built based on the concept of both pictogram and ideogram and its variants.

09/12/2019

Prof. Niklas Elmqvist, Prof. Amanda Lazar, and Prof. Joel Chan University of Maryland

A panel discussion on approaches to reviewing research papers.
In light of the approaching deadline for SIGCHI 2020, Professors Niklas Elmqvist, Amanda Lazar, and Joel Chan will discuss the why/how of giving feedback on drafts of research papers. This would be helpful for anyone (Undergrad, Masters, or PhD students) who might be thinking of volunteering to review for conferences, ACM SIGCHI, or even for other lab members in the HCIL’s very own CHI clinic. Reviewers of all levels of expertise, even if you’ve never reviewed a research paper, are encouraged to participate and ask questions during the discussion. (link to video)

09/19/2019

Ben Shneiderman University of Maryland

Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence: Designing Next Generation User Experiences
The next generation of user experiences will produce 1000-fold improvements in human capabilities. These new tools will amplify, augment, enhance, and empower people, just as the Web, email, search, navigation, digital photography, and many other applications have already done. These new human-centered tools will produce comprehensible, predictable, and controllable applications that promote self-efficacy and social participation at scale. The goal is to ensure human control, while increasing the level of automation. In short, the next generation of tools will make more people, more creative, more often.
Improved designs will give billions of users comprehensible interfaces that hide the underlying complexity of advanced algorithms. Users will see familiar visual strategies based on direct manipulation to provide informative feedback about the machine’s state and what they can do. Every use will build confidence that users can reliably accomplish their goals and increase the trust that the machine is under their control.

09/26/2019

Tom Ball Microsoft Research

MakeCode and CODAL: intuitive and efficient embedded systems programming for education
Across the globe, it is now commonplace for educators to engage in the making (design and development) of embedded systems in the classroom to motivate and excite their students. This new domain brings its own set of unique requirements. Historically, embedded systems development requires knowledge of low-level programming languages, local installation of compilation toolchains, device drivers, and applications. For students and educators, these requirements can introduce insurmountable barriers.
We present the motivation, requirements, implementation, and evaluation of a new programming platform that enables novice users to create software for embedded systems. The platform has two major components:
1) Microsoft MakeCode (www.makecode.com), a web app that encapsulates an entire beginner IDE for microcontrollers; and
2) CODAL, an efficient component-oriented C++ runtime for microcontrollers.
We show how MakeCode and CODAL provide an accessible, cross-platform, installation-free programming experience for the BBC micro:bit and other embedded devices.

10/3/2019

Naeemul Hassan University of Maryland

Towards Automated Fact Discovery and Ranking
In this talk, I present the work of finding new, prominent situational facts, which are emerging statements about objects that stand out within certain contexts. Many such facts are newsworthy—e.g., an athlete’s outstanding performance in a game, or a viral video’s impressive popularity. Effective and efficient identification of these facts assists journalists in reporting, one of the main goals of computational journalism. A situational fact can be modeled as a “contextual” tuple that stands out against historical tuples in a context, specified by a conjunctive constraint involving dimension attributes when a set of measure attributes are compared. New tuples are constantly added to the table, reflecting events happening in the real world. Our goal is to discover constraint-measure pairs that qualify a new tuple as a contextual significant tuple, and discover them quickly before the event becomes yesterday’s news.

10/10/2019

John Dickerson University of Maryland

Diversity in Matching Markets
In bipartite matching problems, vertices on one side of a bipartite graph are paired with those on the other. In its offline variant, both sides of the graph are known a priori; in its online variant, one side of the graph is available offline, while vertices on the other arrive online and are irrevocably and immediately matched (or ignored) by an algorithm. Examples of such problems include matching workers to firms, advertisers to keywords, organs to patients, and riders to rideshare drivers. Much of the literature focuses on maximizing the total relevance---modeled via total weight---of the matching. However, in many real-world problems, it is also important to consider the contribution of diversity: hiring a diverse pool of candidates, displaying a relevant but diverse set of ads, and so on.

In this talk, we model the promotion of diversity in matching markets via maximization of a submodular function over the set of matched edges. We present new results in a generalization of traditional offline matching, b-matching, where vertices have both lower and upper bounds on the number of adjacent matched edges. We also present new theoretical results in online submodular bipartite matching. Finally, we conclude with ongoing work that approaches the problem of hiring a diverse cohort of workers through the lens of combinatorial pure exploration (CPE) in the multiarmed bandit setting, and discuss an ongoing experiment in this space at a large research university.

This talk will cover joint work with Saba Ahmadi, Faez Ahmed, Samsara Counts, Jeff Foster, Mark Fuge, Samir Khuller, Zhi Lang, Nicholas Mattei, Karthik A. Sankararaman, Candice Schumann, Aravind Srinivasan, and Pan Xu.

10/17/2019

Prof. Caro Williams-Pierce University of Maryland

Designing for Mathematical Play: Failure and Feedback
Prof. Caro will share her analysis of three types of microworld (videogame, simulation, and cognitive tutor), and how each constrain and afford mathematical play differently through their feedback and failure mechanisms. In doing so, she will also introduce her framework for youth and adult mathematical play, and describe how different design approaches influence different ways of mathematical learning. Anyone interested in designing digital learning environments is particularly encouraged to come - Prof. Caro promises that it'll be interesting even if you don't research math learning!

10/24/2019

Karen Holtzblatt Incontext Design

What is Valuing vs “Jerk” Behavior? How behavior impacts a positive working experience
Women in tech leave the field at twice the quit rate as men. Women often state, and research confirms, that women don’t feel valued. They point to the culture of the organization and how they are treated as a contributing factor. They say that men are “bro’s” or “jerks.” In 2018, we launched the Valuing & Jerk Project as one WITops initiative (https://www.witops.org). This talk will present our findings and perspective. Behavior creates or undermines connection and value. The Valuing and Jerk Project focuses on understanding which behaviors are experienced as valuing in everyday work and which result in naming the other as a “jerk”. Using Contextual Inquiry, we have uncovered core valuing behaviors, what devaluing means, and where behavior crosses the line to become “jerk” behavior. Armed with this understanding our next step is to generate and test interventions and solutions. The talk will introduce the Valuing and Jerk Project.

10/31/2019

Rachael Bradley Montgomery
University of Maryland

Designing to Support People with Cognitive and Learning Disabilities
Have you ever wondered how to create websites, applications, and content that support individuals with cognitive and learning disabilities; individuals who are aging; or individuals who are tired, overworked, and distracted? The W3C Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility (COGA) Task Force has been working on a design guide that goes beyond WCAG 2.2 to support individuals with cognitive and learning disabilities. The resulting design patterns and guidance bridges accessibility and usability and support a much wider audience than just those with disabilities. Rachael will present her perspectives as an invited expert on this work. Please come learn about the design patterns and how to provide input on this evolving document.

11/7/2019

Dr. Gregg Vanderheiden
TRACE center

Underestimating the challenge of cognitive disabilities (and digital literacy). Directions to explore in short, medium and long term.
Recent work has caused us to question our understanding of the challenge of digital access by people with cognitive disabilities. Our underestimation may, in part, help explain our difficulties as a field to date. In part, it has exposed what may be a much wider problem than we understood, and one that goes beyond those we have thought of as having cognitive disabilities. It intersects with digital literacy but also has implications for those with other disabilities as well. The concept of Technology Quotient (TQ) will be discussed and approaches for addressing access by people with cognitive disabilities and low digital literacy today, tomorrow and in the future will be explored in this talk.

11/14/2019

Adam Aviv George Washington University

Human Factors in Mobile Authentication
Mobile authentication is a crucial component of authentication more broadly, especially as mobile devices become evermore connected to the broader computer security ecosystem. The overarching goal of my research is to improve the current state of mobile authentication by taking a holistic approach to measuring mobile authentication and its impacts that intersect directly with the user experience. In this talk, I will present a narrative of contributions to mobile authentication over the last 10 years, focusing on how human factors impact the security, from attacks, choices, and perceptions. I will particularly focus on one form of mobile authentication, Android's graphical pattern unlock, which may be the most heavily used graphical authentication system, ever. Based on my experience, I will also present some new directions and methods that can improve the security of mobile authentication and some new results on PINs and LG's graphical Knock Code Authentication.

11/21/2019

Whitney Quesenbery Co-Director, Center for Civic Design

Storytelling makes research data come to life
We all love our user research data…but why is it such a struggle to use the insights we uncover to create direction for a project? Storytelling is the missing link, getting past charts and graphs to dig into what the data means for meeting human needs and making something usable and useful. Whitney will show how stories put research insights into context, communicate the entire user journey, show problems through the eyes of your users, and help you ask better questions (and run better usability tests) to gain deeper insights. Whitney is the co-founder of the Center for Civic Design, approaching democracy as a design problem, so there will be examples from the challenges of designing elections as well as stories from her work in theatre.


11/28/2019

Happy Thanksgiving Day

No BBL. Time to catch up with families and friends :)

12/05/2019

TBA

TBA






Spring 2019 Schedule

Date Leader Topic
01/31/2019

Faculty Only BBL

Regular BBLs will start from 7th Feb, 2019.

02/07/2019

Faez Ahmed, University of Maryland

Design Democratization in the Age of Machine Learning.
Design democratization can transform the way we think about designing products. However, to enable design democratization, we need machine learning and computing methods to enable organizations to process a large amount of information efficiently. Using the example of online design contests, we will discuss three problems which organizations face in conducting design contests: a) How does one form teams to evaluate design ideas? b) How does one filter high quality and diverse ideas out of hundreds of submissions? and c) How does one reliably measure the creativity of ideas? We will discuss how matching, ranking, and novelty estimation methods developed in our work address these issues and what challenges remain for the field.

02/14/2019

Huaishu Peng, University of Maryland

Interactive Fabrication and Fabrication for Interaction.
3D printing technology has been widely applied to produce well-designed objects. There is a hope to make both the modeling process and printing outputs more interactive, so that designers can get in-situ tangible feedback to fabricate objects with rich functionalities. To date, however, knowledge accumulated to realize this hope remains limited. In this talk, I will present two lines of research. The first line of work aims at facilitating an interactive process of fabrication. I demonstrate novel interactive fabrication systems that allow the designer to create 3D models in AR with a robotic arm to print the model in real time and on-site. The second line of work concerns the fabrication of 3D printed objects that are interactive. I report new techniques for 3D printing with novel materials such as fabric sheet, and how to print one-off functional objects such as sensor and motor. I will conclude the talk by outlining future research directions built upon my current work.

02/21/2019

Niklas Elmqvist University of Maryland

Everyone a Data Scientist: Empowering Casual Users to Understand Complex Data.
Understanding data is quickly becoming the new digital divide. Merely having access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) is no longer sufficient when our society is overflowing with massive volumes of raw, complex, and heterogeneous data. Since best-practice data science workflows are still only available through esoteric software libraries, typically accessed using the Python and R languages, leveraging this data to its full potential often requires significant programming expertise. Even commercial point-and-click analytics tools such as Tableau, Spotfire, and QlikView require training and assume significant prior knowledge of mathematical, statistical, and sometimes even machine learning concepts. This means that currently only people who have the appropriate data and technology literacy can harness the ready availability of data in our society.

In this work-in-progress talk, I will discuss our efforts for shrinking or outright eliminating this new digital data divide through interactive visualization, explainable machine learning, and collaborative technologies. More specifically, I will talk about several past, current, or planned projects on this topic, including (1) the use of mixed-initiative interaction, which combines both human and computational efforts in the analytical process; (2) the use of attention for computational steering; (3) recommender systems for automatically suggesting the next analytical step in a workflow; (4) direct manipulation methods for interacting with machine learning models; and (5) "team-first" collaborative mechanisms that reduce the barrier to synchronizing and sharing work to facilitate emergent collaboration. This is ongoing research, so your feedback on these efforts is welcome.

02/28/2019

Townhall

Research Speed Dating
This week everyone is a speaker. We want everyone to talk about what is keeping you busy these days. This is a great way to recruiting participants, get feedback on your research questions, your data collection methods or anything concerning your research. We want you to share your research to the rest of HCIL group.

Faculty members, Ph.D. students, Masters students, and Bachelors students, we strongly encourage you to share your work so that everyone is aware of what’s happening inside HCIL.

03/07/2019 HCIL Spring Cleaning
Join and help spruce up the HCIL and be a part of a larger conversation of what the lab space should look like. We start at noon (12 pm) and there is free food for anyone who joins!
03/14/2019

Stories from the HCIL

Come and tell your favorite stories about the HCIL and the iSchool in this new format that we're trying for the BBL. It's like a casual fireside chat where you get to learn about the rich history of the HCIL from the people who know it best! And there is pizza, of course.

03/21/2019 No Brown Bag, Spring Break.
03/28/2019 HCIL Symposium Practice Talks
All speakers are invited to come rehearse their talk. Please shoot an email to the BBL coordinators and add your name to the schedule: HERE.
04/04/2019 HCIL Symposium In Session
No BBL, instead we encourage you to join us at the HCIL Symposium.
04/11/2019

Wayne Lutters, University of Maryland

Supporting service work in information infrastructure
An introduction to Wayne’s lab via a high-level overview of some key historical projects and an active discussion of what we are wrestling with this particular week – representing maps of belief space (w/ Phil Feldman).

04/18/2019

Zheng Yao, Carnegie Mellon University

Join, Stay or Go? Members’ Life Cycles in Online Health Communities
This talk discusses temporal changes in members’ participation in online health community (OHC), focusing on their motivations for joining and changes in their motivations as they transition to other roles or ultimately leave the community. We use mixed methods, combining behavioral log analysis, automated content analysis, surveys and interviews. We found that members started participating in OHCs for a common set of reasons, mainly to acquire support and to perform social comparisons. When their need for support decreased, most members quit the site. The motivations of those who stayed shifted to providing support and helping other members in the community. Oldtimers also established social ties with others members, which motivated them to stay in the community. These oldtimers, who contributed the majority of content, encountered challenges that threatened their commitment to the community, including negative emotion related to other members’ deaths. These challenges led them to take leaves of absence from the community or to drop out permanently. Our findings shed light on the changing motivations of OHC members, which provide implications for better designing OHCs.

04/25/2019

TBA

 Aravind will run a workshop on how to make PDF documents accessible
05/02/2019

Yue Jiang, University of Maryland, College Park

ORC Layout: Adaptive GUI Layout with OR-Constraints

We propose a novel approach for constraint-based graphical user interface (GUI) layout based on OR-constraints (ORC) in standard soft/hard linear constraint systems. ORC layout unifies grid layout and flow layout, supporting both their features as well as cases where grid and flow layouts individually fail. We describe ORC design patterns that enable designers to safely create flexible layouts that work across different screen sizes and orientations. We also present the ORC Editor, a GUI editor that enables designers to apply ORC in a safe and effective manner, mixing grid, flow and new ORC layout features as appropriate. We demonstrate that our prototype can adapt layouts to screens with different aspect ratios with only a single layout specification, easing the burden of GUI maintenance. Finally, we show that ORC specifications can be modified interactively and solved efficiently at runtime.

05/09/2019

TBA

TBA

Note: CHI 2019 will be in session during this time. Everyone is still invited, but many people might be away for the conference.

05/16/2019

Adil Yalcin, Founder and CEO at Keshif

It's all about creating new possibilities for people: A journey from the lab to a startup

One of the most valuable parts of the DNA of HCIL is its focus on "human", and how our mentors guide us to connect our work with people (users). As a student of this school of thought, I had found my purpose to help the 95% by identifying, questioning, and removing barriers (creating opportunities) in visual analytics. Two years ago, with results baked in lab, and the same driving purpose, I stepped into a world unknown to me: creating, running, and growing a business, one customer at a time.

I am back to share some of the surprises, new perspectives, and validations from this journey so far. What I missed can help you realize the opportunities you already have. What I wish I knew may reveal some gaps. And, what remained constant may hint that research in university and what comes after may not be so different after all. I also will touch on the subtle and dynamic balance between your elevator pitch, your audience, the value you provide, and crossing the finish line.

05/23/2019

TBA

TBA

Note: This slot may be cancelled since it is right at this end of the semester.






Fall 2018 Schedule

Date Leader Topic
08/30/2018

Student Townhall

Instead of the regular BBL, there will be an internal HCIL-students-only townhall meeting instead.

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09/06/2018

BBL Student Co-coordinators

Come, network, make introductions, and share what you are working on.

09/13/2018

Joel Chan, Tammy Clegg
University of Maryland, College Park

TBA

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09/20/2018

Joel Zhang
University of Maryland, College Park

Research proposal centered around pain tracking and sharing.

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03/22/2017 No Brown Bag, Cancelled.
10/4/2018

Brian Ondov, Sriram Karthik Badam
University of Maryland, College Park

Brian’s paper talks about Evaluating Visual Comparison and seeks to understand how different encodings of data can drastically affect how we perceive quantities. More information about this project is available at http://hcil.umd.edu/visualcomparison/.

Karthik’s paper is about a computing platform called Vistrates which seeks to unify the fragmented analytical workflows employed by users to analyze a group of visualizations created in different tools.

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10/11/2018

Polly Lee O'Rourke
University of Maryland, College Park

Improving language learning using brain simulation.

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10/18/2018

Andrea Batch
University of Maryland, College Park

Information Olfactation: Harnessing Scent to Convey Data
Olfactory feedback for analytical tasks is a virtually unexplored area in spite of the advantages it offers for information recall, feature identification, and location detection. We have introduced the concept of information olfactation as the fragrant sibling of information visualization, and this talk will cover our theoretical model of how scent can be used to convey data. Building on a review of the human olfactory system and mirroring common visualization practice, we propose olfactory marks, the substrate in which they exist, and their olfactory channels that are available to designers. To exemplify this idea, we present viScent: A six-scent stereo olfactory display capable of conveying olfactory glyphs of varying temperature and direction, as well as a corresponding software system that integrates the display with a traditional visualization display, along with three applications that make use of the viScent system.

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10/25/2018

Student Townhall

Research speed-dating

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11/01/2018

Joohee Choi
University of Maryland, College Park

Will Too Many Editors Spoil The Tag? Conflicts and Alignment in Q&A Categorization (CSCW Practice Talk)

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11/08/2018

Alina Striner
University of Maryland, College Park

Learning in the Holodeck: the Role of Multisensory Cues on Pattern Recognition in VR
Designing for multiple senses has the capacity to improve virtual realism, extend our ability to process information, and more easily transfer knowledge between physical and digital environments. HCI researchers are beginning to explore the viability of integrating multisensory media (“multimedia”) into virtual experiences, however research has yet to consider whether mulsemedia truly enhances pattern recognition in virtual reality (VR). In the context of citizen science watershed habitat training, our research asks, how does realism affect observation skills in VR? Within this domain, we build a multisensory system that allows users to feel (wind, thermal, humidity) and smell landscape and environmental conditions. We then compare and report on how users make observations and infer patterns between 2 stream habitats in VR, with and without the multisensory information. Our findings reveal that multisensory information improved the number of high-level, mid-level and low-level observations participants made, and positively impacted engagement and immersion.

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11/15/2018

Student Townhall

Research speed dating.

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03/22/2017 No Brown Bag, Thanksgiving Break.
11/29/2018

Lelani Battle
University of Maryland, College Park

A Characterization Study of Exploratory Analysis Behaviors in Tableau
Exploratory visual analysis (EVA) is an interactive process comprising both focused tasks and more open-ended exploration. Visual analysis tools aim to facilitate this process by enabling rapid specification of both data transformations and visualizations, using a combination of direct manipulation and automated design. With a better understanding of users’ analysis behavior, we might improve the design of these visualization tools to promote effective outcomes.

In this talk, I will present our recent work on characterizing the EVA process. We contribute a consistent definition of EVA through review of the relevant literature, and an empirical evaluation of existing assumptions regarding how analysts perform EVA. We present the results of a study where 27 Tableau users answered various analysis questions across 3 datasets. We measure task performance, identify recurring patterns across participants’ analyses, and assess variance from task specificity and dataset. We find striking differences between existing assumptions and the collected data. Participants successfully completed a variety of tasks, with over 80% accuracy across focused tasks with measurably correct answers. The observed cadence of analyses is surprisingly slow compared to popular assumptions from the database community. We find significant overlap in analyses across participants, showing that EVA behaviors can be predictable. Furthermore, we find few structural differences between open-ended and more focused analysis tasks. Finally, I will discuss the implications of our findings for the design of effective data analytics systems, and highlight several promising directions for future study.

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12/06/2018

Student Townhall

TBA

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12/13/2018

Cookie Exchange

We encourage you to make/buy cookies (or some related treat) and create individual bags (about six cookies in each bag, and about 4-6 bags). Then bring them in labeled on 12/13 and you can pick bags from other people to take home or eat on the spot. However, you do not need to make cookies to attend! All are welcome to come and hang out.

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Spring 2018 Schedule

Date Leader Topic
01/25/2018

Kickoff to a new Semester!

Come, network, make introductions, and share what you are working on

Please come to our first BBL of the Spring 2018 semester to introduce yourself and share what you're working on in the coming semester. The first BBL will be for us to network with each other and kickoff a great new semester.

02/01/2018

Bahador Saket
Georgia Tech, Atlanta

Visualization by Demonstration

Abstract: A commonly used interaction paradigm in most visualization tools is manual view specification. Tools implementing manual view specification often require users to manually specify visual properties through GUI operations on collections of visual properties and data attributes that are presented visually on control panels. To interact with tools implementing manual view specification users need to understand the potentially complex system parameters being controlled. Additionally, in such tools, users need to constantly shift their attention from the visual features of interest when interacting.

In this talk, I present an alternative interaction paradigm for visualization construction and data exploration called visualization by demonstration. This paradigm advocates for a different process of visualization construction. I will also discuss the trade-offs between these interaction paradigms based on the data collected from an empirical study. I will then discuss applications of the "by demonstration’" paradigm in other areas in data visualization.

Bio: Bahador Saket is a third-year Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech, where he works with Dr. Alex Endert. His current research focuses on the design of interaction techniques for visualization construction and visual data exploration. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Bahador worked at different research labs including Microsoft Research, CNS Research Center, and NUS-HCI Lab. He has published over 12 peer-reviewed articles in the leading journals and conferences in the field of human-computer interaction and data visualization such as IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), Computer Graphics Forum, CSCW, UIST, and MobileHCI.

02/08/2018

Elissa Redmiles
University of Maryland, College Park

Dancing Pigs or Security? Measuring the Rationality of End-User Security Behavior

Abstract: Accurately modeling human decision-making in security is critical to think about when, why, and how to recommend that users adopt certain secure behaviors. We used behavioral economics experiments to model the rationality of end-user security decision-making in a realistic online experimental system simulating a bank account. We ask participants to make a financially impactful security choice, in the face of transparent risks of account compromise and benefits offered by an optional security behavior (two-factor authentication). We find that more than 50% of our participants made rational (e.g., utility optimal) decisions, and we find that participants are more likely to behave rationally in the face of higher risk. Additionally, we confirm that users are boundedly rational: they make decisions based on some risks and context, but not others, and we can model their behavior well as a function of these factors. Finally, we show that a “one-size-fits-all” emphasis on security can lead to market losses, but that adoption by a subset of users with higher risks or lower costs can lead to market gains.
Bio: Elissa Redmiles is a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland in Computer Science. Her research focuses on using computational and social science methodologies to understand and improve users' privacy and security learning processes, behavior, and perceptions. She is the recipient of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a National Science Defense and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, and a Facebook Fellowship. Prior to pursuing her Ph.D., Elissa held Marketing Management and Software Engineering roles at IBM and was a Data Science for Social Good Fellow at the University of Chicago.


02/15/2018

Erin Peters-Burton
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA

Building Student Self-Awareness of Learning to Enhance Diversity in the Sciences

Abstract: Many students are being left out of pursuing further studies in science because the current system of science education values students who learn via completion in an isolated, rather than collaborative way (Tobias, 1990). The stereotype of students who excel in science tend to be the ones who can conform to the institutional structure where the teacher is the sole source of knowledge (Friere, 2000). Through the idea of “Education as the Practice of Freedom” (hooks, 1994), the presentation will explain investigations that explore tangible ways to break down that stereotype. This research begins with the assumption that if teachers taught the ways science operates as a discipline, then students gain more power to construct their own scientific knowledge because they understand the “rules” of knowledge validation (Duschl, 1990). Learning how scientific knowledge is constructed and being self-aware of one’s own learning in science can help level the playing field so that students can do inquiry well (NRC, 1996; AAAS, 1993) and the science classroom will be a more inclusive, positive environment rather than relying on isolated competition for teaching. In this presentation, I will present an overview of research I have done over the past 10 years that focuses on helping students to become self-aware of their learning in science and how scientific knowledge is constructed. The work involves 8th grade students, undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals. The studies include constructs such as self-efficacy, motivation, metacognition, self-regulated learning, and visualization. Findings of the studies are synthesized into self-awareness priorities and how those constructs will ultimately impact social justice by providing more opportunities to see alternative perspectives and learn the “rules” of knowledge validation in science. As a result, students develop a sense of agency and an identity where anything is possible because they can learn independently in any situation.
Bio: Erin E. Peters-Burton is the Donna R. and David E. Sterling Endowed Professor in the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University. She has a B.S. in Physics from the University of Illinois, a M.Ed. in Educational Psychology and Social Foundations of Education from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. from George Mason University (VA) in Educational Psychology and Educational Research Methods. She has taught middle school and high school science and mathematics for 15 years prior to her academic work and was a National Board Certified Teacher in Early Adolescence Science. She has published in science education, teacher education, educational psychology, marine biology, geology education, history and philosophy of science, technology, educational leadership, and learning disability journals. Her book, Thinking Like Scientists: Using Metacognitive Prompts to Develop Nature of Science Knowledge, and her edited book, The STEM Road Map: A Framework for Integrated STEM Education have led to the curriculum series books from the National Science Teacher Association entitled, STEM Road Map for Elementary School, STEM Road Map for Middle School, and STEM Road Map for High School. In 2016 she was awarded the Association of Science Teacher Educators Outstanding Science Teacher of the Year in recognition of her work with the professional development of secondary science teachers.


02/22/2018

Norman Su
Indiana University

The Problem of Designing for Subcultures

Abstract: Members of subcultures speak about and act with pervasive technologies in service to their distinct traditions. I will describe how outwardly subcultures maintain a unified front, yet inwardly are rich sites for compromise and confrontation over technology. I will highlight findings from work we have done with subcultures and, in particular, my own fieldwork with Irish traditional musicians. I will close by describing new design opportunities for technologies that acknowledge the remarkable solidarity and discord of subcultures.
Bio: Norman Makoto Su is an Assistant Professor in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington. His research interests lie in human–computer interaction (HCI) and computer–supported cooperative work (CSCW). His Authentic User Experience (AUX) lab characterizes the relationship of technology with subcultures and designs systems to support their notion of authenticity. He received his Ph.D. in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine and a B.A. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Information and Library Studies at University College Dublin, Ireland. He has done internships at IBM, The Aerospace Corporation, and PARC.

03/01/2018

Ya-Wei Li
Center for Conservation Innovation, Defenders of Wildlife

Using Data and Technology to Save Endangered Species.

Abstract: We will discuss how Defenders of Wildlife, a nonprofit wildlife conservation organization, is expanding its use of technology and data analytics to conserve endangered species. We will summarize our projects involving remote-sensing data to monitor wildlife habitat and compliance with conservation agreements; data mining of federal government decisions to build the largest public repository of text-searchable documents on the U.S. Endangered Species Act; natural language processing of those documents to improve public understanding of how our government conserves endangered species; use of data visualization tools to reveal patterns in large datasets; and other initiatives. We invite the audience to actively engage with us about how we can improve our work and offer ideas for future projects and potential collaborations.

Bio: Ya-Wei (Jake) specializes in endangered species law, policy, and science. He leads the Center for Conservation Innovation at Defenders of Wildlife, which focuses on developing innovative and pragmatic strategies to conserve endangered and at-risk species. Before joining Defenders in 2010, Jake practiced environmental law in the private sector. Jake holds a B.S. from Drexel University and a J.D. from Cornell University Law School. At Cornell, Jake also completed graduate coursework in conservation biology and herpetology.

Jacob works on linking science to Endangered Species Act policy. He works with others inside and outside of Defenders to make ESA-related data available and easily interpretable, so that policy makers and the public can make informed decisions about conservation. Before joining Defenders, Jacob was a postdoctoral fellow at University of Connecticut, and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2013. From 2000-2008, Jacob was a field biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in New Mexico and Arizona, during which time he completed his Bachelor's degree in Conservation Ecology at Prescott College.

03/08/2018

Deok Gun Park
University of Maryland, College Park

Thinking, Autism and AGI


Abstract: Despite recent advances in deep learning, we do not know yet how we can combine these application-specific models to build an artificial general intelligence (AGI). Furthermore, the data is becoming the bottleneck to scale these approaches for the multiple tasks. In this talk, I propose a theory of the thinking and a neural algorithm that can bootstrap intelligence with limited computational resources and data. This neural algorithm approximates the O(n3) parameter space of the thinking theory into the O(1) parameters to make learning tractable for the biological intelligent agents. I will explain this proposal by cognitive phenomenons that are observed in a human, such as infant language acquisition, visual and verbal thinking, personality, creativity, exploit-exploration trade off, dreaming, one-shot learning, abstract language.

Bio: Deokgun Park is a Ph.D. candidate in the HCILab of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, College Park, being advised by Prof. Niklas Elmqvist. His research focuses on the computational methods for open-ended tasks. He completed M.S. in Interdisciplinary Engineering at Purdue University and M.S. in Biomedical Engineering at Seoul National University, where he obtained B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering at Seoul National University. He worked at the government research institute, industry research labs, and startups. He has published and licensed his patents to companies including Samsung Electronics.

03/15/2018

Clemens Klokmose
Aarhus University, Denmark

Shareable Dynamic Media: A revisit of the fundamentals of interactive computing

Abstract: Developing interactive systems that support collaboration between people, distribution across heterogeneous devices and user appropriation is notoriously difficult. Today’s software rests on a foundation built for personal computing, and to properly support the aforementioned qualities we need to revisit this foundation. In this talk, I will present you with a vision called Shareable Dynamic Media, inspired by Alan Kay’s seminal vision of Personal Dynamic Media. I will present a prototype implementation of the vision called Webstrates, and demonstrate how it enables the development of software where distribution across devices, collaboration between people, and malleability and reprogrammability are the norm rather than the exception. I will show our latest project, Codestrates, that combines Webstrates with the literate computing approach of interactive notebooks.

Bio: Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose is an associate professor in the development of advanced interactive systems at the Department of Digital Design and Information Studies, at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University. He co-directs the Digital Creativity Lab that is part of the Center for Advanced Visualisation and Interaction (CAVI). Clemens has worked as a postdoc at Computer Science, Aarhus University and at Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique, Université Paris-Sud. He has furthermore spent a year as a user interface specialist in the industry. Clemens received his PhD in Computer Science in 2009 from Aarhus University supervised by prof. Susanne Bødker. Clemens’ main interest is the fundamentals of interactive computing, particularly to support and understanding computing with multiple devices and multiple people. Many of his ideas are crystallised into the Webstrates platform (webstrates.net), which he leads the development of.

03/22/2017 No Brown Bag, Spring Break.
03/29/2018

Wei Bai
University of Maryland, College Park

Understanding User Tradeoffs for Search in Encrypted Communication

Abstract: End-to-end message encryption is the only way to achieve absolute message privacy. However, searching over end-to-end encrypted messages is complicated. Several popular instant messaging tools (e.g., WhatsApp, iMessage) circumvent this inconvenience by storing the search index locally on the devices. Another approach, called searchable encryption, allows users to search encrypted messages without storing the search index locally. These approaches have inherent tradeoffs between usability and security properties, yet little is known about how general users value these tradeoffs, especially in the context of email rather than instant messaging. In this paper, we systematize these tradeoffs in order to identify key feature differences. We use these differences as the basis for a choice-based conjoint analysis experiment focused on email (n=160), in which participants make a series of choices between email services with competing features. The results allow us to quantify the relative importance of each feature. We find that users indicate high relative importance for increasing privacy and minimizing local storage requirements. While privacy is more important overall, local storage is more important than adding additional marginal privacy after an initial improvement. These results suggest that local indexing, which provides more privacy, may often be appropriate for encrypted email, but that searchable encryption, which limits local storage, may also hold promise for some users.

Bio: Wei Bai is a PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland, advised by Prof. Michelle L. Mazurek. His research interests include network security and privacy with an emphasis on human factors, and his dissertation is about user perceptions of and attitudes toward encrypted communication. He obtained his MS in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Maryland. Contact him at wbai@umd.edu.

04/05/2018

Eun-Kyoung Choe
University of Maryland, College Park

Designing A Flexible Personal Data Tracking Tool

Abstract: We now see an increasing number of self-tracking apps and wearable devices. Despite the vast number of available tools, however, it is still challenging for self-trackers to find apps that suit their unique tracking needs, preferences, and commitments. In this talk, I will present OmniTrack, a mobile self-tracking system, which enables self-trackers to construct their own trackers and customize tracking items to meet their individual tracking needs. OmniTrack leverages a semi-automated tracking approach that combines manual and automated tracking methods. From a deployment study, we showed how participants used OmniTrack to create, revise, and appropriate trackers—ranging from a simple mood tracker to a sophisticated daily activity tracker. I will discuss how to further improve OmniTrack by incorporating multimodal interactions, providing more appropriate visualizations on a mobile device, and supporting researchers' unique data collection needs.

Bio: Eun Kyoung Choe (http://eunkyoungchoe.com) is an Assistant Professor in the College of Information Studies at University of Maryland, College Park. Her primary research areas are in the fields of Human-Computer Interaction and Health Informatics. She examines the design and evaluation of personal informatics tools to empower individuals—including patients, caregivers, clinicians, and those who wish to engage in self-tracking—to make positive behavior changes through fully leveraging their personal data. She explores this topic in various contexts, including sleep and productivity, patient-clinician communication and data sharing, and personal data insights and visualization. Her past and current research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Microsoft Research, and the Google Anita Borg Scholarship. She received her PhD in Information Science from University of Washington, MS in Information Management and Systems from University of California, Berkeley, and BS in Industrial Design from KAIST, Korea.

04/12/2018

CHI practice talks

Combining smartwatches with large displays for visual data exploration by Karthik Badam and Tom Horak

TBD

04/19/2018

Hernisa Kacorri
University of Maryland, College Park

Accessibility and Assistive Technologies at the Intersection of Users and Data

Abstract: Advances in artificial intelligence enable us to address key social issues. However, to see the benefit of this technology in many real-world applications, an integrative approach is necessary; effective solutions consist of a pipeline of processes or tasks involving both humans and machines. My research has integrated human computer interaction (HCI) techniques and data-driven methods applied to human data to steer technological innovations for people with visual impairments and for people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. In this talk, I will provide an overview of my research program, and I will demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating machine learning and HCI methodologies with two concrete examples: i) teachable object recognizers trained by blind users, and ii) facial expression synthesis in sign language animations.

Bio: Hernisa Kacorri is an Assistant Professor in the College of Information Studies and holds an affiliate appointment in the Computer Science and the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at University of Maryland, College Park. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2016 from The Graduate Center at City University of New York, and has conducted research at National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, IBM Research-Tokyo, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on data-driven technologies that address human challenges, faced due to health or disability, with an emphasis on rigorous, user-based experimental methodologies to assess impact. Hernisa is a recipient of a Mina Rees Dissertation Fellowship in the Sciences, an ACM ASSETS best paper finalist, and an CHI honorable mention award. She has been recognized by the Rising Stars in EECS program of CMU/MIT.


04/26/2018

Chi-Young Oh
University of Maryland, College Park

Small Worlds in a Distant Land: International Newcomer Students' Local Information Behavior in Unfamiliar Environments

Abstract: International students are a rapidly growing sub-population of students, and the United States, as a top destination, has hosted students from 218 different countries. However, as with other international newcomers, these students face various types of challenges in a new country. Studies have reported the challenges this population faces in regard to cultures, academic systems, and general adjustments, but research is less clear about the challenges they face in terms of information behaviors during adjustment to a new country. This study addresses the information behaviors of international newcomer students in the context of adjustment to new local environments; that is, their local information behavior (LIB). Specifically, drawing on prior work and theories, this research conceptualizes the idea of "socio-national context," the degree to which there are individuals from the same country available in one's local environment, as a factor influencing international newcomer students’ information behavior. Through the findings from this longitudinal mixed-method study of international and U.S. graduate students in different socio-national contexts, it is argued that information behavior theories and models need to account for people's socio-national contexts if they are to inform research involving international newcomer students and provide insights on designing systems and services for all international newcomer students, especially those from countries that tend to be less well-represented among international students in a host country.

Bio: Chi Young Oh is a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park's College of Information Studies. His areas of research span information behavior, human-computer interaction, health informatics, and community informatics, and his dissertation research examines international newcomer students' information behaviors during adjustment to a host country. Chi Young holds an MS in Information Science (with a concentration in Human-Computer Interaction) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as a BA in Psychology, a BA in Library and Information Science, and a BBA in Business Administration from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. Prior to joining University of Maryland, he was a user experience researcher in the UX Lab of internet search portal Daum in South Korea and a new product planner and assistant marketing manager at LG Electronics.


05/03/2018

Amanda Lazar
University of Maryland, College Park

Rethinking technology for dementia

Abstract: As the population ages, research is increasingly focused on conditions associated with growing older, such as cognitive and physical impairment. Technology is often presented as a solution for managing or treating these changes. This framing can position health conditions as problems to address through design and can neglect the complexity and positive aspects of older adulthood. In this talk, I draw on critical perspectives from Human-Computer Interaction and Gerontology. I describe ways in which technology can help us understand and challenge stereotypes around aging as well as cognitive impairment, and my ongoing and future work in this area. I will argue for a view of aging that takes into account the ways that technologies position older individuals and, in turn, the way that this view can inform the design of new technologies to enrich the experience of growing older.

Bio: Amanda Lazar is an Assistant Professor in the College of Information studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research is in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction and Health Informatics. She studies how technologies designed for health and wellbeing position and support marginalized populations. She received her PhD from the University of Washington in the Biomedical and Health Informatics program and her undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of California, San Diego.


05/10/2018

Joel Chan
University of Maryland, College Park

Back to the Future: How people construct new creative ideas from old knowledge, and how technology can help

Abstract: Where do good ideas come from? One answer is that they come from prior knowledge: for example, Thomas Edison leveraged his knowledge of phonographs to “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. Yet, much research on human creativity demonstrates that prior knowledge often constrains creativity. How do people construct new creative ideas from old knowledge? And (how) can technology help? In the first part of my talk, I will summarize empirical work I have done that advances theories of the conditions under which people successfully construct new creative ideas from prior knowledge. This empirical work shows that prior knowledge can inspire creativity when it is analogically related to the current problem. This insight informs the ongoing work I will discuss in the second part of my talk: developing information technologies that combine human and machine intelligence to more effectively support analogical reasoning over prior knowledge.

Bio: Joel Chan is an Assistant Professor in the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies (iSchool), and Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL). His research and teaching focus on the intersection of people, information, and creativity. He wants to know how they (can best) combine to enable us to design the future(s) we want to live in. His work has been recognized with a Best Paper Award at the ASME Design Theory and Methodology conference, the Design Studies Award 2015, and supported by an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Project Scientist in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his PhD in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh.


05/17/2018

Rachel Kramer
World Wildlife Fund

WILDLABS.NET: the conservation technology network

Abstract: WILDLABS.NET: the conservation technology network is a collaboration across organizations that provides online infrastructure to connect wildlife conservationists directly to technologists to support the informed integration of technology tools in conservation practice. Since 2015, WILDLABS has evolved into a thriving online community of over 2,300 experts around the globe who crowd-source ideas and information, share case studies and co-develop solutions to pressing conservation and research challenges. WILDLABS community members range from academics to tech sector professionals, NGO staff, field-based practitioners and makers. On our platform, ideas are shared in over 25 technology and conservation challenge-specific groups with over 450 active discussion threads. The community is also a hub for posting grant and job opportunities to enhance the uptake of technical expertise into wildlife conservation initiatives. In this talk, we’ll explore the latest happenings on WILDLABS and empower those with engineering and related expertise to share their abilities to help save species.

Bio: Rachel Kramer is a wildlife crime expert at World Wildlife Fund with a decade of experience in field-based conservation, wildlife and natural resource trade monitoring, policy and technology solutions. With TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network that is a strategic alliance of WWF and IUCN, Rachel has overseen projects in Africa and Asia and manages wildlife trade assessments—including in the United States—to support enforcement action and policy change. Through WWF’s Wildlife Crime Technology Project supported by a Google Global Impact Award, Rachel joined United for Wildlife partners in 2015 in founding WILDLABS.NET: the conservation technology network. Rachel got her start in conservation serving in the Peace Corps in Madagascar from 2006-2009, leading community-based monitoring and conservation projects until her evacuation in the coup. Her graduate research at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies focused on surveying wild species consumption and natural resource dependence in Park-bordering communities in Madagascar’s northeastern rainforest. Rachel is committed to harnessing the power of communities and technology to advance the sustainable use of natural resources for future generations.

Past Brown Bags

View the Past Brown Bag Lunch Schedules to learn more about prior talks.