Past Seminars

Gender inclusiveness in computing settings is receiving a lot of attention, but one potentially critical factor has mostly been overlooked: software itself. To help close this gap, we recently created GenderMag, a systematic inspection method to enable software practitioners to evaluate their… Full Details

In this lecture, Norm Cox will explore the early design roots of user interface, interaction and experience design, beginning with Xerox’s Star workstation designed at the famous Palo Alto Research Center. Drawing from his 34 years of consulting in user experience design, he will also share… Full Details

At the Polo Club of Data Science, we innovate at the intersection of HCI and Data Mining, combining the best from both worlds to synthesize scalable interactive tools for making sense of billion-scale graph data.

I will present some of our latest works, including: (1) GLO-… Full Details

Let's imagine: You've happily graduated from CMU and just joined a startup as the lead (or maybe only!) designer. Nice! But you know you need to make quick impact for credibility and value to the product --and the company! But you’ve inherited a product lacking visual consistency or user-… Full Details

A fundamental challenge for the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) is to develop, identify and promote engineering approaches that can predict the usability and learnability of a user interface before it is built. Research in computational cognitive modeling aims to develop and… Full Details

Think you have what it takes to become James Bond? This seminar will explain the process in which Her Majesty recruits James Bonde wannabes. Hail Britannia! We don't compare ourselves with other 3 letter agencies. 

This talk is actually two talks, one about research our team did in applying social psychology to cybersecurity, and another about the nature and role of theory in HCI and how it relates to systems and practice.

The research part of the talk looks at problems cybersecurity… Full Details

A Research Journey from Telepresence to Design Theory to Social Computing

Research, like life, often takes us in unexpected directions. This talk reflects on my research journey through HCI. It began nearly 20 years ago as a U. Iowa undergrad when I helped… Full Details

Massive amounts of medical data from electronic health records are now being mined by researchers, and can be used to improve care such as by finding factors affecting the recovery of patients in intensive care, or early risk factors for heart failure. However, patients are highly heterogeneous… Full Details

Even though considered a rapid prototyping tool, 3D printers are very slow. Many objects require several hours of printing time or even have to print overnight. One could argue that the way 3D printers are currently operated is similar to the batch processing of punched cards in the… Full Details

Human face-to-face communication is a little like a dance, in that participants continuously adjust their behaviors based on verbal and nonverbal cues from the social context. Today's computers and interactive devices are still lacking many of these human-like abilities to hold fluid and natural… Full Details

Even beyond industrial domains such as production and operation management, algorithms increasingly act as mediators between people and the world around them, from curating Facebook walls to matching riders with Uber drivers to selecting top job candidates on LinkedIn. Yet despite their often-… Full Details

Widely-available digital games are usually limited to technologies that reach our sense of sight and sound.  Yet so much more is possible in the realm of expressive communication through playful interaction. In a review of some recent research-creation projects, we’ll explore the… Full Details

Computer science has a long and complex history with programming languages. Historically, we have conducted evaluations using proofs, to ensure they give us the answers we intend, and performance data, to ensure they perform efficiently. While these two techniques are well established… Full Details

Human computation systems seamlessly combine human perception, creativity and knowledge with machine-driven algorithmic computation.  Such systems have been demonstrated to accomplish tasks that could not previously be accomplished by either machines or by non-experts alone. … Full Details

In an age of massive transnational migrations, it becomes relevant to explore the concept of Barbarians. Where do they come from? From afar or from within?

Barbarians are the ones that do not speak the language, they do not share the same system of representations of the accepted… Full Details

From failures of intelligence analysis to misguided beliefs about vaccinations, biased judgment and decision making contributes to problems in policy, business, medicine, law, education, and private life. Early attempts to reduce decision biases with training met with little success, leading… Full Details

Healthcare institutions are now recording more electronic health data about patients than ever before, including data about patient conditions, lab tests, genomics, treatments, and outcomes.  However, an open question remains on what one can do with all of this data.   Many … Full Details

Despite growing interest in interdisciplinary educations, many young art students still fear the idea of learning about technology. One of the missing pieces in enabling art students to get excited about learning something beyond their comfort zone is helping the students figure out how other… Full Details

The Bauhaus was the first academy for design in the world and has played a significant role in the history of design, art, and new media. The motivations behind the creation of the Bauhaus lay in 19th century anxieties about the soullessness of manufacturing and its products. Many historians… Full Details

In recent years, China is more and more focused on innovation and design as it's desired to transform itself from "Made in China" to "Designed in China" or "Created in China". How are we doing in this dramatic change? In this talk, I introduce the development of design education of… Full Details