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Past Seminars

The HCII Seminar Series has been a weekly tradition at CMU since 1990. Details of our seminars from 2014 to present, as well as many of their recordings, are available below. A few years ago, we held a year of special programming in celebration of the seminar's 25th anniversary.

Date Title Speaker Talk title and Abstract
HCII Seminar Series: Nicole Kramer

Exploring the Universe with Immersive Virtual Reality Scott Davidoff
Human Interfaces Manager, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab
Behavioral Science at Disney Research Maarten Bos
Research Scientist, Disney Research
Your Brain on Typography Ellen Lupton
Senior Curator, Contemporary Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Tasty Technology: Creating Multisensory Experiences Marianna Obrist
Lecturer in Interaction Design, Department of Informatics, University of Sussex
Going Beyond Code Search Steven Reiss
Professor, Computer Science Department, Brown University
Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as Components of Rich Landscapes of Learning Gerhard Fischer
Adjunct Professor and Professor Emeritus, Computer Science, University of Colorado at Boulder
The Continuing Quest for Secure and Usable Passwords Lorrie Cranor
Professor, Computer Science and Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University
Humanizing the Enterprise: Delivering Best in Class Experience to Business Software Users Janaki Kumar
Head of Strategic Design Services, Design & Co-Innovation Center, SAP Labs
Toward Gender-Inclusive Software: A Tale of Five Facets Margaret Burnett
Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Oregon State University
Walgreens Customer Experience: From "At" to "Through" Pete Wendel
UX Manager, Walgreens
Robots as ‘Companion Species’? Designing for Disability and the Mixed Spaces of Human-Robot Interactions Mark Paterson
Visiting Lecturer, University of Pittsburgh
Socio-technical Systems Under Stress Brian Keegan
Computational Social Scientist and Research Associate, Harvard Business School‘s HBX
Socio-technical Systems Under Stress Socio-technical systems can face intense stresses arising from unusual patterns of human social behavior. Misinformation can propagate rapidly through social networks like Twitter despite the availability of fact-checking websites. Wikipedia's encyclopedia… Full Details
Motivational Environments: Strategies for Personalized Learning, Intelligent Creativity Support,and Open Health Innovation Winslow Burleson
Associate Professor, College of Nursing and Computer Science Department, New York University
Motivational Environments:Strategies for Personalized Learning, Intelligent Creativity Support,and Open Health Innovation Advances in wearable and ambient sensors, responsive spaces, robots and relational agents present transformative opportunities to develop context and affect aware systems for… Full Details
Expanding Games Robin Hunicke
Co-Founder, Funomena

Games, now more than ever, are expanding. Reaching new audiences via new devices and technologies, exploring deeper subjects via evolving modes of interactivity, and empowering bright new voices from all over the world. In this talk I will cover my history as a researcher, maker and evangelist… Full Details

HCII Seminar Series: Jon Froehlich Jon Froehlich
Assistant Professor, Computer Science, University of Maryland College Park
"Characterizing Physical World Accessibility at Scale Using Crowdsourcing, Computer Vision, and Machine Learning" Roughly 30.6 million individuals in the US have physical disabilities that affect their ambulatory activities; nearly half of those individuals report using an assistive aid such as a… Full Details
HCII Seminar Series: Yao Cheng

HCII Seminar Series: Laurel Riek Laurel Riek
Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, University of Notre Dame
HCII Seminar Series: Hannes Högni Vilhjálmsson Hannes Högni Vilhjálmsson
Associate Professor of Computer Science, Director of the Center for Analysis and Design of Intelligent Agents, Reykjavik University
HCII Seminar Speaker: Leanne Bowler Leanne Bowler
Associate Professor, School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh
"Friendship, joy, cruelty, confusion…and sometimes, reflection and wisdom: Young peoples’ interactions with information and communications technologies" Digital forms of information are increasingly ubiquitous, unbound to a physical space and embedded within all manner of “smart” objects. From… Full Details
Dream Worlds: Imagining the Worlds of Walden and The Night Journey Tracy Fullerton
Associate Professor, USC School of Cinematic Arts Chair, Univrsity of Southern California

In this presentation, Tracy will discuss the evolution of the designs for two experimental game worlds: The Night Journey and Walden, a game. The Night Journey is a collaboration with media artist Bill Viola which game takes place in a visually abstracted landscape… Full Details

HCII Seminar Series: Carl DiSalvo Carl DiSalvo
Associate Professor; School of Literature, Media, and Communication; Georgia Institue of Technology
Design Experiments in Speculative Civics Design is increasingly involved in our public lives, giving form to issues and working to enable new modes of participation. Usually this takes an instrumental approach in which the goal is to use design to provide solutions to pressing or perceived matters… Full Details
HCII Seminar Series: Neil Alexander co-sponsored by QoLT Neil Alexander
Co-Founder, LiveLikeLou.org
Making the Choice to “Live Like Lou” In this inspiring presentation, Neil Alexander uses his personal experience of being diagnosed with ALS, the fatal disease commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease, to emphasize the real-life benefits that gratitude can provide. Using Lou Gehrig’s “Luckiest… Full Details
HCII Seminar Series: Chad Jones Chad Jones
"Transforming Human Interaction with our World Through the Internet of Things" The next paradigm shift in the Internet will be ability to address, sense and control literally anything in the physical world. Described as The Internet of Things (IoT), the Internet of Everything (IoE) and the… Full Details
HCII Seminar Series: Sarita Yardi Schoenebeck Sarita Yardi Schoenebeck
Assistant Professor, School of Information, University of Michigan
"Supporting Parents Online" Almost 30 years after Howard Rheingold’s 1986 account of parenting support he received on the WELL, parents have now become one of the most active demographics of social media users. Though there has been extensive interest in digital youth, little research has focused… Full Details
HCII Seminar: A New Era of IBM Design Phil Gilbert
General Manager, IBM Design

Great brands are known, in part, for the design of their products and for understanding how design can fuel client loyalty and longstanding relationships. Think about what makes you choose a product: it's not just about what it does, it's about the experience you have when using it; that is what… Full Details

HCII Seminar: Baking Data Into Design: User Experience at Google Laura Granka
Head of UX Research, Google+

The User Experience discipline has made great strides in recent years, especially towards tablet and mobile experiences. Understanding mobile device use is… Full Details

HCII Seminar - Ryan Brotman

HCII Seminar - Eytan Adar

HCII Seminar - Yu-ru Lin