BBL Series Test

BBL Speaker Series: Connecting Realities for Fluid Computer-Mediated Communication

Date: Dec 7th, 2023 12:30 PM

Speaker: Seongkook Heo, Assistant Professor, CS, University of Virginia

Location: HBK 2105 and Zoom Slides Here!

Abstract: Computers are more deeply integrated into our daily lives than ever before, and recent advancements in ML and AI technologies enable computers to comprehend the real world. However, using such capabilities for daily tasks still induces friction because of inefficient interactions with them.

In this talk, I will share my group's research on how we can better connect the physical and virtual worlds through the design and development of interactive systems. First, I will discuss how we can bring objects and interactions of the physical world into the virtual world to make virtual communication rich and frictionless. In many computer-mediated meetings, we not only share our faces and voices but also physical objects. We developed a remote meeting system that supports the instant conversion of physical objects into virtual objects to allow efficient sharing and manipulation of objects during the conversation.

Second, I will share how we can physicalize computation results into physical actions. Many projects and applications have demonstrated the use of AI in assisting users with visual impairments. However, computers usually only provide guidance feedback to the user and leave the interpretation of the feedback and the execution to the user, which can be cognitively heavy tasks. We suggested automated hand-based spatial guidance to bridge the gap between guidance and execution, allowing visually impaired users to move their hands between two points automatically. Finally, I will discuss the implications and remaining challenges in bridging the two realities.

Bio: Seongkook Heo is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. He has been working on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research, focusing on bridging the gap between physical and virtual worlds to make computers better support rich and nuanced human interactions by designing novel interactive systems and developing sensing and feedback technologies. His research has been published at top HCI venues, including CHI, UIST, and CSCW, and recognized by Best Paper and Poster Awards at CHI, MobileHCI, and IEEE VR. He is also the recipient of the Engineering Research Innovation Award at the University of Virginia and the Meta Research Award. He received his Ph.D. at KAIST and worked at the University of Toronto as a postdoctoral researcher before joining the University of Virginia.

Brown Bag Speaker Series: Student Lightning Talks

Date: Nov 16th, 2023 12:30 PM
Date: Thursday, November 16, 2023 Time: 12:30pm-1:30pm ET Talk Title: Student Lightning Talks Location: HBK 2105 and Zoom This BBL will be dedicated to four student lightning talks. We are excited to hear what they are working on! How do lightning talks work? Typically, people give a 4-5 minute “presentation” — this can be very informal or involve slides. The presentation gives some background on your project and then introduces a specific question or “ask” that you want feedback on. Then we have ~15 minutes of conversation with attendees about your question/topic. This is a great opportunity for students to get feedback on research ideas or projects in various stages. Talks are held in the HCIL (HBK2105), but if you can’t make it in person, register for Zoom here.

BBL Speaker Series: Student Lightning Talks

Date: Nov 16th, 2023 12:30 PM
Location: HBK 2105 and Zoom This BBL will be dedicated to four student lightning talks. We are excited to hear what they are working on! How do lightning talks work? Typically, people give a 4-5 minute “presentation” — this can be very informal or involve slides. The presentation gives some background on your project and then introduces a specific question or “ask” that you want feedback on. Then we have ~15 minutes of conversation with attendees about your question/topic. This is a great opportunity for students to get feedback on research ideas or projects in various stages.

BBL Speaker Series: I to Support Everyday Life for People with Dementia

Date: Oct 26th, 2023 12:30 PM

Speaker: Dr. Emma Dixon, Assistant Professor, Clemson University

Location: HBK 2105 and Zoom Watch Here! | Slides Here!

Abstract: We are seeing new AI systems for people with dementia, such as brain games which detect and diagnose cognitive impairment and smart-home systems to monitor the daily activities of people with dementia while caregivers are away. Although these are important areas of research, there are open opportunities to extend the use of AI to support individuals with dementia in a variety of different aspects of everyday life outside of diagnosis and monitoring. In this talk, Emma Dixon will briefly discuss her work in the area of AI for people experiencing age-related cognitive changes. The first study examines the technology accessibility needs of individuals with dementia, uncovering ways AI may be used to provide personalized solutions. The second study explores the ways tech-savvy people with dementia configure commercially available AI systems to support their everyday activities. Finally, the third study focuses on the design of future applications of AI to support the everyday life of people with dementia.

Bio: Dr. Emma Dixon is an Assistant Professor in Human-Computer Computing with a joint appointment in Industrial Engineering at Clemson University. Her research investigates technology use by neurodivergent individuals and people living with neurodegenerative conditions. In doing so, her research agenda is situated at the intersection of health information technology and cognitive accessibility research. Due to the complexity of this space, she takes a mixed methods approach, using qualitative methods to ground her work deeply in situated understanding of people’s experiences and quantitative methods to test the usability of emerging technologies. She earned her undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering at Clemson University and her PhD in Information Studies at University of Maryland, College Park. Her research has received a Dean’s Award for Outstanding iSchool Doctoral Paper, as well as a Best Paper Nomination and Honorable Mention awards at ASSETS and CSCW conferences. She has published her work in CHI, CSCW, ASSETS, JMIR Mental Health, Applied Ergonomics, and TACCESS. Her dissertation work was supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

BBL Speaker Series: Navigating the New Normal: An Exploration of Face-to -Face Design Meetings in the Era of Remote Work

Date: Oct 19th, 2023 12:30 PM

Speaker: Karen Holtzblatt Location: HBK 2105 and Zoom Watch Here!

Abstract: Advancements in technology, the globalization of companies, and a growing awareness of environmental issues have catalyzed a shift in work cultures, transforming traditional face-to-face meetings into online ones. The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated this transition, establishing videoconferencing as the prevailing mode of professional interaction. But now companies are asking workers to come back to the office at least some of the time. They cite better collaboration, information sharing, and coaching for early career folks. But is that true and what does it really mean? To find out, we 11 conducted deep dive interviews primarily with HCI professionals to understand their experience of working in person vs remotely or hybrid. HCI professionals often find themselves organizing, leading, facilitating, and participating in complex interactive meetings of various kinds: data synthesis, ideation, brainstorming, design review with whiteboarding, roadmapping, and project kickoffs. Our work complements recent research on Return-to-Work that has been conducted by surveys and gives a deeper understanding of what is going on. We sought to gain insights into these types of meetings and interactions to understand participants’ experiences and what works and what doesn’t. We hope these findings will helpguide both HCI professionals and companies as they choose when to be in-person and how to best run hybrid and remote meetings. We spoke with both senior people and early career professionals. Our insights are also against the backdrop of last year’s research into the experience of remote working during the pandemic and related literature. The presentation will tell stories of our experiences and explicate what drives people to bring people together for these complex meetings and what impacts the success of these meetings in any context. We will also describe the impact of the social dimension of working together. We discuss the need for a shared understanding, ensuring engagement, managing the meeting, and the powerful role of nonverbal communication as well as the need and desire for connection both for its own sake and for the sake of the work and career.

Bio: Karen Holtzblatt is a thought leader, industry speaker, and author. A recognized innovator in requirements and design, Karen has developed transformative design approaches throughout her career. She introduced Contextual Inquire and Contextual Design, the industry standard for understanding the customer and organizing that data to drive innovative product and service concepts. Her newest book Contextual Design 2nd Edition Design for Life is used by companies and universities worldwide. Karen co-founded InContext Design in 1992 with Hugh Beyer to use Contextual Design techniques to coach product teams and deliver market data and design solutions to businesses across scores of industries in many countries. As CEO of InContext, Karen has worked with product, application, and design teams for over 30 years. Karen is also the driving force behind the Women in Tech Retention Project housed at witops.org. WITops research explores why women in technology professions leave the field and creates tested interventions to help women thrive and succeed. Her new book with Nicola Marsden, Retaining Women in Tech: Shifting the Paradigm shares the work. Karen consults with companies to help them understand their diverse teams and improve retention, team cohesion, and equal participation by all. As a member of ACM SIGCHI (The Association of Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction) Karen was awarded membership to the CHI Academy a gathering of significant contributors and received the first Lifetime Award for Practice for her impact on the field. Karen has also been an Adjunct Research Scientist at the University of Maryland’s iSchool (College of Information Studies). Karen has worked with many universities to help design curriculum for training user experience professionals. Karen has more than 30 years of teaching experience professionally, at conferences and university settings. She holds a doctorate in applied psychology from the University of Toronto.

BBL Speaker Series: Towards a Science of Human-AI Decision Making: Empirical Understandings, Computational Models, and Intervention Designs

Date: Oct 12th, 2023 12:30 PM
Speaker: Ming Yin, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Purdue University Location: HBK 2105 and Zoom < Watch Here!

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have been increasingly integrated into human workflows. For example, the usage of AI-based decision aids in human decision-making processes has resulted in a new paradigm of human-AI decision making—that is, the AI-based decision aid provides a decision recommendation to the human decision makers, while humans make the final decision. The increasing prevalence of human-AI collaborative decision making highlights the need to understand how humans and AI collaborate with each other in these decision-making processes, and how to promote the effectiveness of these collaborations. In this talk, I'll discuss a few research projects that my group carries out on empirically understanding how humans trust the AI model via human-subject experiments, quantitatively modeling humans' adoption of AI recommendations, and designing interventions to influence the human-AI collaboration outcomes (e.g., improve human-AI joint decision-making performance).

Bio: Ming Yin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Purdue University. Her current research interests include human-AI interaction, crowdsourcing and human computation, and computational social sciences. She completed her Ph.D. in Computer Science at Harvard University and received her bachelor's degree from Tsinghua University. Ming was the Conference Co-Chair of AAAI HCOMP 2022. Her work was recognized with multiple best paper (CHI 2022, CSCW 2022, HCOMP 2020) and best paper honorable mention awards (CHI 2019, CHI 2016).

BBL Series: Mastering the Paper Review Process

Date: Oct 5th, 2023 12:30 PM
Location: HBK 2105 and Zoom

Abstract: Even if you didn’t submit a paper to this year’s CHI conference, if you’re doing research, you probably know something about the review process. For most journals and conferences, submitted papers are read by 2-4 anonymous reviewers, who provide written feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of the paper and decide whether a paper should be accepted, rejected, or revised. But what should go into the review process? And how should you respond to reviews? In this session, we’ll discuss tips and tricks for being an effective reviewer, how to provide constructive criticism, and how to respond to reviewer comments. Bring your questions and experiences with reviewing, and learn more about the ups and downs of academic publishing.

BBL Series: Mastering the Paper Review Process

Date: Oct 5th, 2023 12:30 PM
Location: HBK 2105 and Zoom

Abstract: Even if you didn’t submit a paper to this year’s CHI conference, if you’re doing research, you probably know something about the review process. For most journals and conferences, submitted papers are read by 2-4 anonymous reviewers, who provide written feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of the paper and decide whether a paper should be accepted, rejected, or revised. But what should go into the review process? And how should you respond to reviews? In this session, we’ll discuss tips and tricks for being an effective reviewer, how to provide constructive criticism, and how to respond to reviewer comments. Bring your questions and experiences with reviewing, and learn more about the ups and downs of academic publishing.

BBL Speaker Series: Successful Aging in Digital Era

Date: Sep 28th, 2023 12:30 PM

Speaker: Dr. Madina Khamzina, postdoctoral associate, Department of Family Science, School of Public Health, University of Maryland Location: HBK 2105 and Zoom

Watch Here! | Slides Here!

Abstract: This talk discusses the opportunities and challenges of technology to support successful aging. The population of people aged 65 and older is growing faster than any other age group worldwide. While people are living longer, it's crucial to ask whether those additional years are being lived healthier and happier. Successful aging has become a central priority at both societal and individual health levels. Technology holds the promise to significantly contribute to successful aging in various ways. For example, keeping people physically active, enabling independent living through fall detection and smart home technology, aiding in the early detection and management of diseases, as well as helping maintain social connections to reduce isolation. Keeping in mind that aging in the digital era presents its own set of challenges, we need to ensure that technologies are inclusive and accessible to everyone regardless of age. Addressing the specific needs and older adults’ factors is crucial in the endeavor to reap the benefits of technology for successful aging.

Bio: Madina earned her Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in December 2022. She is currently a postdoctoral associate at the School of Public Health and is primarily focused on work with the University of Maryland Extension Services. While working in the Human Factors and Aging Lab in Illinois, she became passionate about the role of technology in supporting successful aging. She is a principal investigator for a research project the University of Maryland Extension that is aimed to assess the needs and challenges of broadband internet and technology adoption among older adults in Maryland.

BBL Speaker Series: Research Speed Dating

Date: Sep 21st, 2023 12:30 PM
Time: 12:30pm-1:30pm ET Location: HBK 2105 This week we’ll do another round of our experimenting with “research speed dating”! If it’s anything like the last iteration of this in the Spring, it’ll be a fun time to hear from each other about what we’re brainstorming/working on, and give feedback in a lightweight, informal, low-stakes setup!

Sharing the Productivity Tools & Tips That Help You Get Work Done

Date: Feb 2nd, 2023 12:30 PM
There are hundreds of productivity apps and tools to help you get work done--far too many for any one person to go through and figure out what works best for them. In this week's BBL, we want you to share the tools, apps, and tips you use to help you in your research, classwork, and writing. How do you stay organized? What helps you be productive? What are things that didn't work for you? We'll talk about what people like and don't and run some quick demos during this BBL. Fill out this form to share what you use. Join us in the lab (HBK-2105) or on Zoom to hear about cool tools and to share the ones you use!