DEPARTMENT: Labz
Human-Centered, Self-Improving Websites: Big Lab, Carnegie Mellon University
By Chaehyeon (Chae) Kim, January 2025
By Chaehyeon (Chae) Kim, January 2025
A reflection on our learnings from the CHI 2022 "Dreaming Disability Justice in HCI" workshop, and why we continue to call for disability justice, despite the limitations of how we practice it within academia and industry.
By Cella M. Sum, Franchesca Spektor, Rahaf Alharbi, Leya Breanna Baltaxe-Admony, Erika Devine, Hazel Anneke Dixon, Jared Duval, Tessa Eagle, Frank Elavsky, Kim Fernandes, Leandro S. Guedes, Serena Hillman, Vaishnav Kameswaran, Lynn Kirabo, Tamanna Motahar, Kathryn E. Ringland, Anastasia Schaadhardt, Laura Scheepmaker, Alicia Williamson, June 2024
How does the built environment affect our brain? The way we perceive our environments plays a crucial role in how our brains respond to cognitive load. Understanding the impact of spatial complexities on our cognitive processes could inform future design guidelines for more responsive environments.
By Mirna Zordan, Seungwoo Je, May 2024
Reconstructing the network of life from molecular data is a complicated task. How can computational algebraic geometry play a role?
By Bowen Du, May 2024
Patrick Chwalek's research is focused on understanding various ecosystems and the living organisms within them. He has been creating a range of systems and tools, including wearables and environmental sensor systems, for researchers to use in the wild. In this interview, Chwalek talks about his experiences of deploying these systems outside the laboratory and shares his insights gained from studying different environments.
By Cathy Mengying Fang, Patrick Chwalek, May 2024
By Elizabeth Churchill, February 2024
By Eric J. Gonzalez, February 2024
By Alaina Smith, Juan Gilbert, February 2024
By Safinah Ali, Daniella DiPaola, October 2023
As HRI researchers, designers, and developers we need to reflect on the ways that power pervades the social contexts we're designing for and in. What can we do, with the power we have as designers, to produce more equitable HRI?
By Katie Winkle, October 2023
By Zhongxuan He, October 2023
Research on creativity support tools in human-computer interaction often focuses on novel interaction design, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Let's dive deeper and help creative activities "in the wild."
By Jun Kato, June 2023
We are surrounded by objects that have been designed and made for a wide range of purposes. Alongside the development of specialized electronic devices, we can look to these objects as a functional resource for tangible computing. By deconstructing such everyday objects and uncovering their structures, they become a material that can be remade into new physical interactive systems.
By Clement Zheng, June 2023
Interactive murals integrate electronics into traditional murals to create a new kind of public art as well as a new kind of large-scale and community-situated technology. This article introduces interactive murals along with a set of activities designed to engage young people in technology and the arts. We describe the process and outcome of workshops in which a muralist, two interaction design researchers, and a group of diverse teenagers designed and built a large-scale interactive mural on the exterior wall of a local building.
By Alyshia Bustos, Nanibah Chacon, Leah Buechley, June 2023
Scientists, artists, and engineers are innovating with digital fabrication machines, yet they lack effective tools to program machines for unconventional tasks. We argue for programming language foundations to empower these practitioners to build bespoke fabrication workflows for themselves.
By Jasper Tran O'Leary, Gabrielle Benabdallah, Nadya Peek, June 2023
How do you decide which papers to cite, how many, and from which particular sources? We reflect and discuss the implications of these critical questions based on our experiences in the panel and workshops on the topic of citational justice that took place at CSCW, CLIHC, and India HCI in 2021.
By Amy Ogan, Frederick van Amstel, Gabriela Molina León, Juan Fernando Maestre, Kristin Williams, Nicola J Bidwell, Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar, Saiph Savage, Sushil Oswal, Vishal Sharma, April 2023
The arrival of new generative AI tools is creating waves. Here are some ideas for how we could channel them for supporting self-development and learning.
By Joanne Leong, April 2023
In this curation of his work, performance artist Stelarc, explains the process of extending his body and his self while exploring movement, sound, and autonomy.
By Stelarc, January 2023
HCI researchers and practitioners of all backgrounds need to consider the role WEIRD-ness plays in HCI methods, research, and communities and the impact that has on marginalized communities.
By Leslie Coney, July 2022
Auriel Wright talks about her work on advancing fairness and equity in computer vision at Google.
By Adinawa Adjagbodjou, July 2022
This interview explores the relationship between social computing technology and decolonization and the relationship between coloniality and computing research.
By Jordan Taylor, July 2022
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, "essential work" became a calling card for the labor that kept the country running. But the activity of essential workers often occurs out of sight. For example, the products of waste workers are everywhere---clean floors, sanitized tables, objects made from recycled plastics---though workers themselves are often behind the scenes.
By Franchesca Spektor, Estefania Rodriguez, Samantha Shorey, Sarah Fox, January 2022
Existing tools for digital self-control strongly rely on users' self-regulation strategies and capabilities. Recent work, however, highlights the importance of proactively assisting users in learning how to use technology through customizable and adaptable interventions.
By Alberto Monge Roffarello, Luigi De Russis, September 2021
Email notifications are constantly calling for our attention, and the volume of emails is ever-increasing. A research group at the University of California, Irvine explores how managing the inbox affects stress for different working populations.
By Fatema Akbar, September 2021
How might computing support us in becoming our better, more emotionally resilient selves? We explore this in an interview with the team from Microsoft Research's Human Understanding and Empathy group.
By Xuhai Xu, Karan Ahuja, Jasmine Lu, Mary Czerwinski, Jina Suh, Gonzalo Ramos, September 2021
Climate change is one symptom reflecting a larger problem of how we humans view ourselves as separate from the environment. How can computation and design help us expand our perception so we can better attend to the natural world?
By Malika Khurana, June 2021
Whatever you do in your life, you can bring it all together to find your place. This is a story about the twists and turns of life---from architecture to HCI.
By Jeni Paay, March 2021
Understanding agency and empowerment outside the Global North.
By Maryam Mustafa, March 2021
This article is from the perspective of an Egyptian HCI educator who explores "designing" inclusive designers, and how decolonial thinking can address inclusion in HCI education as one possible critical lens.
By Shaimaa Lazem, March 2021
As interaction researchers strive to make sense of the forest, they should not lose sight of the trees.
By Christofer Rydenfält, Johanna Persson, April 2020
In the future, small portable devices will be available for all kinds of purposes, not least as a support for people with different kinds of impairments. But is this purely a good development or are there possible dangers? In the latter case, how can we find a proper balance?
By Lars Oestreicher, September 2019
Opaque algorithms get to score and choose in many areas using their own inscrutable logic. To whom are said algorithms held accountable? And what is being done to ensure explainability of these algorithms?
By Tim Miller, April 2019
The XRDS blog highlights a range of topics from conference coverage, to security and privacy, to CS theory. Selected blog posts, edited for print, are featured in every issue. Please visit xrds.acm.org/blog to read each post in its entirety. If you are interested in joining as a student blogger, please contact us.
By Maria Gaci, January 2019
A journey spanning Nigeria, the United States, and Tanzania, is one woman's search for meaning and validation as a computer scientist.
By Judith Uchidiuno, October 2018
By Sauvik Das, October 2018
By Lining Yao, October 2018
Knowing who we represent in HCI helps us understand what is at stake. Intersectionality can help us do better.
By Ari Schlesinger, December 2017
By Yannai A. Gonczarowski, Gustavo F. Tondello, September 2017
Video games inspire new tools for creating engaging user experiences.
By Lennart E. Nacke, September 2017
Gameful elements and persuasive strategies can motivate and encourage people to take charge of their health and achieve their ultimate wellness goal.
By Dennis L. Kappen, Rita Orji, September 2017
Gamification is manipulation; at least that is what many people think. Because gamification is a powerful tool for modifying behaviors, how we should consider ethics specifically for gamification?
By Andrzej Marczewski, September 2017
What can 1,000 scientists achieve when they invest one hour doing voluntary work?
By Nur Al-huda Hamdan, September 2016
Improving user experience through game play.
By Gustavo Fortes Tondello, September 2016
By Ahmed Ansari, Raghavendra Kandala, June 2016
Bringing African theorists into the construction of African identity in HCI.
By Nicola J. Bidwell, June 2016
How can the ideas of timelessness and anachronism contribute to the decolonization of design practices in Latin America?
By Luiza Prado de O. Martins, Pedro J. S. Vieira de Oliveira, June 2016
By Jennifer Jacobs, April 2016
By Stefanie Mueller, Nadya Peek, April 2016
By David Byrd, April 2016
The XRDS blog highlights a range of topics from conference coverage, to security and privacy, to CS theory. Selected blog posts, edited for print, are featured in every issue. Please visit xrds.acm.org/blog to read each post in its entirety. If you are interested in joining as a student blogger, please contact us.
By Andrew J. Hunsucker, April 2016
Artistic style is an important aspect for creative practice. However giving away some computational control over digital design and fabrication is necessary in order to engage designers in a higher-risk practice that enhances attention, creative decision making, and product ownership.
By Amit Zoran, April 2016
Fully automated digital fabrication tools are the darling of the personal fabrication movement, but they may not be the best format for harnessing digital fabrication for personal use. Instead we should be developing tools that work cooperatively with users to augment natural abilities rather than eliminate human involvement altogether.
By Ilan Moyer, April 2016
Despite the recent proliferation of easy-to-use personal fabrication devices, designing custom objects that are useful remains challenging. RFID technology can allow designers to easily embed rich and robust interaction in custom creations at low cost.
By Andrew Spielberg, Alanson Sample, Scott E. Hudson, Jennifer Mankoff, James McCann, April 2016
Today's 3-D printing hobbyists churn out kilos of static trinkets. These existing machines can further help them create functional objects, if new perspectives and designs are employed.
By Valkyrie Savage, April 2016
File formats for additive manufacturing are lagging behind the capabilities of 3-D printing technology itself, and no one is doing anything about it.
By Jesse Louis-Rosenberg, April 2016
3-D printing could herald new advances in sustainable production, that is, so long as it does not become a sustainability hazard itself.
By David Rejeski, April 2016
By Adrian Scoică, April 2016
The ultimate goal of the Internet of Things and wearable revolution is to gift every person with their own magic genie, who will understand all of their needs and desires and thereby enrich the world around them.
By Jonathan Caras, December 2015
Virtual reality users are torn between the real and virtual worlds. Determining how, and when, to show elements of reality in a virtual view is key to providing usable VR experiences.
By Daniel Boland, Mark McGill, November 2015
If the physical side effects associated with virtual reality are not managed, the widespread adoption of VR may come to a halt.
By Lisa Rebenitsch, November 2015
By Adrian Scoică, November 2015
By Andrea Stevenson Won, November 2015
Creating a user experience to communicate the seriousness of HIV prevention and awareness can be both educational while entertaining. This combination along with a sense of cultural influence helps to both attract and engage millennials.
By Fay Cobb Payton, KaMar Galloway, December 2014
Increasingly, personal health data can be tracked and integrated from numerous streams quickly and easily, but our feedback lingers in the land of "show the user a graph and hope." How can we help people make sense of personal health data?
By Matthew Kay, December 2014
A look at how athletic performance can be measured outside of the laboratory.
By Christina Strohrmann, Gerhard Tröster, December 2013
Digital activity sensors are no longer confined to research labs; they're in the wild and they come in lime green. They offer the promise to improve our health and even to affect the ways that we interact with others.
By Andrew Miller, December 2013
Using activity recognition for cognitive tasks can provide new insights about reading and learning habits.
By Kai Kunze, December 2013
When utilizing internal sensors, modern smartphones are inexpensive and powerful wearable devices for sensor data acquisition, processing, and feedback in personal daily health applications.
By Gabriele Spina, Oliver Amft, December 2013
The design, construction, and deployment of a pressure-enhanced IMU system that fits in the bottom of your shoe.
By Rolf Adelsberger, December 2013
Brain computer interfaces are still restricted to the domains of health and research, but we understand what needs to be done and are getting closer to making a commercial wearable EEG system.
By Viswam Nathan, December 2013
Accepting the habitual system as an inseparable part of our minds, understanding its limitation and the way it works, may help us to achieve our long-term goals.
By Gidi Nave, September 2013
The newly launched XRDS blog highlights a range of topics from conference overviews to privacy and security, from HCI to cryptography. Selected blog posts, edited for print, will be featured in every issue. Please visit xrds.acm.org/blog to read each post in its entirety.
By Wolfgang Richter, Dimitris Mitropoulos, December 2012
Although mobile technology has the power to vastly improve healthcare delivery in developing regions, many issues can affect the success of mHealth systems.
By Atanu Garai, December 2012
How a forthcoming user experience (UX) lab will meet the needs of the African technology community.
By Mark Kamau, Angela Crandall, Kagonya Awori, December 2012
By Angela Crandall, Rhoda Omenya, December 2012
By Matthew Kay, Dimitris Mitropoulos, Wolfgang Richter, Lora Oehlberg, Lea Rosen, September 2012
By Evan M. Peck, Erin T. Solovey, September 2011
Research teams from around the world reflect on their brain sensing setups.
By Evan M. Peck, Erin T. Solovey, September 2011
It would be wise for stakeholders to organize and establish guidelines in order to prevent BCI from becoming a passing fad.
By Brendan Allison, September 2011
Can information presented below the threshold of consciousness be used to provide support to the users of interactive computer systems?
By Ryan Kelly, September 2011
For 30% of the population, lack of access to home-energy monitoring devices translates into a lack of power---in more ways than one.
By Tawanna Dillahunt, Jennifer Mankoff, June 2011
Building eco-friendly homes with occupant intelligence as the foundation.
By Johnny Rodgers, Lyn Bartram, Rob Woodbury, June 2011
Labor-on-demand---it's like cloud computing but with human workers.
By Lukas Biewald, December 2010
An associate professor at New York Universitys Stern School of Business uncovers answers about who are the employers in paid crowdsourcing, what tasks they post, and how much they pay.
By Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis, December 2010
A professor and several PhD students at MIT examine the challenges and opportunities in human computation.
By Robert C. Miller, Greg Little, Michael Bernstein, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Lydia B. Chilton, Max Goldman, John J. Horton, Rajeev Nayak, December 2010
Can people help computers solve challenging optimization problems?
By Michael Mitzenmacher, December 2010
Paid crowd workers are not just an API call---but all too often, they are treated like one.
By M. Six Silberman, Lilly Irani, Joel Ross, December 2010
To find out how Amazon.com runs its marketplace for crowdsourced labor, we spoke to the vice president at the company responsible for it.
By Nelson Zhang, December 2010
While computing has advanced exponentially, almost explosively, since the 1970s, input devices have only just begun to change. Why?
By Johnny Chung Lee, June 2010
Pens may seem old-fashioned, but some researchers think they are the future of interaction. Can they teach this old dog some new tricks?
By Gordon Kurtenbach, June 2010
Tap. Slide. Swipe. Shake. Tangible user interfaces have some scientists toying around with stuff you can really put your hands on.
By Sergi Jordà, Carles F. Julià, Daniel Gallardo, June 2010
Enabling mobile micro-interactions with physiological computing.
By Desney Tan, Dan Morris, T. Scott Saponas, June 2010
Brain-computer interfaces have the potential to change the way we use devices, and there are at least four methods for implementation.
By Evan Peck, Krysta Chauncey, Audrey Girouard, Rebecca Gulotta, Francine Lalooses, Erin Treacy Solovey, Doug Weaver, Robert Jacob, June 2010
By David Chiu, June 2010
While touchscreens allow extensive programmability and have become ubiquitous in today's gadgetry, such configurations lack the tactile sensations and feedback that physical buttons provide. As a result, these devices require more attention to use than their button-enabled counterparts. Still, the displays provide the ultimate interface flexibility and thus afford a much larger design space to application developers.
By Chris Harrison, Scott Hudson, September 2009
By Justin Solomon, March 2009
By Steve Clough, March 2009
This article describes a technique to visualize query results, representing purchase orders placed on Amazon.com, along a traditional 2-D scatter plot and a space-filling spiral. We integrate 3-D objects that vary their spatial placement, color, and texture properties into a visualization algorithm. This algorithm represents important aspects of a purchase order based on experimental results from human vision, computer graphics, and psychology. The resulting visual abstractions are used by viewers to rapidly and effectively explore and analyze the underlying purchase orders data.
By Amit Prakash Sawant, Christopher G. Healey, Dongfeng Chen, Rada Chirkova, March 2009
By Caio Camargo, March 2009
By Justin Solomon, December 2008
By Joonghoon Lee, December 2008
This project visualizes a scientific dataset containing two-dimensional flow data from a simulated supernova collapse provided by astrophysics researchers. We started our project by designing visualizations using multiple hand drawings representing the flow data without taking into consideration the implementation constraints of our designs. We implemented a few of our hand drawn designs. We used an assortment of simple geometric graphical objects, called glyphs, such as, dots, lines, arrows, and triangles to represent the flow at each sample point. We also incorporated transparency in our visualizations. We identified two important goals for our project: (1) design different types of graphical glyphs to support flexibility in their placement and in their ability to represent multidimensional data elements, and (2) build an effective visualization technique that uses glyphs to represent the two-dimensional flow field.
By Amit Prakash Sawant, Christopher G. Healey, December 2007
By Damien Marshall, Tomas Ward, Séamus McLoone, December 2006
By Umer Farooq, May 2006
By Joshua B. Gross, December 2005
By Kibum Kim, December 2005
By Hossein Mobahi, Karrie G. Karahalios, December 2005
By Kayre Hylton, Mary Beth Rosson, John Carroll, Craig Ganoe, December 2005
By Umer Farooq, December 2005
By Donald Norman, September 2002
By Wendy A. Schafer, Doug A. Bowman, John M. Carroll, September 2002
By Lynellen D. S. Perry, June 2002
By Michael Brown, April 2002
By Marie desJardins, December 2001
By Norbert J. Kubilus, September 2000
By Theodore Chiasson, Carrie Gates, September 2000
By Lynellen D. S. Perry, November 1999
Doctoral students often find it hard to understand at what level of productivity they should be. Through an analysis of resums of doctoral students in the Management Information Systems (MIS) field, a better understanding of what is expected of current students as compared to former students is achieved. Both conference presentations and publications in journals are examined. Finally, there is an examination of whether the quantity of publications can be related to the ranking of the school that a student attends.
By Kai Larsen, November 1998
Explanation is an important feature that needs to be integrated into software products. Early software that filled the horizontal software market (such as word processors) contained help systems. More specialized systems, known as expert systems, were developed to produce solutions that required specific domain knowledge of the problem being solved. The expert systems initially produced results that were consistent with the results produced by experts, but the expert systems only mimicked the rules the experts outlined. The decisions provided by expert systems include no justification, thus causing users to doubt the results reported by the system. If the user was dealing with a human expert, he could ask for a line of reasoning used to draw the conclusion. The line of reasoning provided by the human expert could then be inspected for discrepancies by another expert or verified in some other manner. Software systems need better explanations of how to use them and how they produce results. This will allow the users to take advantage of the numerous features being provided and increase their trust in the software product.
By Bruce A. Wooley, September 1998
By Lynellen D. S. Perry, September 1998
By Erika Dawn Gernand, May 1998
By Marianne G. Petersen, May 1998
By Phil Agre, May 1998
By Susan E. Yager, October 1997
Frameless Rendering (FR) is a rendering paradigm which performs stochastic temporal filtering by updating pixels in a random order, based on most recent available input data, and displaying them to the screen immediately [1]. This is a departure from frame-based approaches commonly experienced in interactive graphics. A typical interactive graphics session uses a single input state to compute an entire frame. This constrains the state to be known at the time the first pixel's value is computed. Frameless Rendering samples inputs many times during the interval which begins at the start of the first pixel's computation and ends with the last pixel's computation. Thus, Frameless Rendering performs temporal supersampling - it uses more samples over time. This results in an approximation to motion blur, both theoretically and perceptually.This paper explores this motion blur and its relationship to: camera open shutter time, current computer graphics motion-blur implementations, temporally anti-aliased images, and the Human Visual System's (HVS) motion smear quality (see 'quality' footnote) [2].Finally, we integrate existing research results to conjecture how Frameless Rendering can use knowledge of the Human Visual System's blurred retinal image to direct spatiotemporal sampling. In other words, we suggest importance sampling (see 'sampling' footnote) by prioritizing pixels for computation based on their importance to the visual system in discerning what is occurring in an interactive image sequence.
By Ellen J. Scher Zagier, May 1997
By Phil Agre, May 1997
By Matt Cutts, May 1997
By Sofia C. DeFernandez, April 1997
Contemporary computers predominantly employ graphical user interfaces (GUIS) and colour is a major componenet of the GUI. Every man-machine interface is composed of two major parts:the man and the machine [4]. Color interfaces are no different in that they are also based on two parts, the Human visual system (HVS) and a color display system. A theoretical examination of these two components establishes a foundation for developing practical guidelines for color interfaces. This paper will briefly examine theoretical aspects of both components and established techniques and tools for the effective use of color for software interface design.
By Peggy Wright, Diane Mosser-Wooley, Bruce Wooley, April 1997
By Ian MacColl, David Carrington, April 1997
By Christopher M. Smith, April 1997
By Michael A. Grasso, Tim Finin, April 1997
Virtual Reality hype is becoming a large part of everyday life. This paper explores the components of actual virtual reality systems, critiquing each in terms of human factors. The hardware and software of visual, aural, and haptic input and feedback are considered. Technical and human factor difficulties are discussed and some potential solutions are offered.
By Lynellen D. S. Perry, Christopher M. Smith, Steven Yang, April 1997
By Lynellen D. S. Perry, September 1996
By Jack Wilson, September 1996
By Jack Wilson, February 1996
By Saul Jimenez, May 1995
By Lorrie Faith Cranor, May 1995
By Adam Lake, May 1995
By Sara M. Carlstead, May 1995
By Bradley M. Kuhn, February 1995
By Lorrie Faith Cranor, February 1995