Research Tweets

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

Yes, on May 25, 2011, #HCIL was “trending” in the Washington DC area on Twitter (see screen grab by Jen Golbeck below).  What does this mean?  Amazingly for the first time in the Human-Computer Interaction Lab’s (HCIL) 28 years, so many of us were tweeting about the Lab’s Symposium on Twitter, we were among the top ten items people were talking about online in the Washington-area. Why care? Because more people than ever can now be a part of a research event through social media.

#HCIL Trending on Twitter in the Washington DC area, May 25, 2011

The Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL)  is the oldest HCI lab in the country, possibly the world.  The lab is incredibly interdisciplinary with faculty, staff, and students coming from 9 colleges and 2 institutes at the University of Maryland.  The lab is jointly administered by the iSchool, Computer Science Department, and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies.  Until a few days ago, I had the honor of being the lab’s Director for 5 years (I’m happy to say iSchool Faculty member, Jen Golbeck has taken over as the HCIL’s 4^th director).

Each year at the end of the spring, the lab shares its work through an annual Symposium .  This year we presented talks, demos, workshops, and tutorials on social network technologies, electronic health record informatics, interaction design and children, information visualization, consumer health informatics, and more.  People presented the technologies they built, or discussed the empirical work they’d done and the lessons they’d learned, or talked about the design methods they used to make the new technologies. (See picture of demo session) This year at the Symposium we had over 300 HCI-interested professionals flying in from the UK, China, Indiana, or taking the metro from Washington DC and more. While this was one of the largest Symposiums we’ve ever hosted at the University, we also had the largest virtual presence of participants with many who followed the Symposium’s happenings and discussions through tweets.

Demonstrations during the HCIL Annual Symposium

One our favorite tweets of the two days was from someone outside of the lab, Brian Danielak (otherwise known as @Capbri) a second-year Ph.D. student in Science Education in the College of Education at the University of Maryland.  He said in his 140 characters: "The #hcil has an astoundingly positive research culture. Why can't more academic research groups be like this?"  This tweet prompted Erika Shehan Poole (@verbicidal) an assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University to ask, “What are some of the #hcil best practices for fostering positivity in research culture? help other groups learn!” What was so wonderful about this exchange is that Erica is someone entirely outside of our University and did not even attend the symposium, but was able to be a part of the discussion!

Well, Ben Bederson (@bederson), one of the former Directors of the HCIL did respond with 6 more tweets offering his suggestions for best practices:

“Best practices for #HCIL: Start by reading @benbendc '93 article - http://bit.ly/lFzV0e”

“Second: *always* treat colleagues with respect. Their successes are your successes. #HCIL”

“Third: critique with grace. Be honest, but no one should *ever* leave a meeting crying. #HCIL”

“Fourth: Focus your work on what you love. Life is too short to do what you *should* do. #HCIL”

“Fifth: Only hire people you want to have lunch with every day. #HCIL”

“Sixth: Marry your colleagues :) Our Fourth CHIple is joining #HCIL next year.”

The only tweet that was questioned was the number of married couples in the lab ;) It turns out we will have 5 married couples as of January (Ben Bederson and I are one of those couples).  If you want to see the some of the other backchannel tweeting, you can do so by searching for “#HCIL” on Twitter.  There you’ll find everything from pointers to articles that reporters wrote about our talks: “@lintool: This Is What a Sabbatical at Twitter Looks Like - @chronicle article: http://bit.ly/ivgCNJ #HCIL” to short descriptions of what was happening: “@cydparr: Morning of demos at #hcil open house. Quick GUI help scripting using screenshots, spatial ability & mobile apps, citation snippets & more” to kind words from our participants: “@ieleta: I wished for a longer EventGraph presentation by @shakmatt, so interesting! #hcil symposium” (see an EventGraph image that Derek Hansen presented below)

A Twitter EventGraph created in NodeXL that shows part of the Twitter conversation about the HCIL symposium. See http://casci.umd.edu/HCIL2011 for details

All in all, it was a wonderful way to continue the research excitement, the exchange of ideas, and enjoy the 28^th Annual HCIL Symposium. See you next year (at UMD or tweeting)!

Growing Research Energy

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

The other day, I received this one line email: “I’ve had two of the best Ph.D. days ever!” It was from iSchool doctoral student, Greg Walsh.  He had just finished two days of being in the CHI2011 Doctoral Consortium.  I knew when I suggested to Greg he apply months ago, he would love meeting students and faculty from around the world thinking about Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) issues.  But what I didn’t expect was how much Greg would take away from his two days of mentorship at this Doctoral Consortium.
 

During this consortium, each doctoral student got a chance to present their in-progress dissertation research and then received feedback from a small group of culturally diverse, multi-disciplinary HCI graduate students and faculty.  They suggested which research methods and design might be of use, how to best focus and present the work, and strategies to move the research forward. As Greg explained to me a few days ago, “It was awesome being able to see how far I’d come and how my work related to other doctoral students’ research.  Maryland really prepared me in ways I wouldn’t have guessed with my research.”  When we talked further, Greg explained, “Not a lot of people are thinking about design methods for creating new technologies.  People may mention it as a part of their research in developing new technologies, but not as much about how to change design methods.  I was psyched to see how different but useful my research is.”

Greg also explained to me that lately he’d not been feeling very excited about his research, but the doctoral consortium energized him in so many ways.  The suggestions he received and the good interest in his work were extremely motivating.  He also pointed out that meeting these graduate students and faculty made him feel much more connected to CHI conference community.  It’s not every day that a graduate student can walk into an international conference of 2700 people and feel comfortable and welcomed.

The CHI2011 Conference (photo by: articpenguin)

The doctoral consortium is one of several CHI venues in which students can connect with colleagues. The CHI Student Design and Student Research Competitions afford undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to present their work to senior researchers as well as their peers. Beth Bonsignore, one of our iSchool doctoral students earned a spot in the Student Research Competition. Reflecting on her experience she shared: “All of the students in our competition received the undivided attention of experienced researchers for almost 3 hours. I learned a great deal about how to frame a compelling story about my work and had some great discussions about how I might extend it. I also had a chance to hear about the work of other students from all over the world, and share my thoughts about the worldwide use of mobile storytelling application designed for children. Where else can you get such an opportunity to connect with future collaborators?”

Beth Bonsignore & Jes Koepfler at the CHI2011 Conference (photo by: articpenguin)

This excitement and connectedness could also be found with our doctoral students who were “student volunteers” or as they’re affectionately called, “SVs.”  This year three of our doctoral students were a part of this CHI conference program: Beth Bonsignore, Jes Koepfler, and Jason Yip.   In exchange for 20 hours of volunteer time they were given free conference registration, all meals, and reduced hotel costs.  While the conference could not exist without the 150 students that do this each year, the students get so much more out of the deal.  They get a chance to network with HCI students from around the world, meet and help HCI researchers from companies, universities, and non-profit organizations they might never otherwise get a chance to.  

For example, during one SV lunch, when Beth Bonsignore and Jes Koepfler learned about the “cooking competencies” research being done by a fellow SV at Michigan, they connected him with Jason Yip, who has been designing a “kitchen chemistry” curriculum. Jason discussed the potential for future collaboration with his new-found colleague and me. Through the SV network, a new research area in chemistry education, human-computer interaction, and social media was born. Jason was so excited, he shared, “This has been an amazing experience because of how I get a chance to interact, not only with educators in my field, but with programmers, technology designers, and other people that have a vested interest in education.” At least 5 fellow SVs told Jason, Jes, and Beth how they published papers with student colleagues they met at past conferences. 

Jes Koepfler also an iSchool SV at CHI met people who broadened her thinking in exciting ways.  Jes’s doctoral research is at the intersection of marginalized populations and social media. As a result of attending CHI she was able to attend the session on "Homeless Users" and introduce herself and her work to some of the leading thinkers in the HCI community on this topic (Jill Palzkill Woelfer of the University of Washington, and Chris Le Dantec of Georgia Tech). 

The yearly CHI conference is not the only professional conference that can offer these important experiences for our students.  But all too often when we think about what graduate students should be doing, conferences seem to fall to the bottom of the list.  The CHI conference reminded us this past week that conferences should be on the top of our list when it comes to growing our research energy.

The Seeds of Research

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

I had an hour the other day with a doctoral student in our program who reminded me why I love research.  Clay (Eliezer) Templeton told me this incredible story of how he built an Adroid App for his synagogue’s Rabbi and a few weeks later he found himself being interviewed by CNN. It was an app to help people prepare for Passover, which had little to do with his doctoral research.  And he happened to mention that while he had some programming experience, he hadn’t programmed an app until he just decided one day to help out.  The funny thing is now that Clay’s gotten a taste of mobile application programming, he’s found out he really likes it!  So I asked him, how he thought he could use this new-found-fun to add to his research?  And then we started brainstorming about perhaps building an app that collects data or one that gets users more involved in the topic he cared about.  After an hour, it was clear that the seeds of research were sown.
 

This well-spent hour reminded me that you just never know where you will find inspiration for your research.  When starting a Ph.D. program, the one thing we do know is that doctoral students can never be sure what will inspire, excite, or interest them.  When those seeds start to sprout it’s in the most amazing times and places!

Sometimes the seeds of research are sown for faculty when we get the chance to work with talented people outside of the university.  This happened to two of our Assistant Professors, Paul Jaeger, and Mega Subramaniam and iSchool doctoral student, Lesley Langa.  They came upon the chance to work with Pino Monaco from the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies and Beth Ziebarth from the Smithsonian Institution Accessibility Program (SIAP).  Together they were just informed a few weeks ago that they received a “Seed Grant” to begin to explore some very exciting research.  Below they explain these research seeds:

Mega M Subramaniam, Paul T. Jaeger, and Lesley Langa:

We just found out that we have received a prestigious seed grant jointly funded by the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Maryland to support our project “The Museum Experience of Children with Autism and Their Families: Improving Access through Web and Electronic Resources.”  This project is one of the first concrete efforts to explore the integration of the web and other electronic resources as a means to promote greater inclusion of persons with disabilities in museums. This project will identify the ways in which the use of the web and other electronic resources by students with autism from Ivymount School in Rockville, MD and their families can help to make museums more inclusive and enhance the museum experience for persons with disabilities. In examining the museum experiences of the children with autism and their families, the study will focus on the roles of the various web and electronic resources and physical resources in the experience of the museum visit and the effect of the accessibility resources on the attitudes of the children and their families toward museum visits.  

This project builds on a wide range of ongoing research at the Information Policy and Access Center (iPAC)  in the iSchool. A core part of the work at iPAC is finding ways to increase inclusion of disadvantaged, underserved, and underrepresented populations in information and information technology. This project will build on our previous research on access for persons with disabilities, much of which is detailed in the book Disability and the Internet: Confronting a Digital Divide by Paul T. Jaeger that will be published in October by Lynne Reiner Publishers.   

We are very excited about this study, as the findings will contribute to: increasing accessibility of museums to people with disabilities; illuminating the importance of the web and electronic resources in expanding a museum’s audience; and expanding research into the role of family learning with special needs children in museums.