Hello TUX!
A reminder that tomorrow we have a Member Presentation by Prof. Ron Baecker.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Ali, Daniel, and Tovi
TUX Member Presentation: Prof. Ron Baecker
March 27, 2018. DGP Lab, Department of Computer Science at U of T @ 40 St.
George St. Room 5166
Lunch reception begins at 12:30 pm. Presentation begins at 1:00 pm.
AI Deployments Accelerate Without Sufficient Intelligence: Opportunities for
HCI Research
After 35 years of ups and downs, AI finally achieved in the last two decades
triumphs over the world's best humans in chess, Jeopardy, Go, and poker.
Accelerating advances in deep leaning technology now bring actual or
promised deployments in speech and face recognition, judgments of human
potential, medical image processing, driverless cars, and automated warfare.
But are these systems truly intelligent? Replacing simplistic definitions
of intelligence with the more nuanced descriptions of Sternberg and Gardner
suggests that the answer is "no". Thinking about what we should expect of
intelligent agents, we must acknowledge the lack of algorithms that can
explain the logic behind their actions so that we can understand their
behaviour. This is required so that we can trust them, delegate
responsibility for actions and accountability for errors, and expect their
decisions that are just. Removing these limitations will require a healthy
dose of HCI research and user experience innovation. My goal with this talk
is to encourage audience members to work on these issues.
Note: Ideas in this lecture are based in part on Chapter 11 of the
forthcoming text: Computers and Society: Modern Perspectives, by Ronald M.
Baecker, Oxford University Press, 2019.
Bio
Ronald Baecker is Director of the Technologies for Aging Gracefully
Laboratory (TAGlab), Professor of Computer Science, and Bell Universities
Laboratories Chair in Human-Computer Interaction.
The focus of TAGlab activities is R&D in support of aging throughout the
life course including cognition, communication, and social interaction.
Collaborators include individuals from Baycrest, Columbia Medical School,
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and Toronto Rehabilitation Institute.
He is also Affiliate Scientist with the Kunin-Lunenfeld Applied Research
Unit of Baycrest (formerly, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care), Adjunct
Scientist with Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, and founder of the
Knowledge Media Design Institute at the University of Toronto. He has been
named one of the 60 Pioneers of Computer Graphics by ACM SIGGRAPH, has been
elected to the CHI Academy by ACM SIGCHI, and has been given the Canadian
Human Computer Communications Society Achievement Award in May 2005. His
B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. are from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Professor Baecker is an active researcher, lecturer, and consultant on
human-computer interaction and user interface design, user support, software
visualization, multimedia, computer-supported cooperative work and learning,
the Internet, entrepreneurship and strategic planning in the software
industry, and the role of information technology in business. He has
published over 175 papers and articles on topics in these areas. He is also
the author or co-author of two published videotapes and of four books:
. "Reading in Human-Computer Interaction: A Multidisciplinary
Approach",
. "Human Factors in Typography for More Readable Programs",
. "Readings in Groupware and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work:
Facilitating Human-Human Collabortation", and
. "Reading in Human-Computer Interaction: Towards the Year 2000".
He is the co-holder of 2 patents. Professor Baecker was the founder, CEO,
and Chairman of HCR Corporation, a Toronto-based UNIX contract R&D and
technology development and marketing firm, sold in 1990 to a U.S.
competitor. He was also the founder of Expresto Software Corp, a firm
specializing in structured visual communication explaining software and
other complex technology. Expresto Software was sold in 2002 to Caseware
International. Another entrepreneurial venture was a virtual non-profit
foundation within the University of Toronto to distribute and support the
open source ePresence Interactive Media rich media webcasting and archiving
system, which then led to the formation of a start-up delivering ePresence
products, services, and solutions, recently sold to Desire2Learn. Most
recently, he was instrumental in the founding of MyVoice.
OUR SPONSORS:
TUX is made possible by the support of our sponsors, Steven Sanders,
Autodesk,
University of Toronto Department of Computer Science, and MaRS.
About MaRS: MaRS is the one of the world's largest urban innovation hubs-a
place for collaboration, creativity and entrepreneurship. Located in the
heart of Toronto's research district, MaRS provides the space, training,
talent and networks required to commercialize important discoveries and
launch and grow Canadian startups.
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Hi everyone,
We have a HCI Group meeting tomorrow at 11:45 @DGP Seminar room. Caleb will be presenting his summer research project. Details are blow.
Thanks,
Seyong
——
In this meeting, I will introduce my current project, 'Engaging with Intangible Cultural Heritage through Live Streaming’ and have a discussion about the project.
I have also included a link (https://tinyurl.com/y7uaz9ds <https://tinyurl.com/y7uaz9ds>) for suggestions and discussions.
Introduction:
Live streaming has recently gained worldwide popularity, due to the affordable digital video devices, high-speed Internet access, and social media. Besides video game and other entertainment content such as live performance, users have begun to share a variety of non-entertainment content, such as civil content, knowledge sharing, and even showcasing ancient cultural practices, including Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), especially in China. ICH refers to social practices and traditions originated within folk culture, and includes oral traditions, customs, language, music, dance, rituals, festivities, craftsmanship that are considered by UNESCO to be part of a place's cultural heritage. However, little has been explored the practices and challenges of the vibrant communities of those streamers who share knowledge or showcase cultural practices through live streams, and few effective tools have been designed and developed to support their needs. I will first give an overview about ICH and how streamers are sharing cultural practices through live streaming in China, and discuss the ongoing research to understand the practices of these streamers and their community and the challenges and opportunities in this design space.
------------------------------------------
Dynamic Graphics Project Lab.,
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto,
Seyong Ha
Hello all,
We continue our bi-weekly reading group next week on Friday, July 27 at
2PM. We will be reading the paper "Beyond Memorability: Visualization
Recognition and Recall" (InfoVis 2015) by Michelle Borkin et. al.
This paper is notable for provoking a vociferous response from an
influential, non-academic InfoVis practitioner in a newsletter he titled
"Information Visualization Research as Pseudo-Science". We can pick apart
whether the paper is good or bad, whether it makes an interesting
contribution, and how much of the criticism was appropriate.
Paper link:
https://vcg.seas.harvard.edu/publications/beyond-memorability-visualization…
Video link: https://youtu.be/A6vEepYE2nY
Newsletter link:
http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_intelligence/infovis…
Forum discussion:
http://sfew.websitetoolbox.com/post/information-visualization-research-as-p…
Eris will "champion" the paper by reading it thoroughly and leading the
discussion, highlighting why she thinks the work is important.
The meeting will take place in the Seminar Room, so that we can take a
closer look at the paper + surrounding debate. Snacks and drinks will be
provided!
Best,
Jacob
Hi folks,
We have a HCI group meeting this Tuesday (July 24th) at 11:45 @DGP Seminar room. In this meeting, Joseph Jay Williams, a new faculty member of CS dept. who has been working on CS Education and HCI, will be presenting on his research approach o and some past projects on crowdsourced, dynamic personalized A/B testing using reinforcement learning and discuss some ongoing/future work. He is interested in seeing who might like to collaborate on these kinds of projects, now or in the future. or to apply the methodologies for dynamic A/B testing or reinforcement learning to their ongoing projects.
The information for the meeting and the place to add questions or comments linked to here <https://docs.google.com/document/d/147QhhyTPVFJ1inKiJpWt60nyYarAVQluVqAHBD5…>. Feel free to make comments and add questions in the document, as well as provide relevant links. Details are also attached below.
Thanks,
Seyong
——
Adapting User Technologies: Bridging Designers, Machine Learning and Psychology through Collaborative, Dynamic, Personalized Experimentation
Enhancing people's real-world learning and thinking is a challenge for HCI and psychology, while AI aims to build systems that can behave intelligently in the real-world. This talk presents a framework for redesigning the everyday websites people interact with to function as: (1) Intelligent adaptive agents that implement machine learning algorithms to dynamically discover how to optimize and personalize people’s learning and reasoning. (2) Micro-laboratories for psychological experimentation and data collection.
I present an example of how this framework is used to create “MOOClets” that embed randomized experiments into real-world online educational contexts – like learning to solve math problems. Explanations (and experimental conditions) are crowdsourced from learners, teachers and scientists. Dynamically changing randomized experiments compare the learning benefits of these explanations in vivo with users, continually adding new conditions as new explanations are contributed.
Algorithms (for multi-armed bandits, reinforcement learning, Bayesian Optimization) are used for real-time analysis (of the effect of explanations on users’ learning) and optimizing policies that provide the explanations that are best for different learners. The framework enables a broad range of algorithms to discover how to optimize and personalize users’ behavior, and dynamically adapt technology components to trade off experimentation (exploration) with helping users (exploitation).
——
------------------------------------------
Dynamic Graphics Project Lab.,
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto,
Seyong Ha
Hi folks,
We have a HCI group meeting on this Tuesday at 11:45 @DGP Seminar room. This
meeting, Fanny will introduce her current project , 'explorable multiverse
analyses' , and have a discussion about the project. Please join the meeting
and have a great discussion. Details are below.
Thanks,
Seyong
Increasing the Transparency of Research Papers with Explorable Multiverse
Analyses
When performing statistical analysis on empirical data, researchers
inevitably make a series of arbitrary choices among several options for
processing data (i.e. exclusions of participants for various reasonable
reasons, aggregation of participants based on one data dimension, data
transformations, etc.) and analysing it (i.e. frequentist vs. Bayesian
inferential models, corrections, inclusion or exclusion of different
variables, etc.). Due to space restrictions (and possibly other reasons),
researchers typically practice selective reporting of their results, that
is, only one particular possibility among the larger landscape of reasonable
options, even if they have experimented with multiple paths in their
research. But these arbitrary choices may be misleading, in that some
choices may result in fluctuations in conclusions. Revealing the outcome of
the multiple (reasonable) analysis paths for a data set would inform the
reader on the fragility or robustness of the presented results.
Together with colleagues I am working on a project that introduces
explorable multiverse analyses, a new approach to statistical reporting
where readers of research papers can explore alternative analysis options by
interacting with the paper itself. This approach draws from two recent
ideas: multiverse analysis
<http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/multiverse_publishe
d.pdf> a new philosophy of statistical reporting where the researcher
conducts many different statistical analyses and summarizes all outcomes in
their paper in order to show how fragile or robust their findings are; and
explorable explanations <http://worrydream.com/ExplorableExplanations/>
textual or illustrated explanations that can be read as normal explanations,
but where the reader can also become active by interacting with some
elements of the explanation.
I will show early prototypes and elicit ideas and thoughts from you on this
idea from your experience as an author, reader, and (possibly) reviewer of
academic papers.
Hi all,
my home department (ICCIT) at the UTM campus is looking for a grad student
to teach CCT380 -- this is the equivalent of CS 318 (intro to HCI,
following the very traditional model of covering user observations, design
guidelines, and usability evaluations).
The CCT version is just slightly different -- more focus on design (e.g.
wireframes) and on understanding user needs (observations), and less focus
on building a fully functional prototype (the final evaluation is usually
done with semi-functional prototypes such as those done in Adobe XD). Most
students in this course have a solid background in design (anything Adobe).
Teaching materials will be provided (everything from lecture slides to
hands-on activities to assignments).
If you are interested in applying, please see attached our job posting
document for instructions and more formal job details. The deadline has
been extended until Monday July 16. Also, please let me know if you have
any questions about this course.
Thanks,
Cosmin
--
Dr. Cosmin Munteanu
Assistant Professor
Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology,
University of Toronto Mississauga
Co-Director
Technologies for Aging Gracefully Lab, University of Toronto
Assistant Professor (Cross-appointed)
Faculty of Information, University of Toronto
Assistant Professor (Cross-appointed)
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Email: cosmin(a)taglab.ca
Web: http://cosmin.taglab.ca
Phone: 905-569-4294
CCT Building Rm. 3067
University of Toronto Mississauga
3359 Mississauga Road
Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6
Hello all,
We continue our bi-weekly reading group this Friday, July 13th, at 2PM. We
will be reading the paper "The turn to practice in HCI: Towards a Research
Agenda" (CHI 2014) by Kari Kuutti and Liam Bannon.
A follow-up to our discussion last time, this paper explores the divide in
HCI between two different kinds of investigations - the investigation of
interaction (often in a controlled lab environment) and the investigation
of practices in technology use, which takes a somewhat broader view.
Paper link: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2557111
"Video" link: "https://youtu.be/sUnRRZEgXNo"
Simon will "champion" the paper this week by (re-)reading the paper
thoroughly and leading the discussion, highlighting why he thinks the work
is important, and offering his own critique of the author's conclusions.
The meeting will take place at Crimson Teas (415 Spadina Ave), which is a
5 min walk from Bahen. Dim sum snacks and tea will be provided!
Best,
Jacob
Hello folks,
Anamaria Crisan <http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~acrisan> from UBC will be visiting
on *Tuesday next week, July 10th*. She will be giving a talk at *1PM
*(title/abstract
below) at, and is available for demos before and after. *Send me an email
by Thursday EOD (July 5)* if you would like to sign up for a demo slot.
Cheers,
Nicole
**********
*Title: *Establishing a visualization design space - A case study in
infectious disease genomic epidemiology
*Talk Abstract:*
Data visualization is an important tool for exploring and communicating
findings from genomic and health datasets. Yet, without a systematic way of
understanding the design space of data visualizations, researchers do not
have a clear sense of what kind of visualizations are possible, or how to
distinguish between good and bad options. We have devised an approach using
both literature mining and human-in-the-loop analysis to construct a
visualization design space from corpus of scientific research papers. We
ascertain why and what visualizations were created, and how they are
constructed. We applied our approach to derive a Genomic Epidemiology
Visualization Typology (GEViT) and operationalized our results to produce
an explorable gallery of the visualization design space containing hundreds
of categorized visualizations. We are the first to take such a systematic
approach to visualization analysis, which can be applied by future
visualization tool developers to areas that extend beyond genomic
epidemiology.
*Bio:*
Ana Crisan is a current PhD candidate in computer science at UBC studying
how heterogenous types of public health data can be integrated and
visualized. She is a CIHR Vanier Scholar and is jointly supervised by Dr.
Tamara Munzner (Computer Science) and Dr. Jennifer Gardy (School of
Population and Public Health). Prior to her PhD studies, Ana worked with
the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control supporting research in
genomic epidemiology, and had also previously worked on prostate cancer
biomarker development with a Vancouver based start-up. A summary of her
present and past work can be found on her website: www.cs.ubc.ca/~acrisan.
Hi folks,
Next Tuesday, we have HCI group meeting and HCI/Vis talk. The meeting will
begin at 11:45 am @ DGP Seminar room and the talk will start right after the
meeting. In the meeting, Devamardeep, one of our undergrad students, will
lead a brainstorming for his summer research about "Layout Management in
Virtual Reality using Eyelid Gestures." After the meeting, Anamaria Crisan
from UBC will be giving a talk, titled "Establishing a visualization design
space - A case study in infectious disease genomic epidemiology." Details
are attached below.
Thanks,
Seyong Ha
----- Brainstorming
Topic: Layout Management in Virtual Reality using Eyelid Gestures
I want to the user to perform precise object manipulation, like grabbing a
book and moving it only along a table. To do so, we can use information of
the surrounding objects (like the table) to constrain the book's position or
create new constraints. Currently there are three constraints that the user
can create: point, line, and plane. We also want to activate / deactivate
the constraints (maybe I want to move the book through the table). A lot of
times in real life you close one eye to help align objects precisely, we are
thinking of using this gesture to activate the constraint.
How should objects interact with these constraints? And how can we make it
easier to create constraints (ie. snap the plane constraint to be parallel
to nearby surfaces)
What other eye gestures can be helpful in this context? ie. shooting lasers
out of your eyes to delete objects.
---- Talk
Title: Establishing a visualization design space - A case study in
infectious disease genomic epidemiology
Talk Abstract:
Data visualization is an important tool for exploring and communicating
findings from genomic and health datasets. Yet, without a systematic way of
understanding the design space of data visualizations, researchers do not
have a clear sense of what kind of visualizations are possible, or how to
distinguish between good and bad options. We have devised an approach using
both literature mining and human-in-the-loop analysis to construct a
visualization design space from corpus of scientific research papers. We
ascertain why and what visualizations were created, and how they are
constructed. We applied our approach to derive a Genomic Epidemiology
Visualization Typology (GEViT) and operationalized our results to produce an
explorable gallery of the visualization design space containing hundreds of
categorized visualizations. We are the first to take such a systematic
approach to visualization analysis, which can be applied by future
visualization tool developers to areas that extend beyond genomic
epidemiology.
Bio:
Ana Crisan is a current PhD candidate in computer science at UBC studying
how heterogenous types of public health data can be integrated and
visualized. She is a CIHR Vanier Scholar and is jointly supervised by Dr.
Tamara Munzner (Computer Science) and Dr. Jennifer Gardy (School of
Population and Public Health). Prior to her PhD studies, Ana worked with the
British Columbia Centre for Disease Control supporting research in genomic
epidemiology, and had also previously worked on prostate cancer biomarker
development with a Vancouver based start-up. A summary of her present and
past work can be found on her website: <http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~acrisan>
www.cs.ubc.ca/~acrisan.
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Hello TUX!
Our next season of TUX is just around the corner, and we wanted to kick things off with some information. We are excited to be continuing our member presentations and Sanders Series Invited Lectures, and will once again be meeting on alternating Tuesdays, with talks from 1pm-2pm and lunch served prior to the talks. Below is the schedule for 2018-2019 presentations. Speakers are still TBD, and will be announced once confirmed.
TUX 2018-2019 Speaker Schedule
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
1pm-2pm
Autodesk-MaRS
Sanders
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
1pm-2pm
DGP
Member
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
1pm-2pm
Autodesk-MaRS
Sanders
Tuesday, November 6, 2018
1pm-2pm
DGP
Member
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
1pm-2pm
Autodesk-MaRS
Sanders
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
1pm-2pm
DGP
Member
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
1pm-2pm
Autodesk-MaRS
Sanders
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
1pm-2pm
DGP
Member
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
1pm-2pm
Autodesk-MaRS
Sanders
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
1pm-2pm
DGP
Member
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
1pm-2pm
Autodesk-MaRS
Sanders
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
1pm-2pm
DGP
Member
On that note, we'd like to ask for your input regarding potential speakers for next year. You may nominate member presentations, speakers from the Greater Toronto Area, or Sanders Series Invited Lectures, distinguished HCI visionaries from around the world. You may also nominate yourself! Speakers can be in academia, industry, or independent institutions. This year, we will also consider senior PhD or Post-Docs for member presentations. We encourage the suggestion of speakers from a broad range of research and practitioner communities that touch on HCI and related topics. Please use the following link for speaker nominations, no later than July 13th: https://goo.gl/forms/RHasTfKed8FUf7rB2
Enjoy your summer, and see you in September!
Ali, Daniel, and Tovi
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OUR SPONSORS:
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TUX is made possible by the support of our sponsors, Steven Sanders, Autodesk,
University of Toronto Department of Computer Science, and MaRS.
About MaRS: MaRS is the one of the world's largest urban innovation hubs-a place for collaboration, creativity and entrepreneurship. Located in the heart of Toronto's research district, MaRS provides the space, training, talent and networks required to commercialize important discoveries and launch and grow Canadian startups.
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