CHI - and Links

I have just returned from CHI in San Jose. CHI is the largest and most prestigious conference in HCI (Human-Computer-Interaction). I attended more amazing lectures than I can count. I am currently going through my bag of various cards and flyers from people I met. Here are some links to some inspiring people doing interesting research:

Annika Waern

• https://annikawaern.wordpress.com/
• I met Annika and her PhD student Jon Back in front of their poster presentation for "Designing Children’s Digital Physical Play in Natural Outdoor Settings". I was attracted to the poster because it showed kids playing in the woods with some large, but simple play installations. Their research on play and its role in urban space is interesting to me in relation to my work with the forest school.

I was captivated by these robots attending the conference alongside the rest of us. It was a surreal and futuristic experience to attend alongside these remotely operated participants.

Janet Read

• http://www.uclan.ac.uk/staff_profiles/professor_janet_read.php
• I attended Janet's course on research with children. She has extensive experience working on creating technologies in classrooms. As part of her discussion about ethics Janet spoke about classroom dynamics and how to run a study when you are alone with a class of 30 kids. She talked about using stations and having the children themselves act as researchers. 

I was inspired by this talk by Salman Khan about the Khan Academy. So inspired, in fact, that the day I got home our entire family started on the program. I am revisiting grade 8 math with enthusiasm!

Daniel Schien

• http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/people/daniel-schien/
• Daniel and the other researchers at the University of Bristol have a focus on sustainability and technology. Working in visualizations, and data analytics they also look into energy consumption of buildings and how data visualizations can impact behaviors.

This is the San Jose Convention Center on a grey morning. It does get sunny in California FYI.

Enrico Costanza

• http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/ec
• Enrico gave a very interesting presentation about a digital data visualization display that shows the temperature inside a building. It was able to indicate when the building was hotter or colder than the policy directive and the study observed behavior changes due to the new information. 

Roberto Martinez-Maldonado

• http://www.uts.edu.au/staff/roberto.martinez-maldonado
• Roberto works on visual analytics software for teachers, to help them plan their lessons. His work uses existing information about the effects of classroom techniques on student achievement.

Market Street in San Jose was great for finding fish tacos!

Greg Walsh

• http://www.ubalt.edu/cas/faculty/alphabetical-directory/greg-walsh.cfm
• I met Greg in a co-design Special Interest Group for working with children. His work is with inner city kids in Baltimore, helping them learn programming and software design. He also has an interest in architectural co-design and how it has inspired HCI participatory design methods.

Andrew Kun

• https://ceps.unh.edu/faculty/kun
• Andrew is working with tabletop interactive surfaces for collaborative data analysis and collection. He is facilitating a workshop at a conference coming up directly related to tabletop surfaces (Something I definitely should attend). The conference is in Niagra Falls. http://iss2016.acm.org/

(Not going to lie, this opening presentation made me laugh. The robot on stilts was epic!)

Laura Sanely

• http://dti.cucea.udg.mx/?q=es/directorio/laura-sanely-gaytan-lugo
• I attended two workshops with Laura about doing research with children. She is working on designing games to help with literacy for under priviliged children in rural Mexico.

Uta Hinrichs

• https://risweb.st-andrews.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/uta-hinrichs(e5b8b773-91ec-4e1f-8984-a9efa53a2d3e).html
• Uta actually went to this CMD program in Calgary. She is now a lecturer and researcher in Britain and doing research in "physicalizations" with children. She studies how children can understand and learn about data through tangible objects.

Michael Mauderer

• https://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/directory/person?id=mm285
• Michael presented at CHI. He is doing work with eye tracking and adjusting various visual effects that are real time affected by eye movements.

My brother and I on public transit to CHI!!

I want to read this book:
https://books.google.ca/books/about/Human_Computer_Interaction.html?id=k0kBgyCaokAC&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y&hl=en

This App is really cool. For digitizing visual data. http://ivolver.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/

One of my favorite Presentations:
Telling stories about dynamic networks with graph comics - Benjamin Bach, Natalie Kerracher, Kyle William Hall, Sheelagh Carpendale, Jessie Kennedy, Nathalie Henry

One of the best things about California. May is far too chilly for locals to swim in the heated pool. Bonus for Canadians looking for a private swim!!