Human-Centered Data Science Lab

HCDE PhD student and SCCL member Daniel Perry led an afternoon workshop titled “Game Design for Science Learning” for students as part of the first STARS engineering program in mid-September. The STARS program provides a specialized first-year engineering-focused curriculum for highly motivated Pell-Grant-eligible students from high-needs high schools. The workshop introduced students to the science learning game MAX5, and provided techniques for designing, building, and evaluating their own science-themed video games. Human centered game design techniques were discussed and applied in smaller groups, and rapid prototyping methods were used by students for their own designs.

We extend a warm welcome to Brittany Fiore-Silfvast, who joins the SCCL as a postdoctoral fellow. Brittany joins the lab as a fellow with the Moore/Sloan Foundation Data Science Environment grant, working as a data science ethnographer. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Washington and an M.A. in Anthropology from Columbia University. Her research focuses on the social and organizational dimensions of data-intensive transformations in arenas such as scientific research, healthcare, global development, design and construction, and warfare. We’re excited to have Brittany on board!

SCCL members and HCDE PhD students Daniel Perry and John Robinson, and SCCL Director Cecilia Aragon, are co-authors on a recently published article in the September issue of the Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience journal. The article, Game Design for Bioinformatics and Cyberinfrastructure Learning: A Parallel Computing Case Study, reports on data collected during a year-long human-centered game design process, in which design ideas generated by high school students were bridged with bioinformatics and parallel computing learning concepts. They provided a human-centered game design methodology, as well as a case study, in which this methodology is applied to the design of parallel computing-focused mini-games.  Co-authors of the paper also include Stephanie Cruz, University of Washington Center for Workforce Development; Jeanne Ting Chowning, University of Washington’s Institute for Science and Math Education; and Mette Peters, Sage Bionetworks.

SCC lab members, families, and friends enjoyed food, drink, and good company at a potluck at Lab Director Dr. Cecilia Aragon’s house this past week.  Grilled meats, salmon, and veggie dishes made for a delicious way to celebrate another successful year, and we noshed with views of Lake Washington in the background.  Many thanks to everyone who made this event possible!

HCDE PhD student and SCC lab member Daniel Perry has been awarded a UW Graduate School Presidential Dissertation Fellowship for the 2014-15 academic year. The Graduate School Presidential Dissertation award was established with support of the University President and assists PhD candidates in the final stages of completing their dissertations. He is the first HCDE student to receive the award.

Perry’s dissertation examines how game-based learning experiences vary based on the specific perceptual, affective, and computational capacities of each learner. His research builds upon a co-design process and studies he conducted with high school students as he developed the game MAX5, a computer game where players use bioinformatics tools to stop a lethal influenza outbreak in the game. He hopes that his research will be of use to other game designers and educators who want to broaden participation to reach diverse types of learners. Perry is advised by SCC Lab Director Dr. Cecilia Aragon.

A paper on “Collaborative Visual Analysis of Sentiment in Twitter Events” by SCCL members Michael Brooks, John Robinson, Megan Torkildson, Ray Hong, and Cecilia Aragon has been accepted to CDVE 2014, the 11th International Conference on Cooperative Design, Visualization, and Engineering. This paper presents research on Agave, a web-based visual analytics tool for collaborative exploration of large tweet data sets. Click here for more information about Agave. The conference will be held September 14-17, 2014, in Seattle, WA.

SCC Lab members and HCDE undergraduates John Robinson and Megan Torkildson recently won the College of Engineering’s Capstone Design Award. Their group is conducting a series of interviews and contextual inquiries with emergency responders to better understand their processes and information needs. The goal of the project is to prototype a tool to utilize social media to provide situational awareness. They plan on implementing a prototype tool or visualization that fulfills emergency responders’ needs and would integrate well into their current workflow.

The Engineering Capstone Design Award was created to support student teams across the College of Engineering working on capstone design projects. Teams are awarded $3,000 for materials or training relevant to their Capstone project. Further information about the award can be found on the HCDE blog.

Call for papers, Deadline 4/1/2014 for the International Conference on Cooperative Design, Visualization and Engineering

The international conference CDVE 2014 will be held in Seattle, WA in September after ten previous conferences in Europe and Asia. The focus this year is on cooperative applications and approaches to design, visualization, and engineering. Accepted papers will be published by Springer in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) and selected papers may be published in special issues of the Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work or the Journal of Concurrent Engineering. HCDE is a technical sponsor of the CDVE 2014 conference, and students from the department will receive a registration discount.

PhD student and SCC Lab member Nan-Chen Chen received the Microsoft Research Graduate Women Scholarship for 2014.  The highly selective scholarship was established to encourage first year female PhD students in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and Math. It is awarded to only ten recipients a year in recognition of their undergraduate work and future research goals. Nan-Chen is interested in building visual analytics tools to help people better understand data. She is passionate about developing technologies that support collaboration and bridging the gaps between disciplines so that people from different fields can more easily work together to solve problems. Further information about the scholarship can be found here.

PhD student Daniel Perry looks on as students play the game MAX5 at the Computing Open House.

SCC Lab members Megan Torkildson (undergraduate student) and Daniel Perry (PhD student) represented the HCDE Department at UW’s Computing Open House this past Saturday, an event that drew over 1,000 middle and high school students and their families to explore and learn about computing activities on campus.  Torkildson and  Perry were among the HCDE volunteers at a table that featured an interactive iPad activity as well as the bioinformatics game, MAX5, developed by Perry and members of  the Games for Good Research Group.  “Many of the students we spoke with were pretty excited to find out about our department, especially the ones interested in computing as well as film production, art, or game animation. They didn’t know a department like ours existed where they could easily combine these interests” remarked Perry.  The annual event was sponsored by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, and featured dozens of projects in computing related fields.