Tuesday April 14, 2020

Online (link to be sent day of event)

Please register.

This is a weird time, but we’ve heard from many of you that it’s important to keep the vibrancy of the BostonCHI community alive by continuing to host our monthly events. So BostonCHI is happy to announce that our April event is on!

Please join us for a remote gathering and presentation in Zoom, live from our homes to yours. Our speaker, Erin Corcoran, will tell us all about how UX is appearing in architecture and building design (more below).

How’s this going to work?

We are aiming to keep it fairly simple, tech-wise

We will be using:

• A Zoom meeting for the event
• A Mural virtual whiteboard during the pre-talk networking
• Live polling during the talk (via Poll Everywhere)

Links for both the Zoom meeting and the Mural whiteboard will be sent to registered attendees

SCHEDULE

• 6-6:30pm: Networking via virtual whiteboard and zoom
• 6:30pm: Presentation
• 7:30pm: Q&A

ABSTRACT

UX for Buildings: Designing for Users in Architectural Practice

Buildings are made for people, at one point described by Le Corbusier as ‘machines for living in’; they are where we work, where we live, and where we play. We’ve all experienced places that felt ‘right’, that we were drawn to, and places that anticipated our needs intuitively, just as we’ve also visited spaces that just don’t work, buildings that are outright unwelcoming or confusing, or places that have negative impacts on our wellbeing.

Good or great spatial experiences don’t happen by chance, and the architectural profession is beginning to utilize a more strategic approach to design, adapting tools and approaches from parallel strategy and UX fields to inform their designs.

This talk will introduce attendees to how UX is emerging within architectural practice, what tools are being utilized to study how people use space and how this data has informed projects, and how the conversation around architecture and its impact on occupants is evolving.

BIO

Erin Corcoran is an Architect and Design Strategist who is fascinated by how humans use space, and passionate about understanding user needs using a mixed analytical and empathy-based design approach.

Currently a part of Gensler’s Boston team, she works to develop solutions to complex space and cultural challenges for public and private sector workplace clients, building owners and developers, post-secondary education groups, healthcare institutions, and community organizations.

A member of the Boston Society of Architects and more recently part of the steering committee for BostonCHI, she is always seeking to expand the conversation and widen her breadth of human-centric design knowledge.

SPONSOR

Thank you to our generous sponsors!

Tuesday March 10, 2020

This event has been cancelled

MS Burlington, 5 Wayside Rd, Burlington, MA

ABSTRACT

Today’s vehicles have a myriad of user interfaces, from those related to the moment-to-moment control of the vehicle, to those that allow the consumption of information and entertainment. With recent advances in automated vehicles, there is increased attention to user interactions as they relate to creating a place for work and play during a trip. Given that it is unlikely that most vehicles will be fully automated in the near future, there are also significant efforts to understand how to help the driver switch between different modes of automation. This talk will provide a brief review of these areas of research, and report on our collaborative work on the topic of creating a mobile office in automated vehicles.

BIO

Andrew L. Kun is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New Hampshire, and director of the UNH Human-Computer Interaction Lab. His primary research interest is in-vehicle human-computer interaction. He serves as the ACM SIGCHI Interim Vice President for Conferences, as Steering Committee co-chair of the ACM AutomotiveUI conference series, program co-chair of the 2020 ACM Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interactions (TEI) conference, and program co-chair of the 2020 ACM MobileHCI conference.

SCHEDULE

• 6:30 – 7:00 Networking over food and beverages
• 7:00 – 8:30 Meeting
• 8:30 – 9:00 CHI Dessert and more networking!  

SPONSOR

Thank you to our generous sponsors!

Tuesday February 11, 2020

IBM Cambridge, One Rogers St, Cambridge MA 02142

Please register.

ABSTRACT

The internet was supposed to democratize discussion, allowing people from all walks of life to communicate with each other at scale. However, this vision has not been fully realized—instead online discourse seems to be getting worse, as people are increasingly drowning in discussion, with much of it unwanted, unpleasant, or downright harmful. In this talk, I present new systems that empower discussion participants to work collectively to bring order to discussions through a range of collaborative curation tools. These systems enable the following new capabilities:

1. Recursive summarization of threaded forums using Wikum,
2. Teamsourced tagging and summarization of group chat using Tilda,
3. Fine-grained customization of email delivery within mailing lists using Murmur
4. Friendsourced moderation of messages against online harassment using Squadbox.

In a world of abundant discussion and mass capabilities for amplification, the curation of a social space becomes as equally essential as content creation in defining the nature of that space. By putting more powerful techniques for curation in the hands of everyday people, I envision a future where end users are empowered to actively co-curate every aspect of their online discussion environments, bringing in their nuanced and contextual insights to solve social issues.  

BIO

Amy X. Zhang is a fall 2020 incoming assistant professor at University of Washington’s Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. She is currently doing a 1-year postdoc in the Computer Science Department of Stanford University after just finishing her Ph.D. at MIT CSAIL. She is also a current affiliate and 2018-19 Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. She is a founding member of the Credibility Coalition, a group dedicated to research and standards for information credibility online. She has interned at Microsoft Research and Google Research. Her work has received a best paper award at ACM CSCW, a best paper honorable mention award at ACM CHI, and has been profiled on BBC’s Click television program, CBC radio, and featured in articles by ABC News, The Verge, New Scientist, and Poynter. She received an M.Phil. in Computer Science at the University of Cambridge on a Gates Fellowship and a B.S. in Computer Science at Rutgers University, where she was captain of the Division I Women’s tennis team. Her Ph.D. research was supported by a Google PhD Fellowship and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.  

SCHEDULE

• 6:30 – 7:00 Networking over food and beverages
• 7:00 – 8:30 Meeting
• 8:30 – 9:00 CHI Dessert and more networking!  

SPONSOR

Thank you to our generous sponsors!