Three HCI talks in three days
2014 September 22-24

We are delighted that two very distinguished researchers from the University of Maryland, Ben Shneiderman and Jenny Preece, will be visiting UBC next week and giving a total of three talks.

These talks are sponsored by Computer Science, GRAND (the Graphics, Animation and New Media Network of Centres of Excellence), ICICS (the Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems), SLAIS (the iSchool at UBC), and HCI@UBC.

Mon Sep 22 cal: ppt:	Dr. Ben Shneiderman
	Interactive Visual Discovery in Temporal Event Sequences: Electronic Health Records and Other Applications
	12:30-2:00 (lots of seats)
	ALRD 105 (Allard Hall, the Law School, 1822 East Mall)
Tue Sep 23 cal: ppt:	Dr. Ben Shneiderman
	High-Impact Research: Blending Science, Engineering, and Design
	3:30-5:00 (lots of seats, coffee/tea and cookies before the talk)
	ESB 1013 (2207 Main Mall)
Wed Sep 24 cal: ppt:	Dr. Jennifer Preece
	Citizen Science: Information, Technology and People
	4:00-5:00 (RSVP to reserve a seat)
	Dodson Room in the Barber Learning Centre (1961 East Mall)
	Reception follows at the iSchool at 5:00-6:00 (invitation only)

Room capacity is limited (around 60) for some of the venues; an RSVP is specifically requested for Preece's colloquium and the reception that follows on Wednesday at the iSchool.

List of those selected is here. Email has been sent to everyone who filled out the poll and provided an email address (there were many who signed up without identifying themselves).

Details follow for all three of the talks:

This talk reviews our decade of research on visualizing and exploring temporal event sequences. I begin with LifeLines (www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/lifelines) for viewing a single patient history and then show LifeLines2 (www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/lifelines2) to view compact summaries of thousands of patient histories represented as time-stamped events, such as strokes, vaccinations, or admission to an emergency room. Our current work on EventFlow (www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/eventflow), supported by Oracle Health Sciences, also supports interval events such as medication episodes or long hospitalizations. Demonstrations cover visual interfaces to support clinicians in making treatment decisions and hospital quality control researchers who study treatment patterns that lead to successful outcomes.

Bio: BEN SHNEIDERMAN (www.cs.umd.edu/~ben) is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Founding Director (1983-2000) of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/) at the University of Maryland. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, and IEEE, and a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, in recognition of his pioneering contributions to human-computer interaction and information visualization. His contributions include the direct manipulation concept, clickable web-link, touchscreen keyboards, dynamic query sliders for Spotfire, development of treemaps, innovative network visualization strategies for NodeXL, and temporal event sequence analysis for electronic health records.

Ben is the co-author with Catherine Plaisant of Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (5th ed., 2010, www.awl.com/DTUI). With Stu Card and Jock Mackinlay, he co-authored Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think (1999). His book Leonardo’s Laptop appeared in October 2002 (MIT Press) and won the IEEE book award for Distinguished Literary Contribution. His latest book, with Derek Hansen and Marc Smith, is Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL (www.codeplex.com/nodexl, 2010).

The colloquium will take place Wednesday, September 24th at 4 pm in the Dodson Room, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. A wine and cheese reception will follow at the iSchool at 5 pm. Please RSVP for this event by emailing slais.events@ubc.ca.

Citizen Science: Information, Technology and People
Dr. Jennifer Preece, University of Maryland:

Abstract: Citizens have been informally contributing to science for hundreds of years. One of the best known modern examples is of sightings by bird watchers. The Christmas Bird Count, an annual national count in the USA, is one hundred years old and birdwatching activities date back to even earlier times in the UK and parts of Europe. This data informs scientific studies of bird migration and behavior, which in turn provide evidence of habitat loss, and changes in weather patterns. Citizens contribute to many branches of science from astronomy, to biochemistry, hydrology, biodiversity, personalized medicine, and more. Increasingly digital devices including cell phones, sensors, cameras, databases and associated techniques for storing, retrieving, and communicating data, and many types of social media have been integrated into citizen science and other volunteer practices. In this talk I discuss a range of citizen science and volunteer projects focusing on the design of the technologies that support them and suggest some best practices for designing and motivating citizens to use these technologies.

Bio: Professor Jennifer Preece is a Professor and Dean at the University of Maryland’s iSchool She has researched usability and sociability design issues in online communities. Currently she has several research projects that focus on motivating participation in citizen science. She authored or coauthored three high-impact books: Human-Computer Interaction (1994), On-line Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability (2000), Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction (2002, 2007, 2011, 2015).

For more information about the iSchool Colloquium series, please visit our website (slais.ubc.ca/fall-2014-colloquim-series-talk-by-jennifer-preece/ or http://slais.ubc.ca/community/colloquia/) or contact the organizer, Dr. Heather O'Brien (h.obrien@ubc.ca).