Author: alyxanderbur

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Two papers to appear in Late-Breaking Work – CHI 2020

We are proud to announce that two of our lab’s papers were selected for publication in CHI 2020 Late-Breaking Works! See below for information about each paper.

Towards Understanding Desiderata for Large-Scale Civic Input Analysis
Mahmood Jasim, Ali Sarvghad, Enamul Hoque Prince, Narges Mahyar

Advancement in digital civics and the emergence of online platforms have enabled vast amounts of community members to share their input on various civic proposals. Civic leaders, who gather, analyze, and make critical decisions based on community input, struggle to make sense of large-scale unstructured community input due to lack of time, analytical skills, and specialized technologies. In this qualitative study, we investigated civic leaders’ requirements that can accelerate the community input analysis process and help them to gain actionable insights to make better decisions. This study is our first step towards exploring the design of community input analysis technologies for civic leaders to facilitate civic decision-making.


Exploring How International Graduate Students in the US Seek Support
Tamanna Motahar, Mahmood Jashim, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, Narges Mahyar

International Graduate Students are an integral part of the United States (US) higher education ecosystem. However, they face enormous challenges while transitioning to the US due to cultural shock, language barriers, and intense academic pressure. These issues can cause poor mental health. Social technology have the potential to help individuals during socio-cultural transitions through social support. The relative ease of access and ubiquity of these technologies make them a candidate for supporting these students as well. However, little is known about the support-seeking process of International Graduate Students. In this paper, we tried to explore this complex process of support seeking and identified different dynamics.

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Workshop on Sketching Visualisations: A hands-on introduction to data literacy

Where: LGRC, room A 311
When: Friday, Jan 24th, 9am-12pm
Organizers: Narges Mahyar and Ali Sarvghad
Open to the UMass community.
No charge, but limited places.

Description: Data visualization has been defined as ‘the use of computer-supported, interactive, visual representations of abstract data to amplify cognition. Data visualization draws upon a variety of fields including computer science, visual perception, design, and communication theory to visually and interactively represent data so that it is explorable and discoverable. In this workshop, we will take a hands-on, data-driven approach to learn the process of visually representing data. In particular, we will make active use of visual variables and draw upon principles from externalization and sketch-based design to explore the challenges and possibilities of data visualization.

Bio: Sheelagh Carpendale is a Full Professor at Simon Fraser University in the School of Computing Science. She holds the NSERC/AITF/SMART Industrial Research Chair in Interactive Technologies. Her leadership role in the international data visualization research community has been repeatedly confirmed through many awards including the IEEE Visualization Career Award and being inducted into both the IEEE Visualization Academy and the ACM CHI (Computer-Human-Interaction) Academy. Her other awards include the Canadian NSERC E.W.R. STEACIE Fellowship, a British BAFTA (equivalent to an Oscar) in Interactive Learning; the Alberta ASTech Award, the Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society Achievement Award. Her research focuses on information visualization, interaction design, and qualitative empirical research. By studying how people interact with information both in work and social settings, she works towards designing more natural, accessible and understandable interactive visual representations of data. She combines information visualization, visual analytics and human-computer interaction with innovative new interaction techniques to better support the everyday practices of people who are viewing, representing, and interacting with information.