Notes from my visit to Georgia Tech

Last month I had the pleasure of visiting the GVU Center at Georgia Tech and talking with some of the professors and graduate students. Here are my (mostly unedited) notes on their research projects and interests. If anyone wants more info, please leave a comment.

Keith Edwards

(somewhat sparse — I think I was still getting warmed up)

  • tech intervention for homeless, social workers
  • human trafficking
  • usability of networking at home
  • InSpace (with Steelcase, Interface carpet) — smart office space

Amy Bruckman

  • users creating content in social network
  • students writing about science in wiki → does it lead to deeper thinking?
    writing for an audience, not just teacher
  • how do people learn about games? as computational, social artifact
    ontology of game study
    GameLog (paper)
  • Computer Supported Cooperative Innovation
    • open source, open content works best when goal is well defined (implement an OS)
    • study groups of people collaboratively creating a Flash animation — open-ended task (Kurt Luther)
  • Facebook — share creative expression in apps
    NSF project on broadening participation in computing (with Mark Guzdial)
  • Why do African-American middle school boys play sports games but not go into tech?
    Provide opportunities for them to be game testers

Mark Guzdial

  • Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought
    • natural language maps to primitive neurological concepts
    • implications for programming languages, end-user programming?
  • Media Computation curriculum (for non-technical)
    • all first-year students must take some programming class
    • 1999-2003 (before Media Comp curriculum)
      • 30% fail intro class, 51% management students fail
    • Now
      • 15% fail intro, 10-20% management fail
    • CS version: Python + Myro + scribbler robot
    • Engineers: Matlab
  • how to track reuse of code?
    • MIT Scratch: projects have watermark, can track reuse
  • Mike Eisenberg, Craft Technology Group (CU Boulder)
    • virtual origami
    • Scheme + image
    • graph + code synch
      • screensaver: demo what can be done in code later
  • Brian Dorn
    • studying end-user created Photoshop extensions
    • >100 lines of code
    • ICER 06 Canterbury (PDF)
    • VL/HCC 07 doctoral consortium (PDF), short paper (PDF)
  • Brian O’Neil
    • how can natural language influence programming language design
    • biology: tools for computational biology, use their terms for domain-specific language
  • More end-user programming resources
    • Lance Miller (Intl Jnl Man-Machine Studies 6 1974) (IBM Sys Jnl 20 1981)
    • Thomas Green (Jnl Vis Lang and Comp 7 1996)
    • (refs from John Pane, IJHCS 2001)

Ellen Do

  • sketch to control robotic interaction
  • hospital room of the future (ubicomp)
  • record doctor interaction, playback
    to help with patient/family communication
  • handwashing compliance
  • course in creativity and cognition
  • course in wellness, emotion, sex, and technology
  • toys of the future (tangible media)
  • output as well as input
  • sketch understanding
  • doing health care research
    • lots of observations on paper
    • lots of time analyzing
  • technology to avoid unreimbursable costs
  • remote patient monitoring
  • microphone for patients with asthma
  • Kaiser Permanente Garfield Innovation Center for mock-ups of health care tech

James Eagan (grad student of John Stasko)

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