AVI 2020

Margaret Burnett, Oregon State University, USA

Doing Inclusive Design: From GenderMag in the Trenches to InclusiveMag in the Research Lab

When: Wednesday, 30 Sep 2020

Abstract: How can user interface and user experience (UI/UX) professionals assess whether their software supports diverse users? And if they find problems, how can they fix them? We begin with a summary of GenderMag, a systematic inspection method for finding and fixing “gender inclusivity bugs" -- biases against different genders in software interfaces and workflows. We then show what UI/UX professionals are doing with it in the real world, from their bias finds & fixes to their practices & pitfalls in using it. Finally, we introduce InclusiveMag, a new meta-method that can be used by HCI researchers to generate systematic inclusiveness methods for other dimensions of diversity.

Bio: Margaret Burnett (http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~burnett/) is an OSU Distinguished Professor at Oregon State University. She began her career in industry, where she was the first woman software developer ever hired at Procter & Gamble Ivorydale. A few degrees and start-ups later, she joined academia, with a research focus on people who are engaged in some form of software development. She co-founded the area of end-user software engineering, which aims to enable computer users not trained in programming to improve their own software, and co-leads the team that created GenderMag (gendermag.org), a software inspection process that uncovers user-facing gender biases in software from smart systems to programming environments. Together with her collaborators and students, she has contributed some of the seminal work in both of those areas, and also in explaining AI to ordinary end users. Burnett is an ACM Fellow, a member of the ACM CHI Academy, and a member of the Academic Alliance Advisory Board of the National Center for Women In Technology (NCWIT).

Philippe Palanque, ICS-IRIT, Université Toulouse 3, France

Ten Objectives and Ten Rules for Designing Automations in Interaction Techniques, User Interfaces and Interactive Systems

When: Thursday, 1 Oct 2020

Abstract: Automation, as a design goal, focusses mainly on the migration of tasks from a human operator to a mechanical or digital system. Designing automation thus usually consists in removing tasks or activities from that operator and in designing systems that will be able to perform them. When these automations are not adequately designed (or correctly understood by the operator), they may result in so called automation surprises that degrade, instead of enhance, the overall performance of the couple (operator, system). Usually, these tasks are considered at a high level of abstraction (related to work and work objectives) leaving unconsidered low-level, repetitive tasks. This paper proposes a decomposition of automation for interactive systems highlighting the diverse objectives it may target at. Beyond, multiple complementary views of automation for interactive systems design are presented to better define the multiform concept of automation. It provides numerous concrete examples illustrating each view and identifies ten rules for designing interactive systems embedding automations.

Bio: Philippe Palanque is professor in Computer Science at the University Toulouse 3 and is head of the ICS (Interactive Critical Systems) research group at IRIT. Since the early 90’s his research focus is on interactive systems engineering proposing notations, methods and tools to integrate multiple properties such as usability, dependability, resilience and more recently user experience. These contributions have been developed together with industrial partners from various application domains such as civil aviation, air traffic management or satellite ground segments. Recently he has been involved in the specification of future interactive cockpits and their interactions and in the modelling of operational states of civil aircraft (with direct support from and close collaboration with Airbus). He has been working in the area of automation for more than ten years, was a member of the SESAR Higher Automation Levels in Aviation network of excellence and paper co-chair of ATACCS (Application and Theory of Automation in Command and Control Systems) 2015 conference. He was steering committee chair of the CHI conference series at ACM SIGCHI, is a member of the CHI academy and chair of IFIP Technical Committee on Human-Computer Interaction (TC13). He edited and co-edited more than twenty books or conference proceedings including the "Handbook on Formal Methods in Human-Computer Interaction" published by Springer in 2017.

Albrecht Schmidt, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany

Interactive Human Centered Artificial Intelligence – A Definition and Research Challenges

When: Friday, 2 Oct 2020

Abstract: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become the buzzword of the last decade. Advances so far have been largely technical with a focus on machine learning (ML). Only recently have we begun seeing a shift towards focusing on the human aspects of artificial intelligence, centered on the narrow view of making AI interactive and explainable. In this paper I suggest a definition for “Interactive Human Centered Artificial Intelligence” and outline the required properties. Staying in control is essential for humans to feel safe and have self-determination. Hence, we need to find ways for humans to understand AI based systems and means to allow human control and oversight. In our work, we argue that levels of abstractions and granularity of control are a general solution to this. Furthermore, it is essential that we make explicit why we want AI and what are the goals of AI research and development. We need to state the properties that we expect of future intelligent systems and who will benefit from a system or service. For me, AI and ML are very much comparable to raw materials (like stone, iron, or bronze). Historical periods are named after these materials as they fundamentally changed what humans can build and what tools humans can engineer. Hence, I argue that in the AI age we need to shift the focus from the material (e.g. the AI algorithms, as there will be plenty of material) towards the tools and infrastructures that are enabled which are beneficial to humans. It is apparent that AI will allow the automation of mental routine tasks and that it will extend our ability to perceive the world and foresee events. For me, the central question is how to create these tools for amplifying the human mind without compromising human values.

Bio: Albrecht Schmidt is professor for Human-Centered Ubiquitous Media in the computer science department of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Germany. He studied computer science in Ulm and Manchester and received a PhD from Lancaster University, UK, in 2003. He held several prior academic positions at different universities, including Stuttgart, Cambridge, Duisburg-Essen, and Bonn and also worked as a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems (IAIS) and at Microsoft Research in Cambridge. In his research, he investigates the inherent complexity of human-computer interaction in ubiquitous computing environments, particularly in view of increasing computer intelligence and system autonomy. Albrecht has actively contributed to the scientific discourse in human-computer interaction through the development, deployment, and study of functional prototypes of interactive systems and interface technologies in different real world domains. His early experimental work addressed the use of diverse sensors to recognize situations and interactions, influencing our understanding of context-awareness and situated computing. He proposed the concept of implicit human-computer interaction. Over the years, he worked on automotive user interfaces, tangible interaction, interactive public display systems, interaction with large high-resolution screens, and physiological interfaces. Most recently, he focuses on how information technology can provide cognitive and perceptual support to amplify the human mind. To investigate this further, he received in 2016 a ERC grant. Albrecht has co-chaired several SIGCHI conferences; he is in the editorial board of ACM TOCHI, edits a forum in ACM interactions, a column of human augmentation in IEEE Pervasive, and formerly edited a column on interaction technologies in IEEE Computer. The ACM conferences on tangible and embedded interaction in 2007 and on automotive user interfaces in 2010 were co-founded by him. In 2018 Albrecht was induced into the ACM SIGCH Academy.