DUB Seminar (Fall 2021)

Design, Use, Build Seminar

HCID 590 A - Master of Human-Computer Interaction and Design

Instructor: Benjamin Mako Hill / makohill@uw.edu

Office Hours: By appointment (I'm usually available via chat during "business hours.") You can view out my calendar and/or put yourself on it. If you schedule a meeting, we'll meet in the Jitsi room (makooffice) you'll get a link to through the scheduling app.

Meeting Times: Mondays 12-1pm and three Mondays 3:30-5pm (see FIXME calendar in Canvas)

Important Links:

• We will use Canvas for announcements and turning in assignments
• We will use [FIXME our own Slack Channel] for asynchronous 'group chat' to discuss assignments and readings, ask questions, and share information around the course material throughout the week.
• DUB Seminar website with the calendar, links to information about speakers, etc

Overview and Learning Objectives

The power of the Design, Use, Build group (DUB) lies in the way that brings together people across a range of departments at the University of Washington. DUB helps set up UW faculty to take on major challenges in HCI by bringing folks out of their departments and exposing them to new ideas and persepctives. The primary venues for this are the annual DUB retreat, small group activities organized several times throughout the year, and the DUB seminar. For more than 15 years, the DUB seminar has brought some of the leading researchers working at the intersections of people and computing to UW. It remains one of the best and easiest ways to connect with the broader UW community.

I am going to approach HCID 590 as a kind of slow-burn class stretched out across the year. That means that there won't be a final exam at the end of the quarter. It also means that each quarter the learning goals will shift. This also means that the assignments and activities may change so that they can build upon what you have learned. The first quarter of DUB, will be an opportunity for you to learn about the DUB community, practice formulating questions, and reflecting on what you have heard.

I will consider this quarter a success if following happens:

• Everyone attends and participates in the weekly DUB seminars and the required discussion sessions.
• Everyone is able to routinely form thoughtful questions about the academic work presented that would be appropriate to academic speakers, your classmates, and industry.
• Everyone listens actively and takes excellent notes.

Class Schedule

Seminars

The DUB seminar will be hosted from 12-1pm on Wednesdays and (AFAIK) will conducted entirely over Zoom this quarter. I've listed the planned talks here and linked them on the calendar in Canvas. I don't schedule the DUB seminar and I know things sometimes change over the quarter. The latest version will always be on the DUB seminar webpage and changes will be announced on the DUB mailing lists.

1. Wednesday October 6: Marshini Chetty (University of Chicago)
2. Wednesday October 20 Lindah Kotut (UW Information School)
3. Wednesday October 27 Nithya Sambasivan (Google)
4. Wednesday November 3 Sucheta Ghoshal (UW Human Centered Design & Engineering)
5. Wednesday November 10/21 Jed Brubaker (University of Colorado)
6. Wednesday November 17/21 Leilani Battle (UW Computer Science & Engineering)
7. Wednesday December 1 Martez Mott (Microsoft Research)

You'll notice that we're skipping October 13 because we'll all be attending the DUB retreat that day. You'll also notice that there will be small group mixers on both September 29 and December 8th. Although you're not required to attend these, I strongly encourage you to attend these because they are low key, lots of fun, and provide great opportunities to connect with folks working on related stuff at UW. You can follow the links above for more information.

Class Group Discussions

You are expected to attend the two facilitated group discussion events listed below and on the class Canvas calendar:

1. Monday, October 25th from 3:30–5pm (in person in Alumni House classroom)
2. Monday, November 15th from 3:30–5pm (in person in Alumni House classroom)
3. Monday, December 6th from 3:30–5pm (Optional and virtual only via Zoom)

Assignments

Responses: Visual Notes & Questions; Class Discussions

For each week that we have a DUB seminar, your assignment will be to participate in a Canvas discussion. I'm asking folks to do at do two things:

Post visual notes and a question [Due each Thursday @ 9pm following seminar]

By 9pm on Friday following a talk, please post a message to the [FIXME Canvas discussion forum]] I'll create for each week with the following items:

(1) A visual note capturing a single idea from the presentation

You are welcome to reflect on how the talk fits into the design challenges that you are currently addressing, highlight a research methods that you can use in the context of your projects or capture your key takeaway. Please do not try to visualize the whole presentation within your one visual note! The best notes can focus on one key point.

(2) Three questions including

• A follow-up question for the speaker
• A question for the cohort to discuss
• A question for the instructor, industry, or someone else

In terms of the questions: Every question that you ask should help you gather facts or opinions. The questions should be probing and with a purpose. It is not required of you to ask the speaker any questions during the seminar but it is highly encouraged! If you decide to ask your questions in class be sure to respect the speaker and ask questions that you are really interested in learning about.

In terms of the visual notes: I'm actually pretty new to visual note-taking myself but I'm not a particularly great at drawing. I know that both experience and skills will vary quite a lot across the group so don't feel bad if you're new to this too. I found these videos pretty useful:

• Verbal to Visual / What is Sketchnoting
• The 50/50 Rule of Visual Note-Taking (YouTube)

I am putting things in Canvas because I want you all to be able to see each others notes and questions. I am not expecting that you will all want.

Discussion on Slack [Due Monday @ 3:30pm following seminar]

I am expecting that everybody will spend 30 minutes discussing each seminar on Slack and I expect that everyone will spend 10-15 minutes reading others messages and about 15-20 minutes writing out their own thoughtful responses.

A simple starting point will be to simply pose your question for the cohort in the slack itself! If you don't feel the desire to share your question, you can spend time answering others.

I have written a program that is logging our Slack channel and all threads that occur within it and I will use the system to keep track of each time anybody in the class posts and whether and how much they post when they do so. I don't have a target word count that I'm looking and I understand that sometimes a thoughtful short message may reflect research and other work. That said, I do expect that (a) everybody will post every week, and (b) the posts will be substantial enough to suggest something in the range of 15-20 minutes of thoughtful effort.