Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica

 

The prevalence of computer-mediated communication tools, such as instant messaging, microblogging and social networking sites, has extended the scope of possible relationships between people and machines. Moving beyond the classic “one person interacting with one machine” model in human-computer interaction (HCI), the phenomenon of using computers as communication media to enable and support interpersonal communication, collaboration, and online communities and societies requires researchers to explore a somewhat different set of theories, methods, ideas, and scientific and design practices for pursuing deeper understanding and better informing technological and social designs.

        The talk aims to provide a sketch of the research space of collaborative and social computing in ACM SIGCHI, a leading research community of HCI. The talk will introduce two SIGCHI conferences where work on collaborative and social computing has significant and consistent presence, CHI and CSCW. One observation is that collaborative and social computing and HCI in general are not brand new topics they may appear to be. This year is the 30th anniversary of CHI. CSCW has also been held biennially from 1986 to 2008 and annually since 2010. To perform research and development in these fields, understanding the trajectory, evolution and value behind may be as important as catching up the hot topics. The talk aims to contribute to the reflection and discussion of the possible benefits, difficulties and directions for growing these areas in the local academic, industrial and cultural contexts.

Hao-Chuan Wang is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Computer Science, National Tsing Hua University since February 2012. He received his Ph.D. in Information Science from Cornell University in 2011, M.S. in Computer Science from National Chengchi University in 2004 and B.S. from National Taiwan Normal University in 1999. He also studied and worked at the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University (2006-2008) and the Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica (2004-2006).

Prof. Wang’s primary research interest and expertise lie in the collaborative and social computing aspects of human-computer interaction (HCI). He also holds experience and interest in applied machine learning, language technologies and educational technology. His work is characterized by the focus on integrating computing and information research, and social and behavioral sciences for better tool design and solving problems of interpersonal communication and collaboration. His recent projects include designing and evaluating tools for supporting group creativity, investigating the effects of cultural background in online communication, and supporting collaborative learning with computer agents. His work has been published in a number of key publication venues in related areas, most notably ACM CHI and CSCW. He has been an active participant and reviewer for ACM SIGCHI conferences for several years, and is currently a Program Committee member (also known as Associate Chair or Meta-Reviewer in SIGCHI) for CSCW 2013, the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. More information of him can be found at his website http://www.cs.nthu.edu.tw/~haochuan