Blogs



Toward Understanding the Efficacy of Virtual Classrooms Among Bangladeshi Students During Covid-19

Posted: Fri, June 03, 2022 - 11:41:22

The sudden appearance of Covid-19 forced people to stay at home due its highly infectious nature. Governments shut down countries; economies and businesses collapsed. The education system was no exception; rising Covid-19 cases forced schools to shut down. According to UNESCO, Covid-19 afflicted 37,694,522 students as of January 2022 [1]. Since educational facilities halted in March 2020, Bangladeshi students have…

The spirit of scientific communication

Posted: Mon, February 28, 2022 - 12:46:19

How can I tell what I think till I see what I make and do? — Christopher Frayling [1] Just a couple of months before the start of the new decade and the pandemic began haunting the world, we had the privilege to attend the Halfway to the Future symposium (https://www.halfwaytothefuture.org/2019/) in person and present a paper. The symposium was…

Modifying category icons in smartphone app stores for better understanding: A user-centric approach

Posted: Fri, February 25, 2022 - 12:30:00

Recent increases in smartphone users have resulted in a great diversity of backgrounds and cultures among these users. Designers of smartphone elements need to address this diversity by making design elements more uniform and acceptable for all. The user interface should address the needs and level of understanding of all users. In this study, we focus on a new approach…

Tangible XAI

Posted: Tue, February 15, 2022 - 4:11:15

Computational systems are becoming increasingly smart and automated. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems perceive things in the world, produce content, make decisions for and about us, and serve as emotional companions. From music recommendations to higher-stakes scenarios such as policy decisions, drone-based warfare, and automated driving directions, automated systems affect us all. But researchers and other experts are asking, How well…

We need to get rid of significance in A/B testing, seriously!

Posted: Tue, February 08, 2022 - 11:20:00

In my previous job, I was responsible for all A/B testing in an e-commerce department. We worked with an external partner and took care of the whole package—from generating hypotheses to developing the tests to providing a report of the results. Those reports were presented to a variety of stakeholders, including product management, merchandise, and the director of e-commerce. To…

Could tech upgrades increase Covid risk? Covid-19 risk in public washrooms

Posted: Wed, February 02, 2022 - 10:40:43

Dyson AirBlade Wash + Dry faucet instructions in English and French. Photo by Ilona Posner Many airports closed drinking fountains for fear of spreading Covid-19. Or perhaps they did it to increase the sale of bottled water. In either case, travelers need to search hard to find free drinking water to refill their bottles after passing through security, before boarding…

Rethinking the Participatory Design Conference experience

Posted: Mon, January 31, 2022 - 4:07:02

I read an article recently that suggested with the growth of online and hybrid conferences in response to Covid-19, there were more opportunities for everyone. The focus of the article was on celebrating the enabling potential and design of technology to make this happen. But after spending the past two years attending online conferences and now serving as general co-chair…

Black literary technoculture and Afrofuturist rupture

Posted: Wed, October 20, 2021 - 10:31:41

As an epigraph to her incomplete book, Parable of the Trickster, Octavia Butler writes, “[T]here’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” I take this to be her call for opening ourselves up to those other worlds that are already here, yet we have been conditioned to ignore. To seek them out and challenge ourselves to explore…

Where is the transparency of the new ACM Violations Database?

Posted: Thu, September 23, 2021 - 10:28:16

After a summer of discussions and action about racism in our community in 2020 (see, e.g., [1]), the spring of 2021 raised further concerns about harassment and oppression. Long before this eventful year, however, I and many others have had both private and somewhat public conversations about the need to reckon with the trauma in our community, whether it is…

Artificial intelligence is changing the surveillance landscape

Posted: Wed, June 30, 2021 - 12:46:38

The following is a review of recent publications on the issue of AI and surveillance and does not reflect Microsoft's opinion on the topic.The termsurveillanceis derived fromsur, which means from above, andveillance, which means to watch. Theoretical approaches to surveillance can be traced back to the 18th century with Bentham’s prison-panopticon. The panopticon premise involved a guard in a central…