Computer Science Colloquium – “Designing Tools for More Effective Remote Communication”

“Designing Tools for More Effective Remote Communication”

Communication can be described as trying to reach “common ground” with two or more parties. In this talk, I will describe some of the software systems that I have created to help enable more effective and efficient communication between parties. The work I will describe will be focused on two domains: (1) tools that help programmers communicate about code (e.g., in the context of seeking programming help) and (2) tools that allow blind web users to overcome accessibility barriers in web pages by quickly seeking support from sighted crowd workers. In this talk, I will describe the design process for these systems, explore which aspects of communication can be particularly challenging in the domains of programming & accessibility support (with an emphasis on remote communication), and the methods I used to implement and evaluate these systems. I will also provide a brief overview of other work that I have done around usable programming tools.

Steve Oney is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information. His research focuses on enabling and encouraging more people to write and customize computer programs by creating new programming tools and exploring usability issues in programming environments. His research also explores techniques for remote communication and support in the context of programming and web accessibility. Professor. Oney completed my Ph.D in Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute and attended MIT (CS & math S.B. in 2007, CS M.Eng in 2008).