All are welcome to join the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering for a special guest lecture on designing interactive systems for community citizen science.

TALK ABSTRACT

Recently, the use of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for promoting social good and pursuing sustainability has begun to receive wide attention. Conventionally, scientists lead projects that engage lay people in research activities. However, using this top-down approach to "parachute" technology intervention without thoughtful consideration may cause irreversible harm to communities. We introduce an alternative framework, Community Citizen Science (CCS), to closely connect research and social issues by empowering communities to produce scientific knowledge, represent their needs, address their concerns, and advocate for impact. CCS advances the current science-oriented concept to a deeper level that aims to sustain community engagement when researchers are no longer involved after the intervention of interactive systems. This seminar will introduce the CCS concept through three deployed systems that applied HCI and AI techniques, as well as future directions in this field. We envision that CCS can drive HCI and AI toward citizen empowerment at a time when community concerns, sustainability issues, and technological ethics are at the forefront of global social discourse.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Yen-Chia Hsu is a computer scientist with an architectural design background. He designs, implements, deploys, and evaluates interactive systems that support community empowerment, especially for sustainability issues. Currently, he is a Project Scientist in the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He received his Ph.D. degree in Robotics in 2018 from the Robotics Institute at CMU. Previously, he received his Master's degree in tangible interaction design in 2012 from the School of Architecture at CMU, where he studied and built prototypes of interactive robots and wearable devices. Before CMU, he earned his dual Bachelor's degree in both architecture and computer science in 2010 at National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan.