Human Interaction

Computing is deeply intertwined with human behavior in a number of ways. At Cornell we study them all: designing ways people interact with computing systems, ways computers mediate communication and other interaction between people, things we can learn about people by looking at those interactions, and impacts of computing on society in a number of critical domains from education to health.

We have a strong presence at related conferences, including CHI, CSCW, ICWSM, KDD, WWW, and do work in a number of areas.

Designing interfaces

One key question in human interaction is how to design computers people can actually use, whether the computers are sensors, phones, tablets, traditional computers, or robots. Cornell has a number of researchers deeply interested in making computation more accessible and useful to everyone.

Human-robot interaction: Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee, (Sue Fussell), (Malte Jung), Wendy Ju, Hadas Kress-Gazit

Information visualization: David Mimno, Mor Naaman, Noah Snavely, Ramin Zabih

Interaction techniques: Shiri Azenkot, Tanzeem Choudhury, Francois Guimbretiere, Noah Snavely

Mobile interfaces: Tanzeem Choudhury, Nicola Dell, Deborah Estrin, (Geri Gay)

Social media and web interfaces: Dan Cosley, (Geri Gay), (Gilly Leshed), Mor Naaman, (Sue Fussell)

Modeling human and information behavior ("Computational Social Science")

A second key question is what we can learn about people from how they interact with computers and how they interact with each other through computers. Both the data people record about themselves and they traces they leave behind when using computational systems promise to provide insight into people's interests and social networks; this insight, in turn, can be used to improve information access, communication, and market mechanisms.

Information networks: Dan Cosley, Thorsten Joachims, Jon Kleinberg, (Michael Macy), Mor Naaman

Language and meaning: Claire Cardie, Cristian Danescu Niculescu-Mizil, Lillian Lee, David Mimno

Mechanism design: (Larry Blume), (David Easley), Arpita Ghosh, Eva Tardos

Personal informatics: Tanzeem Choudhury, Dan Cosley, Deborah Estrin

Recommender systems: Dan Cosley, Thorsten Joachims

Social interaction: (Natalie Bazarova), Dan Cosley, Wendy Ju, (Gilly Leshed)

Teamwork: (Sue Fussell), (Geri Gay), (Malte Jung), (Gilly Leshed)

Impacts of computing on society

The third key question we ask is how computation affects, and ideally can improve, both individual and social outcomes. The increased pervasiveness of computers in our daily lives means they have far-reaching impacts on society in a number of domains, and we are at the forefront of a number of them.

Accessibility: Shiri Azenkot

Crowd work: Dan Cosley, Haym Hirsh, (Malte Jung)

Education: Jon Kleinberg

Ethics: (Steve Jackson), Phoebe Sengers

Games: Walker White

Health: Tanzeem Choudhury, Dan Cosley, Deborah Estrin, (Geri Gay), Ramin Zabih

ICTD: Nicola Dell, (Steve Jackson)

Privacy and security: Ari Juels, Fred Schneider, Elaine Shi, Vitaly Shmatikov, Stephen Wicker

Sustainability: Carla Gomes, Bart Selman