CHCI Workshop 2022: Human-Centered AI for Research, Innovation, and Creativity: Creating Connections Across Disciplines

The Center for Human-Computer Interaction (CHCI) will host its sixth annual workshop on the Future of HCI in March 2022, on the theme “Human-Centered AI for Research, Innovation, and Creativity: Creating Connections Across Disciplines.” Ed Gitre (Assistant Professor, Department of History) and Chreston Miller (Assistant Professor, University Libraries) will lead the workshop. Gitre’s co-leadership is supported by the Diggs Teaching Scholar Association.

AI and related technologies (e.g., machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing) can be very powerful for the analysis of large and complex datasets. Simultaneously, what constitutes “data” continues to expand as domain experts, from literature to construction, reimagine their research and creative output. A human-centered design approach can improve the accessibility and usability of AI-powered tools. Empowering teams of domain experts, AI experts, and human-centered design experts to make effective use of these technologies is an area rich in opportunity for collaborative research and design. Already, transdisciplinary teams at Virginia Tech are forging frontiers in AI-empowered, human-centered research, analytics, performance, and design. 

We invite the Virginia Tech community to join us on March 24-25, 2022, as we explore new connections and create new collaborations in this exciting and growing area.

Through the workshop we will explore ways of improving the user experience of AI-powered data analysis, and facilitate transdisciplinary collaborations involving human-centered design, AI, and domain experts. During and after the workshop, we envision that human-centered designers with expertise in HCI, UX, interactive visualization, and the like will be able to work with experts in any domain with complex data analysis needs (e.g., construction, education, intelligence analysis, agriculture, history) to understand their data and questions of interest. At the same time, AI experts will be able to recommend intelligent technologies and approaches that can address these needs. Together, such teams should be able to propose novel, usable, and accessible tools, powered by AI, to solve data analytics problems in a given domain through human-AI collaboration. 

In addition to the workshop leads, Doug Bowman (Director, CHCI and Professor, Computer Science), Todd Ogle (Associate Director, CHCI and Assistant Professor, University Libraries), Andrea Kavanaugh (Associate Director, CHCI, and Senior Research Scientist), and Sara Evers (Graduate Assistant, CHCI and Ph.D. student, School of Education) comprise the organizing committee. The workshop will be held on Thursday and Friday, March 24-25, 2022.

Registration information will be forthcoming in early 2022. For more information, please contact Sara Evers.