CHCI Students’ Summer Internships
September 5, 2023
During the summer, graduate students at the Center for Human-Computer Interaction (CHCI) have the chance to acquire practical experience within their research specialties as they collaborate with prominent companies and laboratories across the globe. This year these include places like Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany; Wayfair headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts; Procter & Gamble in Mason, Ohio; Hewlett Packard Enterprise based out of San Jose, California; Adobe in New York City; and Microsoft in Seattle, Washington.
Below is a sampling of CHCI students – where they interned and highlights from their experience:
Jiayuan Dong is a third-year student in the Industrial and Systems Engineering department. She was a part of the NSF-funded International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) program in Munich, Germany. She worked as a Summer Research Intern in the Human-Centered Ubiquitous Media Lab of Professor Albrecht Schmidt, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Her research project focused on individual preferences for digital legacy. Digital legacy is someone’s available data after the event of death. She developed a user survey from relevant literature; in addition, she analyzed user responses to understand the potential impact of various factors on digital legacy management, such as different access options and time preferences for people's online accounts. This user research project raised awareness of digital legacy by allowing people to think about planning their online data, and the result could potentially provide design guidelines for future digital legacy applications. She is advised by Myounghoon Jeon.
Erin Meaney is a Senior in the Department of Computer Science. She was a UX Research Operations Intern on the Experience Design team at Wayfair. She had the opportunity to intern at the Wayfair headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. Her role was within the Storefront Research Operations team, where she engaged in collaborative efforts with cross-functional departments including product, design, engineering, content writing, and other XD stakeholders.
The primary goal of her internship was to enhance user experiences across Wayfair's platforms through effective user research. One of her key responsibilities was leading a discovery research project, which involved all researchers and stakeholders on the team. This project focused on establishing a baseline for the support and tools provided by the Research Operations team. Additionally, Erin took charge of managing a research insight community. She is proud to share that her cross-functional team secured third place in an internal hackathon aimed at devising solutions for real business challenges. An exciting highlight for her was being invited to attend a brunch with the CEO to celebrate their success in the competition!
Morva Saaty is a senior PhD student in the Department of Computer Science. She was an R&D Data Scientist Intern at the DS&AI group at Procter & Gamble in Mason, Ohio.
Her project involved designing and modeling digital tools for habit adoption and performing multimodal analysis of users’ opinions and feelings by using cutting-edge AI technologies and machine learning techniques (e.g., large language models) on collected social media data. She is advised by Scott McCrickard.
Daniel Vargas Diaz is a second-year MS student in the Department of Computer Science. He was a Software Engineer intern at Hewlett Packard Enterprise based out of San Jose, California.
He worked on developing a new system to represent data in a 3D space. The data they used was extracted from HPE's SD-WAN Orchestrator, one of the company’s main products. This Orchestrator allowed customers to connect various appliances located in different sites to a data hub for protection and data transfer. The ultimate goal of the project was to visualize these connections within a 3D space, offering a more intuitive and comprehensive understanding of the network architecture.
Interestingly, Daniel’s original project involved working with networks, but after finding out that he did HCI research, he was moved to this UX/UI visualization project. He was also recommended for a full-time position. He is advised by Sang Won Lee.
Carlos Augusto Bautista Isaza is a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science. He was a Research Intern in the 3D Graphics & Interactive Design Lab at Adobe based out of New York City.
He explored affordances and possibilities for manipulating objects and humans in 3D virtual environments constrained to a fixed camera 2D view. The project involved understanding different user groups and how they would interact with 3D models in 3D environments limited to a single point of view. Carlos was able to generate a functional prototype and was invited to keep the collaboration going towards potential publication. He is advised by Sang Won Lee.
Anirban Mukhopadhyay is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Computer Science. He was a Design Research Intern with the Mixed Reality Design and UX Research team at Microsoft in Seattle, Washington.
He ran a user study to understand factors affecting trust in human-copilot interaction during collaborative experiences. Anirban was excited to meet and discuss ongoing projects with researchers across different orgs at Microsoft. He is advised by Kurt Luther.