To many, informatics means big data. But as the 2014 Obermann Working Symposium, “Designing the Digital Future: A Human-Centered Approach to Informatics,” November 7-8, 2014, demonstrated, informatics technology intersects with narrative, the arts, collaborative learning, dance, diversity, narrative, social justice movements, values sensitive design, visual thinking, and more. During an “agenda lunch” on the second day of the symposium, participants considered the future of human-computer interaction and informatics at the University of Iowa. These slides are the product of that discussion.

2. AGENDA LUNCH Table 1
Sayan Bandyabadhyay
• grad student in Computer Science sayan
• bandyabadhyay@uiowa.edu
Grant Nordby
• Architect in Iowa City
• agnordby@gmail.com
Tammy Clegg
• University of Maryland College of Ed/College of information studies
• tclegg@umd.edu
Rodney Thompson
• from IC and Coralville, child advocate looking to collaborate with
others
Momina Tabish
• Computer science PhD
• syedamomina-tabish@uiowa.edu

3. Definitions
I asked for a definition of Human Computer Interaction, since it is so
new to me, and this is how Tammy and Sayan explained it to me –
technology design with people at the forefront of that design, emphasis
on design, emphasis on process rather than product, designs that make
the human as comfortable with the technology as possible
• Sayan provides an example of the slow evolution of computer
displays/monitors over time: we started with no display at all, then
moved on to a basic display once we realized it was good to be able
to see what you were doing while you were doing. As technology
became more advanced we were able to make those displays better
and easier to use. Now we are even starting to think about how
displays might work for people who are visually impaired – adding
texture to output so that displays can be used with touch and sound

4. Where do people’s interests at your table connect
with informatics or HCI?
• Sayan: math and HCI – references second session in 10:45am block - the
way that the speakers approach the technology through a human
perspective, there is an emotion that is involved in this that doesn’t always
come through when working through technology, this might be helpful in
thinking about how math could be more human based
• Rodney: thinking about design and technology (including the limitation of
technology) opens up the whole concept of having a problem and finding a
solution. HCI has to do with questions, how you ask questions and the
questions you come up with while trying to resolve your problems, this will
be useful in any kind of problem solving
• Grant observes that HCI is very aware of audience. Since audience shapes
what we talk about, we might learn from HCI’s audience awareness. He
notes connecting with human side of computing is something architectural
software does to make it easier for experts to show work to non-experts

5. Where do work/teaching areas intersect at your table?
Is there potential for collaboration?
• Grant (architect) explains that in his work every day is about
communication, uses modeling programs to help visualize products
and data, make knowledge accessible to others, empowering people
to make decisions. This connects with a central tenant of other areas
of interest
• Rachel (computer science, joined our group later, did not get full
name) thought the interdisciplinary class that Meena and H.S.
presented on this morning was interesting and surprising, is starting
to think about how this might be possible in her program
• Grant asks Tammy how interdisciplinary programs create focused
research projects and research programs. Tammy explains that they
have weekly brown bags where people give research talks.
Additionally, a yearly symposium helps to draw people together

6. What would you like to see happen at UI in informatics
and/or HCI next year? In 5 or 10 years?
• Grant – make technology more accessible for people who
don’t like code, lower some of the technological barriers.
Notes that grasshopper has opened some doors to people
who don’t know code. Enable a more DIY approach!
• Tammy would like to see more diversity in HCI research and
education, a continued/greater focus on making impactful
tools that change the world in a lasting way. More tools that
might appeal to different groups of people
• (another student who joined later and whose name I did not
catch) wants to see better voice recognition tools that might
recognize the emotional and lead to better search parameters

7. What would you like to see happen at UI in
informatics and/or HCI next year? In 5 or 10 years?
• Sayan would like to see not just the advancement of technology, but
greater accessibility for everyone and anyone (for example, the blind
- more intuitive touch screens/not just flat smooth touch screens)
• Rodney – would like to see conferences like this include more
people from the community and especially children, use it for a
networking opportunity amongst kids. Also, more questions! A
little bit of preaching to the choir here, we should pose more
questions about what we are trying to accomplish
Overall, we all seem to want more space for people who don’t yet have
a voice in this conversation

8. Other notes
Rodney reads his proposal for web-based tools that kids can use to
promote peace and justice
Ideally, a safe place online that will help empower kids to become
better adults by giving them more opportunity to define their own
terms for a better future
This leads to an interesting conversation about how we need to harness
people’s natural tendencies to make technologies more powerful i.e. if
we want to appeal to kids, design a program to be more game-like
Tammy notes that a teenager (Jake Andraka) has done some
monumentally powerful stuff in HCI and is worth looking to as an
example of young people in HCI

9. Other Notes
Great quote from Grant about having a bunch of non-experts at the
table and why that is useful: “That’s why you involve an outside voice,
to ask the really dumb [seemingly straightforward] questions that
everyone else forgot to ask”.
Its important to create space to fail. Recognize that failure can be
awesome because it leads to creative solutions, greater awareness of the
problem, etc. We all need the freedom to fail!

11. AGENDA LUNCH Table 2
• Jen Shook; English, UICB; jennifer-shook@uiowa.edu
• Elizabeth Deifell; Second Language Acquisition;
elizabethdeifell@uiowa.edu
• Lisa Anthony; UF/ Comp Sci; lanthony@cise.ufl.edu
• Jon Winet; Art/Humanities; jon-winet@uiowa.edu
o Director for Digital Arts and Humanities
o Experimental literature; using Twitter as the platform
• Jacki Rand; History; jacki-rand@uiowa.edu
o Faculty advisor for History Core; graduate student led

12. Where do people’s interests at your table connect with
informatics or HCI?
• What brought grad students to the symposium?
o Elizabeth: looking at HCI; interdisciplinary dissertation. Really tiny dataset; naturalistic and
complex; justify a small n; justify legitimacy; bridge education and communication studies;
good to get interdisciplinary perspective
• Post-structuralist; non-Gosseian statistics
• Using technology combined with close observation ; precision is lost
o Lisa: small n is no problem in HCI; qualitatively; you don’t have to justify in HCI; in an HCI
study, 20-30 is a lot
o Depends on how representative you’re trying to get
o Point of connection with HCI: methodologies; small n and open to exploratory studies ;
when publish in own communities
o Qualitative but still has points of percentages; percentages as a structure that justify how to
dig into that; case studies; digging into the story behind the numbers
• Jon:
o UI: names, dates database; 99,000 names; 64 incomplete columns of data and second project
looking at rich literature of Iowa City; narrative as central point of research; all through
multimedia narrative

13. Where do work/teaching areas intersect at your table? Is
there potential for collaboration?
• Elizabeth: to Jackie: language, space
o Talk from Univ. of Oregan; place-oriented game; layers
o You walk past a certain place you can watch a video etc.
o Jackie: tribal people do this but don’t have the same resources;
tribal prioirities; concerns about what’s happening in this
vacuum
o “It’s just amazing what a few hundred miles will do to a people”
• Re-enactments
• Interventions
o Jon: worked in Silicon Valley in the 90s; non-traditional uses of
existing technologies; HistoryCore: AINIS; incubator;
experimentations
• Last minute decided to teach course as an object based space
• Want to be a “change agent” in the dept
• Classroom in anthropologist dept; everything based in real

14. What would you like to see happen at UI in informatics
and/or HCI next year? In 5 or 10 years?
• Jacki: course release on HistoryCore
• More collaboration between tech and arts and humanities; more
collab between arts and humanities; public piece
• Jen: Hard to find research assistantships when you’re teaching;
digital humanities work; Informatics
• Jacki: administration has to reflect and show commitment; team
teaching problem areas
o Transnational feminism; diaspora; more efficient Collaboration
not challenges but opportunities ; you have to have collaboration
for HCI

16. AGENDA LUNCH Table 3
• Lindsay Mattock, LIS lmattock@uiowa.edu
• Janet Davis, Computer Science, Grinnell
davisjan@cs.grinnell.edu
• Jean Finlay, Journalism/Education jean-finlay@
uiowa.edu
• Prakash Nadkarni, Iowa, healthcare prakash-nadkarni@
uiowa.edu
• David Eichmann, SLIS david-eichmann@uiowa.edu

17. Where do people’s interests at your table connect
with informatics or HCI?
• JD – HCI researcher, potential interconnect to Grinnell
Mellon proposal
• PN – medication reconciliation example
• Shared interest in usability testing
• JF – institutional Web site redesign – who is the audience
and how are they being served?
o Administrators interested in serving a lot of data
o Practice-base experience as life cycle driver
o Utility of digital signage in information dissemination
o Balancing scarce resources against equal access to limited bandwidth channels

18. Where do work/teaching areas intersect at your table? Is
there potential for collaboration?
• Institutional outreach/engagement juxtaposed with
design principles / information architecture
• How to craft a message for dissemination
• How relevant are our existing conceptualizations of use
cases for information systems, archives, etc.?
o Are new approaches to constructing use cases required? (user models, cultural
sensitivities, …)
• “digital repatriation”
• Cultural informed consent
o Differences in the scope of forgetting

19. What would you like to see happen at UI in informatics
and/or HCI next year? In 5 or 10 years?
• Inter-institutional collaboration enabled (e.g., Grinnell
Mellon proposal)
• More collaboration and discussion about information in
the public sphere
o How do we train our students and ourselves to evaluate those data critically?
• Data literacy enhancing information literacy
o Disciplinary distinctions in acceptable levels of literacy

21. AGENDA LUNCH Table 4
• Joe Kearney – Associate Dean, CLAS, Comp Sci
• Dan Reed – OVPRED, Computer Science, UI
• Celine Latulipe - Creativity, supporting the arts, dance,
UNC-Charlotte
• May Beth Rosson - Gender, science, public access, Dean of
iSchool, Penn State
• Ron Wakkary - Design practice, SFU
• Juan Carlo Hourcade – Computer Science, UI
• Tom Keegan - Libraries, Rhetoric, UI
• Teresa Mangum – Gender, Women's, Sexuality Studies,
Director, Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, UI

22. Where do people’s interests at your table connect with
informatics or HCI?
• Traditional connections to Libraries and then crossover to business,
engineering, etc. to the point where "everything looks like HCI."
• The College "is the glue" between units within institutions.
• Strong desire to see data visualization incorporated into the
curriculum: as both low-grade intro level course content and higher-level
courses tailored to that focus.
• Informatics as a new "literacy." Do we teaching it that way at the
undergraduate and graduate level across disciplines?
• How do we de-silo the institution and get credit for teaching
transdepartmental courses?

23. Where do work/teaching areas intersect at your table? Is
there potential for collaboration?
• Can business schools, computers science departments, etc. be
leveraged to provide a service to institutions more broadly (as a
certificate or some other credential)?
• Do institutions address the interdisciplinary nature of informatics in
research and pedagogical structures?
• Do or can universities dynamically change their administrative
structures to accommodate new initiatives?
• Can we see undergraduate education and faculty research as a two-sided
means of encouraging uptake of new practices, approaches.

24. What would you like to see happen at UI in informatics
and/or HCI next year? In 5 or 10 years?
• Encouragement of (informatics) collaboration across disciplines free
from administrative structures that silo disciplines.
• Uptake of an informatics/digital skillset across the disciplines.
• Scalable practice-oriented courses within majors that move from
emphasizing applied knowledge to closer study of long histories
supporting the discipline.
• Get departments in conversation about best practices.

26. AGENDA LUNCH Table 5
• Katie Walden, American Studies and Sports Studies, Katherine-e-walden@
uiowa.edu
• Luiza Pantoja, Informatics and Information Science,
luiza.pantoja@gmail.com
• Katie Wetzel, English Literature, Katherine-wetzel@uiowa.edu
• Eric Simpson, Department of English at Grinnel, simpsone@grinnell.edu
• Lisa Nathan, Library, Archival, and Information Sciences, University of
British Columbia,
• Elena Osinsky, Language, Literature, and Culture; Informatics,
Education, elena-osinsky@uiowa.edu

27. Where do people’s interests at your table connect
with informatics or HCI?
• We are concerned with…
o Pedagogy and work within the classroom (Literature, Rhetoric,
Informatics, Anthropology, sociology, education classrooms)
o Accessibility of information and skills
o Imagined memory of place
• We see connections with HCI occurring through
o The demand at Grinnell for Public Digital Humanities,
o Collaborating between Institutions (Grinnell/UI)

28. Where do work/teaching areas intersect at your table? Is
there potential for collaboration?
• Collaboration between Grinnell and UI Public Digital
Humanities
• Incorporate Critical Thinking into Projects: Join
Reflection or Constructive Critique with Building
• Our various areas offer alternative (sometimes more
abstract) solutions to one another that deal with the
temporal and skills-based problems we encounter in the
digital humanities curriculum

29. What would you like to see happen at UI in informatics
and/or HCI next year? In 5 or 10 years?
• We’re interested in establishing skills “bootcamps” and
seminars to engage undergraduates, graduates and faculty
between various local institutions
• We’d like to see HCI and UI informatics deal with the
temporal problems of reconciling skill building and complex
course projects with the academic calendar
• These various avenues of thought might help reconciling
humanities academic work with the public, making it more
accessible or relevant.