How to Succeed in Grad School

Jim Hollan Department of Cognitive Science Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Email: hollan@ucsd.edu Lab: Design Lab at UC San Diego Web: hci.ucsd.edu/hollan & designlab.ucsd.edu

First: WELCOMEYou are now a member of a very special community

First really good advice for how to succeed: Make use of your access to department members and the wider cognitive science and UC San Diego community

How to succeed in graduate school

Jim Hollan I make no claim to originality, only to good taste in stealing from smart people I admire.

Experience not only at UCSD but also in industrial research labs: Xerox Parc, MCC, and Bell Labs/Bellcore.

Special appreciation for wisdom from Richard Hamming, Ivan Sutherland, and Dave Patterson, from my personal mentors Pat Suppes, John Seeley Brown, Dave Rumelhart, and Don Norman, and especially from my students and colleagues from whom I have learned so much.

UCSD: Ross Bott, Aaron Circourel, Alan Cypher, Steve Draper, Jeff Elman,Tom Erickson, Bill Gaver, Don Gentner, Bob Glushko, Jonathan Grudin, Geoff Hinton, Ed Hutchins, Mike Jordan, Jay McClelland, Naomi Miyake, Yoshio Miyake, Mike Mozer, Don Norman, Dave Owen, Gary Perlman, Mary Riley, David Rumelhart, Abi Sellen, Mark Wallen; NPRDC: Mark Rosenstein, Tim McCandless, Louie Weitzman, Mike Williams; BBN: Larry Stead, Bruce Roberts, Al Stevens; MIT: Ken Forbus, Brian Smith

MCC: Rich Cohen, Jonathan Grudin, Will Hill, Carol Kroll, Gale Martin, Paul Martin, Tim McCandless, Jim Miller, Jay Pittman, Steve Poltrock, Mark Rosenstein, Mark Tarlton, Nong Tarlton, Loren Terveen, Louie Weitzman, Wayne Wilner, Kent Wittenburg, Dave Wroblewski

Bellcore: Steve Abney, David Ackley Ben Bederson, George Furnas, Will Hill, Michael Littman, Tim McCandless, Jakob Nielsen, Mark Rosenstein, Larry Stead, Scott Stornetta, Louie Weitzman, Kent Wittenburg;

UNM: David Ackley, Ben Bederson, Allison Druin, Stephanie Forrest, Ron Hightower, Jon Helfman; Terry Jones, Derek Smith; NYU: David Bacon, David Fox, Ken Perlin, Jon Meyer

UCSD: Dan Amelang, Dan Bauer, Barry Brown, Gaston Cangiano, Tom Defanti, Brynn Evans, Pierre Fastrez, Adam Fouse, Daniel Frysinger, Bill Griswold, Jean-Baptiste Haue Ron Hightower, Ed Hutchins, Adriene Jenik, Terry Jones, Daniel Kaulen, Scott Klemmer, Falko Kuester, Kevin Li, Tim Marks, Roshni Malani, Javier Movellan, Don Norman, Carol Padden, Anne Marie Piper, Kevin Ponto, Erik Pukinskis, Nan Renner, Malte Risto, Adam Rule, Tim Sohn, Lawrence Saul, Mohan Trivedi, Zhuowen Tu, Nuno Vasconcelos, Tricia Wang, Amaya Becvar Weddle, Nadir Weibel, So Yamaoka; Elsewhere: Maneesh Agrawala, Patrick Baudisch, Jan Borchers,Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, François Guimbretière, Saadi Lahlou, Wendy Mackay, Roy Pea, Jurgen Steimle, Aurélien Tabard

ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award 2015:Jim Hollan, UC San DiegoThinking with Computers컴퓨터를 통한 사고

Previous awards: Doug Englebart, Stu Card, Ben Shneiderman, Don Norman, Jack Carroll, Tom Moran, Tom Landauer, Judy and Gary Olson, Bill Buxton, Sara Keisler, Lucy Suchman, Terry Winograd, George Roberson, Steve Whittaker

General Advice to UndergradsWhy do so few people make significant contributions?What is the difference between those who have impact and those who don’t?One factor is expectations If you think you can’t almost certainly you won’tTo do significant things you have to neglect other thingsDo what you love (that’s easy) and love what you do (that’s the challenge)Be careful about commitments but when you commit really commitTake time to think important thoughtsRefuse to let the urgent drive out the importantBe thoughtful about who you spend time with

How to succeed in graduate school?

The short answer: Don’t think of yourself as a graduate student

Difficult Transition from Student to ResearcherStellar students often struggle with research

I don’t know about you but I always thought I did well as a student because others did so poorly. It is different in research.In classes, the world is rigged. There’s a simple correct answer and the problem is structured to let you come to that answer. You also get feedback with the correct answer soon after you submit your answer.Research is different. No one tells you the right answer. We don’t even know if there is a right answer.Skills associated with being a “stellar student” may actually impede you becoming a stellar researcher.

Advice for Grad StudentsFrom day one of graduate school think of yourself not as a graduate student but as a young researcher in your field.

This wider context is key to making wise decisions. Criteria always should be how will X advance my research or ability to do the research I find exciting.

Of course you need to satisfy requirements. This is necessary but is far from sufficient. Should not be your focus. Minimize as much as possible.

Advice for Grad StudentsResearch Requires Courage Because It Involves Risks

Social and emotionalRisks to reputation and prideHigh probability any particular project, especially if challenging, will failResearch projects vary: from sure thing to highly risky incremental to potentially high impact

Advice for Grad StudentsReputations start early

You have more time and flexibility now than you likely ever will again

Be smart in using your time

Get to know people in your field (email, conferences, talks, visits, …)

Learn how to balance doing multiple things and dealing with ambiguity

Example from my scheduleGift letter Toyota; Brian promotion; Grade/report Daniel; DSGN 1 IAsTuesday7am Flight 9-10 Azeem 10-11 Honcho Huddle11-12 Prep with Don for Larry/Ramesh12-1 Lunch with Amy/Adam1-3 NSF proposal Zhuowen/So-One4-5 Living Lab of the Future Larry/Ramesh/Don 6-10 Patent attorneys

Advice for Grad StudentsDevelop a Research Portfolio

Your time is the investment currencyWork on important problemsWhat makes a problem personally important?Portfolio should be a mix of differing risk/payoff projectsTake time to assess and adjust the mixPortfolio will evolve over your whole career

Advice to Grad StudentsGoal is to have impact. That means• Do Real Stuff. Solve problems people care about• Impactful projects are likely longer term projects• Need to sell the ideas and work • Not only publish but people must read • Spend as much time on communicating as on work itself

• Know the literature! Ideas have histories• Feedback is key. Seek out and value critics• Developing taste is critical in selecting research

problems, how to approach, and communicating results• People not papers are your real legacy and the main

multiplier of the impact of your ideas

ChallengesScience is ultra competitive Have to work hard Need to avoid burning out

Learn to deal with ambiguity

Build a repertoire of research skills

Remember to have fun Refuse to let the urgent drive out the important

HeilmeierWhat is the question?Why is the question important? Who cares? If you’re successful, what difference will it make?

What are you trying to do?Articulate your objectives without jargon

How is it done today?What are limits of current practice? What is your approach?

How will you determine if you are successful?What are the risks and payoffs? How much will it cost and how long will it take? What are midterm and final “exams” to check for success?

Science is a Social ActivityDoingCollaborate, collaborate, collaborate

TalkingImportance of both formal and informal interactions (Hinton, Rumelhart) From water cooler chats to lab meetings to classes and seminars to conference talks TAing and teaching are important opportunities Look for opportunities to give talks (both formal and informal)

WritingA constant activity and continual developing skill (Knuth, Norman) Set aside regular time to write A new challenge is learning how to write proposals

Writing Proposals

Proposal EvolutionIdeas to Ideas Informed by Literature to Draft Proposal to Many Iterations of Draft to Final Proposal

Like all writing evolves from something to help you think to something that communicates to othersInitial Focus Clear formulation of question you are addressing and why it is important Informing the questions based on the literature

Later Focus Specifics of how you will address the question and Why your approach is promising

Proposal WritingWriting about what you plan to do rather than what you’ve done is different and challengingA key challenge is avoiding vagueness and handwavingIf you don’t know how you are going to accomplish some aspect of the project, describe how you are going to find out, describe alternative approaches, and how you will make a decision. Similar to talking about possible outcomes of experiments

Get feedback from othersDifficulty of allowing others to see early draftsStructure your interactions to get the right level of comments

Math and mathematicians

Undergraduate days focused on a conjecture from the 1800’s: Four Color Conjecture

Became a bit obsessed with graph theory, convinced conjecture false, determined to find counterexample, but really only found computers and programming

Then found Polya, How to Solve It, then double major math/psych, then two-body problem resulted in graduate school at what seemed like the wrong place but probably was the right place, then thanks to Pat Suppes a postdoc at Stanford IMSSS but really AI Lab and Parc, then found Alto and Lisp Machines.

Brief Story of My Research Path and Lessons Learned

UCSD and NPRDC

Moboard; Steamer; Direct Manipulation Interfaces;User-Center System Design Book

MCC Human Interface Lab

HITS: Human Interface Tool Suite;Multimodal Interfaces; ReadWear/EditWear;

History Enriched Digital Objects

Bellcore and UNM

Beyond Being There; 3D interfaces and AR3T; Multiscale Zoomable Interfaces and Pad++

UCSDIntelligent Driver Support; Multitouch and SLAP; Write&Speak;

Activity Trails; ChronoViz; Kinect and Projected Surfaces; Gesture and Sign Language; Electronic Medical Records

Research Path: Places and Projects

Two-body problem leads to UCSD

An amazing time and place

Research Focus: mental models and how to aid understanding of complex dynamic systems using interactive dynamic graphics

Slogan: Conceptual Fidelity rather than Physical Fidelity

Moboard and Steamer

Direct Manipulation paper with Ed and Don; UCSD book

UCSD

UCSD: Lessons LearnedConvinced that computation is the most plastic medium for representation, interaction, and communication we have ever known

Building systems and transitioning them to real use is incredibly fun, challenging, and a good way to do science

Value of combining field work and systems buildingImpact of building tools to build interfaces. Our graphics editor was one of the first for building object-oriented dynamic interactive interfaces and associating them with behavior

Importance of abstracting out the cognitive design principles as in the Direct Manipulations Interface paper

Being naive about the scale and complexity of projects can sometimes lead to important advances and taking on really challenging projects

UCSD and NPRDC

Moboard; Steamer; Direct Manipulation Interfaces;User-Center System Design Book

MCC Human Interface Lab

HITS: Human Interface Tool Suite; Multimodal Interfaces; ReadWear/EditWear;

History Enriched Digital Objects

Bellcore and UNM

Beyond Being There; 3D interfaces and AR3T; Multiscale Zoomable Interfaces and Pad++

UCSDIntelligent Driver Support; Multitouch and SLAP; Write&Speak;

Activity Trails; ChronoViz; Kinect and Projected Surfaces; Gesture and Sign Language; Electronic Medical Records

Research Path: Places and Projects

MCC HCI LabHITS: Human Interface Tool Suite

Extend graphics editor notion to design of multimodal interfaces (graphics, natural language, gesture, advice)

Interfaces were represented in a declarative language as were the tools themselves

Big Idea: a chain of editors that spans from bit-shuffling of computers to domain areas that empower designers with different levels of knowledge and types of expertise and the connections between editors was live. Change at right level and for the whole system.

MCC HCI Lab: ReadWear and EditWear

MCC HCI LabEdit Wear and Read WearHill, Hollan, Wroblewski, and McCandless

History-Enriched Digital ObjectsHill and Hollan

Attribute-MappedScrollbars

Wear on menus, buffers, email, ...

MCC HCI Lab: Lessons LearnedFirst experience managing a large research organization: small research group methods don’t scale

Virtue of building a system for integrating research groups and focusing research

HITS fundamental tool chain idea is still a promising vision

Key idea of history-enriched digital objects: people do what they normally do but because they do it in a computational environment it can have useful representational consequences

Even further convinced that computation is the most plastic medium for representation, interaction, and communication we have ever known

UCSD and NPRDC

Moboard; Steamer; Direct Manipulation Interfaces;User-Center System Design Book

MCC Human Interface Lab

HITS: Human Interface Tool Suite;Multimodal Interfaces; ReadWear/EditWear;

History Enriched Digital Objects

Bellcore and UNM

Beyond Being There; 3D interfaces and AR3T; Multiscale Zoomable Interfaces and Pad++

UCSDIntelligent Driver Support; Multitouch and SLAP; Write&Speak;

Activity Trails; ChronoViz; Kinect and Projected Surfaces; Gesture and Sign Language; Electronic Medical Records

Research Path: Places and Projects

Inexpensive 3D graphics just about to emerge

AR3T: a system for 3D interface prototyping

Become enamored of 2D multiscale zooming approach

Begin Pad++ project at Bellcore but moved to UNM.

Large Darpa funding

Licensed to Sony

Bellcore: Computer Graphics and Interactive Media Group

Bellcore: Computer Graphics and Interactive Media Group

Beyond Being There

Numerous research projects developing video teleconferencing. Struck by focus on imitation.

Solve the telecommunications problem by establishing a sense of being there. Presupposition: being there is the natural state and any other state is less.

Imitating one medium in another often fails to exploit the distinctive features of the second medium

Bellcore: Lessons LearnedImportance of not imitating one media in another. Lessons from both Pad++ and Beyond Being There.

Importance of focusing on presuppositions as a research strategy.

Beyond Being There approach led us to ephemeral interest groups, semi-synchronous discussions, collaborative filtering and recommending systems, negotiated access.

Key ideas of semantic zooming, lenses, and negotiated access are worthy of further investigation.

Even further convinced that computation is the most plastic medium for representation, interaction, and communication we have ever known

UCSD and NPRDC

Moboard; Steamer; Direct Manipulation Interfaces;User-Center System Design Book

MCC Human Interface Lab

HITS: Human Interface Tool Suite;Multimodal Interfaces; ReadWear/EditWear;

History Enriched Digital Objects

Bellcore and UNM

Beyond Being There; 3D interfaces and AR3T; Multiscale Zoomable Interfaces and Pad++

UCSDIntelligent Driver Support; Multitouch and SLAP Widgets; Anoto

Digital Pens; Write&Speak; ChronoViz; Kinect and Projected Surfaces; Activity Trails; Electronic Medical Records; Gesture and

Sign Language; Reestablishing Context; …

Research Path: Places and Projects

Promote the shift in cognitive science toward a view of cognition as a property of systems that are larger than isolated individuals.

This extends the reach of cognition to encompass interactions between people as well as interactions with resources in the environment.

Members of the Dcog-HCI Lab are dedicated to developing the theoretical and methodological foundations engendered by this broader view of cognition and interaction.

A central image for us is environments in which people pursue their activities in collaboration with the elements of of the social and material world. Our core research efforts are directed at understanding such environments: what we really do in them, how we coordinated our activity in them, and what role technology should play in them.

Intelligent Driver Support System

10 Cameras Ten Cameras

Video Streams

ChronoViz: A tool for supporting navigation of time-coded data

Liao, Guimbretière, Hinckley, and Hollan, PapierCraft: A Gesture-Based Liao, Guimbretière, Hinckley, and Hollan, TOCHI

Steimle, Weibel, Olberding, Hollan: PLink: Paper-Based Links for Cross-Media Information, CHI.

Cowan, Weibel, Pina, Griswold, Hollan. Ubiquitous Sketching for Social Media. MobileHCI.

Sarcevic, Weibel, Burd, Hollan. TraumaPen: A Paper-Digital Interface for Information Capture and Display in Time-Critical Medical Settings, Pervasive Health.

PADD: Papier Augmented Digital DocumentsFrançois Guimbretière

!

Digitalpen

!Figure 1: Proposed digital pen and peripheral display system.

TrumaPen: A Paper-Digital Interface for Information Capture in Time-Critical

Medical Settings

Piper, Weibel, Hollan. Audio-Enhanced Paper Photos: Encouraging Social Interaction at Age 105, CSCW.

IEEE Computer, October, 2012

Design Lab at UC San Diego

SummaryThink of yourself not as a graduate student but as a young researcher in your field and make decisions in that wider context.

Develop the research, collaboration, and writing/communication skills required. In addition to developing research skills you also need to learn how to manage multiple activities and to deal with ambiguity.

Focus on questions that you find really exciting. For me it is more like the questions choose you than you choose them.

Develop a research portfolio. Be sure to include high risk big payoff projects.

Be careful about your time. Take time to think about the important issues. Be prepared to drop other things when you find you have a way to attack.

Don’t let the urgent drive out the important.