Hacking is great, but how do we know what’s worth hacking? Will people want to use what we build? Will they know how? I will give you a quick overview of the modern Design process all the way from finding a compelling design opportunity to the iterative process of implementing a usable solution. Given that you have already started building, I will spend most time on fast, practical techniques for evaluating and improving usability of interactive systems.
Bio: Krzysztof Gajos is an associate professor of Computer Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Krzysztof is broadly interested in interactive intelligent systems, a research area that bridges artificial intelligence, machine learning and human-computer interaction. Recent projects pursued by his group touched upon areas such as personalized adaptive user interfaces, computer accessibility, peer learning, creativity support tools, crowdsourcing, and tools and methods for engaging broader publics in research.
In the spring, Krzysztof teaches CS 179: Design of Useful and Usable Interactive Systems. If you want to build software products that address valuable needs and that people enjoy using, consider taking the course. See cs179.org for more.
Prior to arriving at Harvard, Krzysztof was a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research. He received his PhD from University of Washington and his M.Eng. and B.Sc. degrees from MIT. In the Fall of 2005, he was visiting faculty at the Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana, where he taught Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. In the summer of 1999 he also taught in Sichuan, China.
