Students' quest: find a way to study video game characters

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Everyone knows that the characters shown in video games don’t accurately reflect the diversity of the people playing them. When you take the controls of your favorite video game, your first — and often, only — option typically is to play as a white male character. But how exactly does everyone know that? And if it changes, how do we track the progress? While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that women and minorities are underrepresented, there is precious little hard data about the characters in games. “A lot of people play games, but there actually hasn’t been much work s

iSchool students help preserve history of Oso mudslide

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

At 10:37 a.m. on March 22, 2014, a devastating landslide struck near Oso, Washington. Mud and debris engulfed the Steelhead Haven neighborhood, killing 43 people and closing off state Highway 530, the main artery connecting the small town of Darrington to the world. For days, many Darrington residents took part in the desperate search for their missing friends and neighbors. They ignored official warnings and endured treacherous conditions to scour a debris field that measured nearly a mile wide. "They wanted to be involved, they wanted to do the work, and they

iAffiliates Day highlights iSchool collaboration with partners

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Industry and community partners and iSchool faculty and staff attended the fourth annual iAffiliates Day on April 26, 2016. The event, a benefit of the iAffiliates program, provides a forum for organizations to learn about Information School research and explore areas for collaboration.  Veresh Sita, Alaska Airlines’ chief information officer, discussed the ways the company leverages data to shave time off customers’ trips from check-in through baggage claim. Cutting a few minutes from each trip adds up to happier customers and hundreds of millions of dollars in savings for th

iSchool alumnus named Library of Congress Historian

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

iSchool alumnus John Cole was recently named the Library of Congress Historian, a new position dedicated to serving as the top technical expert and adviser on the institution’s history. Cole, a 1966 graduate of what was then the University of Washington School of Librarianship, has served in leadership roles during his 50-year career with the Library of Congress. He was the founding director of its Center for the Book, which was created by a 1977 law, and is the author of several books about the institution. He has played a key role in the library’s National Book Festival, which attract

Informatics students create new Rainier reservation system

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Kraig Snure knew something could go wrong, terribly wrong, with the wilderness camping reservation system at Mount Rainier National Park. The creaky old system relied on mail-ins and faxes and software developed by a volunteer 17 years ago – eons, technologically speaking.   Snure had already put a team of four iSchool Informatics students to work on a replacement system when a fierce storm hit in early March, causing a power outage that crashed the park’s servers and fried the old reservation system. “We hoped it would keep going until the new system was up, but Murphy’s

Why every innovation can’t be the next iPhone

Thursday, April 28, 2016

It’s clear to me that “innovation” is not an unquestionable good. Some innovation is clearly better than other innovation -- and not all innovations are created equal. I measure innovation by its ability to improve people’s lives. An innovation may only improve one person’s life or the lives of millions; regardless, a life-improving innovation is better than an idle innovation that gathers dust. As Thomas Edison said, “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.” Another way I look at this is by adhering to the principle that technology innovations that help us achieve th

iSchool students, faculty, staff take on microaggressions at Diversity Summit

Friday, April 22, 2016

Dozens of iSchool students, faculty and staff members gathered Friday, April 22, for the school’s fifth annual Diversity Summit. Ralina Joseph, director of the UW Center for Communication, Difference and Equity, led a lively group discussion of microaggressions – brief and commonplace uses of language that tend to belittle minority groups, sometimes unintentionally. For example, an African American person might be told he or she doesn’t “sound black.” “The difficulty with microaggressions are the double messages,” Joseph said, “which make them difficult to decode.” Bein

Massive online courses more effective in developing world, TASCHA finds

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

A new report challenges widely held assumptions about Massive Open Online Courses, showing that they may be far more effective in the developing world than previously thought. The report, issued by the Information School’s Technology & Social Change Group (TASCHA), found that the low completion rates and homogeneous demographics found among users in the United States and similarly wealthy nations do not hold true worldwide. Researchers studying the effectiveness of the online courses, known as MOOCs, surveyed 1,400 course users and 2,250 non-users ages 18-35 in Colombi

Students work with indigenous people to establish library in Mexico

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

How do you create a library for a culture that has no word for library in its language? That’s the challenge faced by a group of students in the Information School’s Master of Library and Information Science program. Along with Associate Professor Ricardo Gomez, four students recently traveled to southeastern Mexico’s Chiapas state to work with the Tzeltal people and lay the groundwork for the indigenous group’s first library. The project is among dozens that students are pursuing for Capstone, the culmination of their master’s degree program. Capstone connects iSchool studen

iSchool MLIS alumna recognized as SLA Rising Star

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Kathryn Callon, a 2011 iSchool Master of Library and Information Science alumna, has been named one of four Special Libraries Association 2016 Rising Stars. SLA presents its annual Rising Star Awards “to acknowledge young professionals forging paths of excellence within SLA and the information profession.” Nominated individuals develop notable workplace innovations, actively participate in SLA units and association programming, and promote SLA’s visibility and the value of information professionals by executing outstanding work and professional activities on behalf of the association.

Outdoors app project earns UW Innovation Award

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

How can we teach children to appreciate nature when their faces are buried in screens? It’s a common worry among parents and researchers alike. To address it, Professor Josh Lawler of the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences approached Assistant Professor Katie Davis of the Information School with a rather counterintuitive idea: What if the screen can be used as a tool to get kids outside? The result is a partnership to develop a mobile application that encourages kids to explore outdoors, and study how it affects their attitudes toward nature. Lawler and Davis recently earned a

iSchoolers help ExtraHop grow by leaps and bounds

Monday, March 28, 2016

Ansel Santosa’s bosses at ExtraHop were knocked out by their new hire. He was both a hard-core software engineer and a team-builder with people skills, a coveted mix at the pioneering data analytics firm. “Where can we find more of you?” they asked him. The 2013 iSchool Informatics alumnus didn’t hesitate. “There’s a whole school of people like me,” said Santosa. He told them about the UW’s interdisciplinary iSchool, where students – while mastering everything from coding and data management to user experience design – meet industry insiders and engage in the collabora

Study: Most tweets following fall Paris attacks defended Islam, Muslims

Monday, March 28, 2016

The Paris terrorist attacks of November 13, 2015, sparked a massive global discussion on Twitter and other social media sites between those attacking and those defending Islam and Muslims. The March 22 terrorist attack in Brussels is, of course, sparking similar, heated online debate. Researchers at the University of Washington Information School and the Qatar Computing Research Institute analyzed 8.36 million tweets beginning seven hours after the Paris attacks and continuing for 50 hours. Searching for words and hashtags relevant to the event, the team identified about 900,000 tweets rela

At KidsTeam UW, youngsters have a hand in tech design

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Kids arrive after a day of elementary school, have their snacks, and burn off some energy at playtime. Then they get to work, turning popsicle sticks, glue, paper and markers into make-believe robots. It may look like an ordinary after-school program, but it’s far from it. These kids are part of KidsTeam UW, and their work is helping to shape technology and learning experiences for other children. In traditional user testing, children are shown a prototype of a nearly finished product, and testers collect data before sending test subjects on their way. Assistant Professor Jason Yip�

'Smart Touch' accessibility work earns Best Paper Award at CHI

Thursday, March 17, 2016

You touch, tap and swipe your way around the modern world. For many, it’s become second-nature. But today’s consumer technologies can frustrate those who don’t have the manual dexterity to use them. For people whose motor skills are impaired by cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, and other motor-neuron conditions, a touchscreen presents a serious challenge. Devices require users to pinpoint areas with their fingertips; they don’t know how to react when a user drags the side of a hand or an entire palm across the screen. Enter “Smart Touch,” a system that adapts to however a u