Talk Title:Reading, Augmented

Speaker:  Andrew Head, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, University of Pennsylvania

Location: HBK 2105 and Zoom

Abstract:  Have you ever read a text and failed to get much out of it? Why did that happen? There is a good chance it is because you came to a text with different context than the author expected. In this talk, I offer a vision of texts where they are always augmented to provide the necessary context. These texts explain their complex jargon. They simplify their own dense passages. They provide indexes into their best passages. And they enliven the stuffiest notations. Then, I show this vision is close to reality. It is based on a series of novel interfaces my lab and collaborators have developed. Lab studies of these interfaces have shown they improve information acquisition and change the way readers navigate texts. Their design has even influenced production reading applications. Come to this talk to examine a most common intellectual activity—reading—from a new viewpoint.

Bio:  Andrew Head is an assistant professor in computer science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is co-founder and co-lead of the Penn HCI research group in human-computer interaction. His group develops novel technologies for interactive reading and reasoning. He publishes in ACM CHI, UIST, and other top venues for HCI research. To learn more about his group’s work, see his website: https://andrewhead.info.