HCI, CMC, and CSCW Design at Cornell University

Cornell has a strong and growing group of researchers interested in understanding and supporting interactions between people, computers, and society. We span a variety of disciplines, including communication, computer science, information science, psychology, science and technology studies, and sociology. We use a number of methodologies, including system-building, field studies, lab experiments, modeling,, and critical theory. And finally, we study these interactions in the context of real, important problems.

The two most common majors (for undergrads) or fields (for graduate students) for HCI students are communication and information science. Students interested in HCI should definitely contact the departments, as well as the individual professors listed below whose interests most closely align with theirs, to talk about how to match their goals with what Cornell offers. In addition, below is a list of courses that are offered in either (or both) departments, along with courses from other departments that HCI students commonly take.

People

• Natalie Bazarova
  My research focuses on how technology affects the way we see and relate to one another, and how perceptions affect our adaptation to technology, performance, and relationships in interpersonal, organizational, and cross-cultural interactions. For more information about my research, visit my website.
• Jeremy Birnholtz
  My research aims to improve the usefullness and usability of communication and collaboration tools, with a particular focus on understanding and exploiting mechanisms of human attention.
• Dan Cosley
  My main interest for a long time has been helping people make sense of and manage information, both individually and as groups. More recently this has grown to include leveraging people's current behaviors online, along with social science theory, to produce individual and social goods that otherwise would not have been created.
• Laura Forlano
  I'm interesting in exploring the intersection between organizations, technology (in particular, mobile and wireless technology) and the role of place in communication, collaboration and innovation.
• Susan Fussell
  My research focuses on interpersonal communication in face-to-face and computer-mediated contexts. My goals are to enhance our theoretical understanding of the mechanisms involved in conversational discourse and to apply this theory to the design and evaluation of new communications technologies.
• Geri Gay
  Her research focuses on social and technical issues in the design of interactive communication technologies. Specifically, she is interested in social navigation, affective computing, social networking, mobile computing, and design theory.
• Francois Guimbretiere
  The overarching goal of my research is to bring the ease of use of pen and paper interactions to computer interfaces.
• Jeff Hancock
  Jeff is interested in social media, with an emphasis on how people produce and understand language and the self. His research has focused on two types of language, verbal irony and deception, and on a number of cognitive and social psychological factors affected by social media, including self-presentation, identity, persuasion and social influence, attributions and the intensification of social dynamics online.
• Gilly Leshed
  I am currently working on a new project that looks into the culture of overwork and the role of technology in mitigating and/or encouraging practices of overwork.
• Phoebe Sengers
  My research integrates systems design with critical, cultural analysis of interaction, of technology, and of HCI practice itself. I am interested in identifying and designing for values commonly left out of technical practice, focusing on issues around consumer culture, sustainability, and modernism. My current major project is a design-ethnographic study of modernization in the small fishing community of Change Islands, Newfoundland.

Projects

• Bridging the gap between computers and paper -Francois Guimbretiere-
• Supporting conscious awareness of consumption in design -Phoebe Sengers-
• Encouraging sustainable choices through persuasive technologies -Susan Fussell-
• Helping people manage attitudes and practices around overwork -Gilly Leshed-
• Building online communities and social goods such as Wikipedia -Dan Cosley-
• Understanding cross-cultural work and communication -Susan Fussell-
• Supporting community collaboration and social mobile technologies for health support -Geri Gay-
• Looking at how people lie in online conversation and dating sites -Jeff Hancock-
• Supporting mutual awareness in online spaces -Jeremy Birnholtz-
• Supporting reminiscence and personal reflection through social media -Dan Cosley-

Classes

Information about related classes is coming soon...