It Doesn't Have To Be Pink! Designing for Women

I will continue with my notes from some Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference. Since this summary has been waiting in my "drafts" for a little while, this entry will contain less "commentaries" :)

Presenters

Jessica R. Cauchard, Funda Kivran-Swaine, Sarah Esper, and Yael Kliper

Abstract

The session aims to change our perception about design, give tools that women use for designing and open a discussion on twitter (@GHCdesignforwoman).

Note: please check for the beautiful designs that we have contributed during the session, from the twitter handle above!

Notes

If we want people to use something, then dedicate it to them.

Laptop for women: Pink laptops, phones, etc.!!!

Hardware-wise: Many of us missed calls because it was in our bags? But men carry phones in their pockets more, so vibration is more effective... Another example, has anyone seen any smart watches for ladies?

Reject assumption

Example: Photos and pictures are with us since the cave paintings to current very high-res photos.

Assume everyone in the room is a designer, so think about a product to help people take photos of themselves. Go find people who are not like you to get some knowledge, even if they are taking really unbelievable selfies. Think about a sportive, outgoing adventurer living far far away. None thinks that he takes selfies, but when you give the selfie-stick to him, he takes incredible selfies from around the world at extreme places!

Outcomes:
  - reject casual cultural observation
  - truth+awareness>stereotypes
  - go out with an open mind
  - challenge assumptions

Woman and Money

Money is exclusive in the male domain. When googled "women+money"= Models, quotes, sad women.. comes as pictures. But when googled "banking"= males across the globe! (almost all business-related hand-shakes belong to men!).

However, there are many females that benefit from and use micro finance. Unfortunately, they have issues getting loans and building credit histories. There are many ways being developed about increasing such. One great example is to include social-presence and influence network into credit score computation. Since women have much more reach on social media and local network, using social media presence as a parameter into the credit issues enhances not only women, but benefits everybody.

More examples include, branch designs for woman, atms for woman, coupon clipping for woman, retirement planning for woman... Think.

Power and Equality

1. shifting the concern from equality to power
2. distributive collaborative learning vs. massive online learning

Online media is more personal, so woman can grow more intimate, one-to-one and caring relationships.

Workshop

We were divided into groups of 5-6 people, and designed! I will explain step-by-step development and give examples from our group's experience.

**Step 1: Select an application to design for.**

The categories included everyday life apps like whatsapp, health and financial applications. We have chosen online-banking, because we needed an app that all members of our team were familiar with.

**Step 2: Describe the app with adjectives and how it makes you feel when using.**

I believe this was the sparkle that started the creativity.

But that paper proved teleportation?! (Part 2)

How to write a paper?

The best way to write a publication is:

1. get a pen and write the generic pieces of a paper".
           (my organization)
• intro
• related work
• pipeline/overview
• tech details
• results
• limitation/conclusion/future work
  
  (the organization on the slide)
• title & abstract
• authors
• intro
• related work
• methodology
• findings
• conclusion 
2. Read lots and lots of papers. Copy/borrow the structure of the papers you like and understand.

Parts of a paper

Title and abstract:
- Title should descriptive, include keywords, make it simple, don't use area-specific jargon, avoid typos because that makes the senior reviewers to decline reviewing your paper.

Authors:

• Be generous, invite people to be an author in your paper. It builds your network, ask people whether they contributed enough to be an author, ask explicitly. If someone asks you, it is a responsibility, you should feel confident that you have contributed enough, something you have verified and believed that it is true. Even if you did not do it, you are responsible of the typos, wrong things in the paper, and it is still you responsibility.
• As woman in cs, we might be not claiming what we did...
• How to be a good co-author? You have a team that worked on that. Do really explicit what you do, write down everything you did. Do bulleting!!! (like my advisor says...). You might be working 24 hours but other people may not.. Let others speak too, we are all collaborators, feel comfortable to ask, say, contribute.

Intro:

• What is the contribution?
• Be concrete, give example. Don't be abstract. Don't start in low level and go to the big piece. All these cute ideas that can't be squeezed in a paper, create a dead kittens file. Don't include, put that in the other file.

Related Work:

• Least liked part!!
• That's where you can show what you did is better in the area of your world! Put yourself in your area. You should be aware and thoughtful about who you cite and how you cite them. You don't want to be overly defensive, and don't make it an island in a huge ocean. There should be some similar stuff somewhere in the world. You don't want to cite all of the world, just cite them in most recent and useful manner.

Methodology:

• Tell people how you did what you did.
• How to reproduce, the exact approach
• Acknowledge limitations, frame the limitations.

Findings

• Clearly state what you observed, put numbers in the text..
• Try and pull all of your findings, numbers, etc. to tables, figures, etc. They should be standing alone. Somebody that is flipping through the paper should understand a paragraph alone, or a figure alone.
• Help the reader interpret the findings.

Conclusion

• Recap the abstract.
• A person can just read the abstract and conclusion, so make sure that you have a good summary.

Other concerns

• Ensure the proper layout
• Take some time that the paper is really on the product line
• Take professional help about English if needed
• Submit the paper on time and read the call for papers
• Don't ever plagiarize. Ask for permission. Cite and acknowledge. Don't take text directly from anywhere, you might forget to go and change.
• Submit the work you are proud of. The number of submissions to conferences is increasing highly, send it to colleagues if you need feedback.

How to deal with the reviews! (Especially reviewers...)

• Write a response, wait for a day to send.
• Some people are strong enough to read the reviews momentarily, but some are not. Just put it away, and come back to them when you are ready.
• Look for the things that keep coming up.
• If somebody says "I don't get it", just explain. Don't say it like "Oh I did say it in section 4 par 5...". Maybe you mis-communicate, if most of the reviewers do not get it.
• If you respond the reviewers, they will see the paper again, and somebody might be pissed off..

In case of Rejection:

• great papers sometimes get rejected
• 3 times is kind of enough to resend
• or consider a venue change

In case of Acceptance:

Camera ready:

• take the feedback into consideration, still
• share the paper, blog about it tweet about it , present the work
• leave the details in the paper

But that paper proved teleportation?! (Part 1)

As PhD students, our priorities always elevate our research.. Thus, our publications, as the proof of the achievements of our research, seem to be everything that we spend our time for. Considering such effort and time spent... Why the hell that paper is rejected?!

One of the talks at Grace Hopper was, how to publish your research. The presenters were Holly Rushmeier (Yale University) and Jaime Teevan (Microsoft). It was a really enlightening talk regarding what we should and shouldn't do when writing, waiting and after the decision. I will summarize the talk, and also feed in my observations.

Before starting, I think the most important issue is the discussion of why we want to publish that much. I don't consider myself as a successful author, but I believe I have the correct motives (I believe more after the talk actually). The first or sole reason should not be  "because I want more publication/reputation/citation/money/fame/...". It is because:

"The world needs your ideas!"

In that manner, the quality vs. quantity debate becomes more clear, as mentioned in the talk, it is good and advised that publishing as much as you can, but without sacrificing the quality. Three important and main points:

1. Express,
2. the great idea,
3. well.

Depending on the area that are in, maybe you have lots and lots of good papers, i.e. in systems area. However maybe you work in theory and you proved three really important theories and tha your gift to humanity. The key is, none should spin around the same papers. And how you asses the success of a paper after it is published? The recognition you get is measured by the citation count. Even if you have small number of papers that are always cited from important people, then you're on the right track. Continuing with the thought flow, then how to ensure that they are actually cited? Submit to highly visible venues!

We have many options here.

1. Conferences, journals... biggest outlets. I know that some of your friends might argue with you and underestimate the impact of conferences, but I guess they are not CS people. Let them shine in Science...
2.  Specialized workshops, accepting full papers or abstracts or posters. And guess what, you get to visit that small city in a state that you are not sure whether such a state exists! :)
3. Software patents, data, code... Tangible things. If you can make your software fully available to the public, next to the paper you write, that is fantastic! So you both help people and get the recognition. Actually, as the perfect place, I want to thank all of the open-source projects and frameworks I have used, you always save the day.
4. Social media? Blogs! Never thought of it in a formal environment right? Sometimes ideas need to be expressed in a timely manner, so social media is a great way to not wait forever... You write a blog, and wow I'm the 345th reader!

Conferences

As it was said before: CS is different. Historically; conferences become more and more important. Once upon a time, journal publications were really slow -I mean slower than now, or ever- and it could take years to see a really good idea published. So instead of journals, and their lazy reviewers, and the lazier editors, (nope, just KIDDING! I love you journal guys, that's why I keep returning to you... come on, don't be resentful), the conferences became more and more selective and getting more important. Biggest and hardest ones? For sure ACM sig's, i.e. SIGGRAPH... (As a note, I should apologize for my loud "YES!" from the people sitting next to me during the actual presentation. Sorry guys, I was excited.. to hear that it is hard..est...).

However, one should keep in mind that not every conference is great, there is a gazillion of them. How to differentiate is a whole new blog post.. but here are some questions that should be asked: do you need to just submit an abstract or full paper? how is the review process? how is the quality of the feedback? what is the number of reviewers? what it its acceptance rates for the previous years (probably this is the most representative question)? Under 50% is considered good? what is the number of citations does that conference get? and how often cited? what are its sponsoring organizations? Do they have ACM and IEEE? Or is it another yet important venue, like Eurographics (in graphics)....

Deadlines!!! For example for SIGGRAPH and Eurographics, they are really dead... The submission dates are absolutely strict! Not even one min after the deadline is acceptable. So prepare yourselves accordingly (is of course the advise, never the reality).

One of the best aspect of conferences: There is a certain date to get a decision, like your birthday:) It will come no matter what. You will face the truth on that day. However the truth is not always black or white, there is also a conditionally accepted decision, meaning "if only you do these, then it is yes!"

At that point, I see the phrase "SIGGRAPH deadlines:)))" in my notes, and I remember the timeline of SIGGRAPH being projected on the screen.. Watching it so many times during the process, I swear that I could repeat it my eyes closed... Anyway, thanks again for having all examples for SIGGRAPH, that motivated me personally x10 times!!

And we all know the process. Submit, reviewers are assigned, some of them you already know but none of them you will ever know, but good news they will know you if you get accepted, and they will never know you if you don't... And the waiting phase, more waiting. Also for some of the conferences, there is a rebuttal phase to answer the ridiculous things that the reviewers said, that you want to argue, but you cannot, that passes like a silent self-defense without being allowed to use any weapons, because yes you are not allowed to use anything but words. And every year it changes...

Coming to the ethics part, which we all know and the most boring to explain.. like reading the tutorial of the game that you have been playing all the time:) I will give you a skip option to next paragraph if you are already bored. SKIP. Rule 1: no dual submissions. Never and ever, send the same paper to more than one venue, because 1) it is asking for more review sources then you are normally allocated to. If the conferences say it is three reviewers, sending the paper to two conferences and having six reviewers is not fair, to nobody. 2) Every conference needs new and more developed content. If it is already published in wow-what-a-nice-conference-you-are then why also submit it to the-secondary-what-a-pity-conference?! If you are in doubt about whether it is a dual submission or not, you can always ask the editor/chair of a conference, it is better to act before than apologize and self-destruct later.

More ethics, if you get accepted to a conference, attend the conference, commit! Why not go?! People are there to hear you presenting it, because you did it, it's your precious work. And a better reason, conferences depend on attendances financially. If you cannot attend because of the government does not allow you to go (which is the only excuse from stopping you to go according to Rushmeier), as a last resort, find somebody that can present it as good and also attend...

Journals

Benefit: You don't have to go somewhere, yay!
But: there is no deadline.. The review cycle can be so slow, taking years...

How to decide that it is a good journal?
ISI Journal Impact Factor: nb of citations in year n to articles published in year n-1 and n-2, divided by total articles published in that year. (I believe my note-taking pace was not comparable to Prof. Rushmeier's speaking speed, so please don't believe me in this calculation). There is also H factors, Elsevier journals are good, and again you have to know your particular area.

The outcomes of journals are also a bit flexible, because of not having a publication/camera-ready deadline. As I said, there is a conditionally accept case for conferences, however for journals it is accept/reject/revision(major/minor). And guess what, since the authors are always expected to be capable of improving it, the accept never happens at the first time, perfectly. Minor revision means "probably accept it if you do these revisions", where major revision means "we didn't get your idea, but if you do these and these, maybe there is a cool thing behind your project?", and unfortunately reject means "No! Get out! Never ever come with the same paper again!", because revisions are so normal.

And the same review processes, probably double blind, which avoids bias and prejudices. However don't destroy your paper to make it totally totally anonymous. Thinking of which, who are those reviewers that we are so afraid of!! Yes, it might be you, me, the prof next door.. and also, the people you mention in the prev work gives an idea of whom to expect! (..if they are alive).
As many others, I was wondering how some reviewer minds are working, and here is their point of view. They look for your main contribution, what you are telling people that they do not already know, what solid evidence you have that shows it is valid. They also need to be given good reasons for both strengths and weaknesses of your work. So look for the good stuff. If it is a good paper, be explicit about that, people need positive comments, positive things about why it is important and good, don't be shy or humble, defend your years-old project!

Lastly, some more ethics: if you have conflict of interest with a paper, always turn it back, don't review. And yes, your best friend, or best colleague that you work on the same project, and your aunt are conflicts... And if you are reviewing it FOR someone, make sure that you get the credit you deserve about reviewing, on the list of reviewers for the conference.

Up to know, it is the first portion about the how/where/when/what to publish, based on the ghc13 talk of Holly Rushmeier and Jaime Teevan. In the second part, I will continue with the part-by-part analysis of an ideal paper. Stay tuned! I broke the post into two, because I know you have a paper deadline tonight and you need procrastination material... Right? :)

Somebody is watching where you look at...

Yet another technical but interesting talk at ghc13 today was about integrating eye direction to augmented reality applications. The presenter was Ann McNamara, from Texas A&M University, and she was well-communicating with the full-room of her audience.

Thinking of the existence of the term "Augmented Reality", it was told to be first used by engineers at Boeing in1990s, for the projections of other things on real world objects. But it's not until mid-90s that AR apps started to appear on smart phones and become popular.

As the popularity of smart phones and hand-held devices started to increase, it seems clever to exploit those in AR applications. Such as cameras and screens on smart phones that combine real world and virtual world by overlaying virtual elements. Or what's better, using the GPS info and a bit of image recognition, the real-world is better integrated with the virtual one.. (or vice-versa? :) )

Ok now the real task: you want to overlay elements that are related to the real world, but they have to be placed in the vaccinity of the real work objects, so the placement really matters in terms of reality of the application, which is quite challenging.

As an example, one of the first AR applications is Volkswagen XL1 and Meraio, which uses a phone or a tablet. The user looks through the device to the car, and sees the additional information on how to provide maintenance on the car, or how to place some parts, or the age of a part, etc. Which is quite useful for maintenance and engineering. As another example, panorama in an unfamiliar environment with all the virtual info that is overlaid on the view, i.e. you see the comments about the restaurant on your right, or the timetable for the buses on the nearest bus stop, or the weather about this new neighborhood you just moved in, etc.

But the problem is, how can you see around, important items, and all of their properties, and ratings and comments and... wow, that is too much for the size of your mobile devices, right? If they put all of them at once in that little screen, we would have highly overpopulated screens! And what about when we place the device closer to the object, it should get bigger, but sorry, the amount of visualizations are not getting smaller... Also, in a real scene, it is always the case that many objects occlude each other.. How to overcome all?

By view management!

Which ensures that there will be no overlap, no obscuring each other and will aid scene navigation. So how to manage a view, one of the most cleverest responses: the view is where we look! Nowhere else, so where are we looking? Or do we see where we look, is the better question.


The whole clever purpose of this project is to direct and/or benefit visual attention in mobile devices. Incorporating eye tracking into AR techniques and present labels or visual information where the visual attention is detected, where the user is looking is the cool part that would change the approach HCI techniques to not just focus on gestures, or hands, or body; but also eyes are of equal or more importance. Anyone remembers the movie called Minority Report? I know, most of the technological enhancements use the same old cliche example, but wouldn't it be cool to have the actually-not-so-smart-phone to interpret you better by just looking into your eyes? Not on a mobile device, but I have tried a couple of eye-tracking application in previous Siggraph's, and I can see that it is a promising technology if it is well-exploited.

So how they exploited that approach is using visual clutters based on optical flow or pixel flow and
looking at eye tracking to find where to place visual information. Speaking of which, eye tracking works by using infra red lights, and uses image processing for detecting the texture pupil for calculating the gaze and eye position. Then a heat map for gazes is extracted: imagine we are all Cyclops of X-men, but without glasses! The heat map shows our accumulated "burns" on an image:) So when you are placing important information, or labels, or something-to-be-seen, you wouldn't want to put them on cold places.

There also some other questions that are researched, as how to associate locations with the places that are more examined, or how to change labels without making the transition apparent, or how to put all that technology into mobile devices. One answer is the structure sensor: a device you attach to the mobile device and you can scan around! And another one is directing attention. Instead of detecting attention and going to those important places, you direct the attention to the places that want to be looked.

The researcher choose a very-well suited and also enjoyable input for evaluating attention direction: episodic paintings! Yes, I am not an art major either, and this talk was my first time to hear about such paintings too. Episodic paintings are actually some old videos, in one frame :) Ancient artists didn't know how to record, so they merged it with art and explained a timeline in only one painting. The frames are not divided, and they painted all the episodes on one panel, so you should observe the painting and read its episodes from just one frame! Of course, for the historical art people, it is easy to read (or watch?) these paintings and see the whole timeline. However for me, and for most of you, it is just one painting with some irrelevant repetitions :)

The reason why we went that deep into episodic paintings is, the user study conducted in this research help out-of-domain people to read those paintings, by subtle gaze direction. Remember directing attention? Subtle gaze direction is unconscious gaze redirection, in other words, making people look to some specific point without actually making them aware of where they are looking! Creepy but... cool. So obviously, putting a red arrow for some point in the picture is not what they are trying to accomplish:)

The human visual system (HVS) is a wonderland, hopefully I can blog about all those working mechanisms about mach-band effect, illusions, differencing logic, cons and rod, etc... Ann also benefits from this system, and uses the motion to make somebody look somewhere. Because the peripheral vision of HVS is more responsive to the motion. They put a little bit motion effect to some part of the painting, and wow, all the heat map changes, that spot is on fire :) They applied gaze direction to episodic paintings in a conference in 2012, and the user group with gaze direction was far more successful in reading the paintings in a correct order! There are also other techniques to direct gazes, like dodging a spot, blurring or changing contrast. But they are mainly used in videos, not static images, which is logical because the video already has motion, but the image does not.

She also showed some preliminary results on heat maps, before and after the attention is directed, and the results show that we see before we look but we also look where we see :) Which is as complicated as expected from our complex nerves, right?

I hope we will see the real world applications out of this starting project and our mobile devices will be looking at where we are looking at, to ease our communication with the digital world.

Hello World!

After all the tiring questioning and area-spesific blogging experience, now it my time to open a real, hopefully living, blog!

I would like to give all the credits to #ghc13 (Grace Hopper Celebration of Woman in Computing), to encourage me to open a tech/social/english/like-all-geek-girls-have blog. And here we are...

After this brief introduction, I want to let you know that if I sound boring, then imagine me bored when I was writing what you just read... That's why this blog will try to show different/new/creative/enjoyable and FROM US perspectives! Hopefully, with all the smiling women around me now, I can accomplish that for the next couple of days, because guess what? I AM WRITING THIS FROM GRACE HOPPER :) And it is an honor to write this first article from the most encouraging conference ever.

Now, let's get going! For this week I will be mostly sharing my experiences from GHC, however after that I'll be here with many tech news, social aspects of such news and other experiences and voices from anywhere in the world!

Thanks to everyone whose voice will be heard from this blog,
and thanks to everyone who will feel that their voice is shared from this blog,
via... ME :)