About

The ProtoLab conducts research at the intersection of social computing and design with the goal of developing tools, processes, and instructional techniques that change the way people solve complex problems creatively and collaboratively. We develop technology related to social media, crowdsourcing, mixed-initiative systems, and physical-digital interactions to enable large-scale online creativity and to study the cognitive, social, and cultural aspects of design.

News and Events

Design for San Diego

Design for San Diego (D4SD) is an innovation challenge structured around the human-centered design process that seeks to solve complex civic problems.

CommunityCrit

CommunityCrit is a novel civic technology that structures activities for the public to generate ideas, as well as elaborate and evaluate urban design concepts.

Collective Planning

Exploring how social computing systems can enable groups of people to collaboratively plan for future events.

Collaborative Synthesis

Exploring how the practice of integrating, organizing, filtering, and evaluating information as part of a design process can be distributed across many people.

Research

How Features of a Civic Design Competition Influences the Collective Understanding of a Problem

Brian McInnis, Xiaotong (Tone) Xu, and Steven P. Dow. In ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 2018.

CommunityCrit: Inviting the Public to Improve and Evaluate Urban Design Ideas through Micro-Activities

Narges Mahyar, Michael R. James, Michelle M. Ng, Reginald A. Wu, and Steven P. Dow. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2018.

Paragon: An Online Gallery for Enhancing Design Feedback with Visual Examples

Hyeonsu B. Kang Gabriel Amoako, Neil Sengupta, and Steven P. Dow. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2018.

The Problem Solver and The Artisan Designer: Strategies for Utilizing Design Idea Archives

Nanna Inie, Allison Endo, Steven P. Dow, and Peter Dalsgaard. In ACM Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 2018.

ConsensUs: Supporting Multi-Criteria Group Decisions by Visualizing Points of Disagreement

Weichen Liu, Sijia Xiao, Jacob T. Browne, Ming Yang, and Steven P. Dow. In Journal of Social Computing, Volume 1, Issue 1, Article No. 4, 2018.

Semantically Far Inspirations Considered Harmful? Accounting for Cognitive States in Collaborative Ideation

Joel Chan, Pao Siangliulue, Denisa Qori McDonald, Ruixue Liu, Reza Moradinezhad, Safa Aman, Erin T. Solovey, Krzysztof Z. Gajos, and Steven P. Dow. SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition, 2017.

Listen to Others, Listen to Yourself: Combining Feedback Review and Reflection to Improve Iterative Design

Yu-Chun Grace Yen, Steven P. Dow, Elizabeth Gerber, and Brian P. Bailey. SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition, 2017.

Crowdboard: Augmenting In-Person Idea Generation with Real-Time Crowds

Salvatore Andolina, Hendrik Schneider, Joel Chan, Khalil Klouche, Giulio Jacucci, and Steven Dow. SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition, 2017.

From in the Class or in the Wild?: Peers Provide Better Design Feedback Than External Crowds

Helen Wauck, Yu-Chun (Grace) Yen, Wai-Tat Fu, Elizabeth Gerber, Steven P. Dow, and Brian P. Bailey. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2017.

Better Organization or a Source of Distraction? Introducing Digital Peer Feedback to a Paper-Based Classroom

Amy Shannon, Alex Sciuto, Danielle Hu, Steven P. Dow, and Jessica Hammer. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2017.

Critique Style Guide: Improving Crowdsourced Design Feedback with a Natural Language Model

Markus Krause, Tom Garncarz, JiaoJiao Song, Elizabeth M. Gerber, Brian P. Bailey, and Steven P. Dow. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2017.

Online Feedback Exchange: A Framework for Understanding the Socio-Psychological Factors

Eureka Foong, Steven P. Dow, Brian P. Bailey, and Elizabeth M. Gerber. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2017.

Fruitful Feedback: Positive Affective Language and Source Anonymity Improve Critique Reception and Work Outcomes

Mary Duyen Nguyen, Tom Garncarz, Felicia Ng, Laura Dabbish, and Steven P. Dow. In ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 2017.

Team Dating Leads to Better Online Ad Hoc Collaborations

Ioanna Lykourentzou, Robert E. Kraut, and Steven P. Dow. ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 2017.

IdeaHound: improving large-scale collaborative ideation with crowd-powered real-time semantic modeling

Pao Siangliulue, Joel Chan, Steven P. Dow, and Krzysztof Z. Gajos. In Proceedings of User Interface Software and Technology, 2016.

Social Network, Web Forum, or Task Market?: Comparing Different Crowd Genres for Design Feedback Exchange

Yu-Chu (Grace) Yen, Steven P. Dow, Elizabeth Gerber, and Brian P. Bailey. ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, 2016.

PeerPresents: A Web-Based System for In-Class Peer Feedback during Student Presentations

Amy Shannon, Jessica Hammer, Hassler Thurston, Natalie Diehl, and Steven P. Dow. In Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, 2016.

WearWrite: Crowd-Assisted Writing from Smartwatches

Michael Nebeling, Alexandra To, Anhong Guo, Adrian de Freitas, Jaime Teevan, Steven P. Dow, Jeff P. Bigham, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2016.

Comparing Different Sensemaking Approaches for Large-Scale Ideation

Joel Chan, Steven Dang, and Steven P. Dow, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2016.

Improving Crowd Innovation with Expert Facilitation

Joel Chan, Steven Dang, and Steven P. Dow, ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 2016.

Personality Matters: Balancing for Personality Types Leads to Better Outcomes for Crowd Teams

Ioanna Lykourentzou, Angeliki Antoniou, and Steven P. Dow, ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 2016. (Honorable Mention Award)

Almost an Expert: The Effects of Rubrics and Expertise on Perceived Value of Crowdsourced Design Critiques

Alvin Yuan, Kurt Luther, Markus Krause, Sophie Isabel Vennix, Steven P. Dow, and Bjoern Hartmann, ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 2016

Do the best design ideas (really) come from conceptually distant sources of inspiration?

Joel Chan, Steven P. Dow, and Christopher Schunn. Design Studies, January 2015. (Best Paper of 2015 Award)

Using Anonymity and Communal Efforts to Improve Quality of Crowdsourced Feedback

Julie Hui, Amos Glenn, Rachel Jue, Elizabeth Gerber, Steven P. Dow, AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing, HCOMP 2015.

Crowdlines: Supporting Synthesis of Diverse Information Sources through Crowdsourced Outlines

Kurt Luther, Nathan Hahn, Steven P. Dow, and Aniket Kittur, AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing, HCOMP 2015.

Providing Timely Examples Improves the Quantity and Quality of Generated Ideas

Pao Siangliulue, Joel Chan, Krzysztof Gajos, & Steven P. Dow. In Conference on Creativity and Cognition, C&C 2015. (Nominated for Best Contribution to Creative Communication)

Exploring Privacy and Accuracy Trade-Offs in Crowdsourced Behavioral Video Coding

Walter S. Lasecki, Mitchell Gordon, Winnie Leung, Ellen Lim, Jeffrey P. Bigham and Steven P. Dow. In Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2015.

Scaffolding, Aggregating, and Evaluating Crowdsourced Design Critique

Kurt Luther, Jari-lee Tolentino, Wei Wu, Amy Pavel, Maneesh Agrawala, Brian Bailey, Bjoern Hartmann, and Steven P. Dow. In Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Media, CSCW 2015.

Toward Collaborative Ideation at Scale

Leveraging Ideas from Others to Generate More Creative and Diverse Ideas. Pao Siangliulue, Kenneth Arnold, Krzysztof Gajos, and Steven P. Dow. In Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Media, CSCW 2015.

Exiting the Design Studio: Leveraging Online Participants for Early-Stage Design Feedback

Xiaojuan Ma, Li Yu, Jodi Forlizzi, and Steven P.Dow. In Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Media, CSCW 2015.

A Classroom Study of Using Crowd Feedback in the Iterative Design Process.

Anbang Xu, Huaming Rao, Brian Bailey, and Steven P. Dow. In Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Media, CSCW 2015.

Glance: Rapidly Coding Behavioral Video with the Crowd

Walter S. Lasecki, Mitchell Gordon, Danai Koutra, Malte F. Jung, Steven P. Dow, and Jeffrey P. Bigham. In Conference on User Interface Software and Technology, UIST 2014.

IdeaGens: A Social Ideation System for Guided Crowd Brainstorming

Joel Chan, Steven Dang, Peter Kremer, Lucy Guo, and Steven Dow. In extended abstracts of AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing, HCOMP 2014.

Supporting the Synthesis of Information in Design Teams.

Raja Gumienny, Steven P. Dow, and Christoph Meinel. In Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, DIS 2014.

Crowd-Based Design Activities: Helping Students Connect with Users Online

Julie Hui, Elizabeth M. Gerber, and Steven P. Dow. In Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, DIS 2014.

Frenzy: Collaborative Data Organization for Creating Conference Sessions

Lydia Chilton, Juho Kim, Paul André, Felicia Cordeiro, James A. Landay, Daniel S. Weld, Steven P. Dow, Robert C. Miller, and Haoqi Zhang. In Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2014. (Honorable Mention Award)

Generating Implications for Design through Design Research

Corina Sas, Steve Whittaker, Steven P. Dow, Jodi Forlizzi, and John Zimmerman. In Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2014.

Reviewing versus Doing: Learning and Performance in Crowd Assessment

Haiyi Zhu, Steven P. Dow, Robert E. Kraut, and Aniket Kittur. In ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW 2014.

Crowd Synthesis: Extracting Categories and Clusters from Complex Data

Paul Andre, Niki Kittur, Steven P. Dow, In ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW 2014.

Attendee-Sourcing: Exploring The Design Space of Community-Informed Conference Scheduling.

Anant Bhardwaj, Juho Kim, Steven P. Dow, David Karger, Sam Madden, Rob Miller, and Haoqi Zhang. AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing, HCOMP 2014.

Glance Privacy: Obfuscating Personal Identity While Coding Behavioral Video

Mitchell Gordon, Walter S. Lasecki, Winnie Leung, Ellen Lim, Steven P. Dow, and Jeffrey P. Bigham. In extended abstracts of AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing, HCOMP 2014.

Glance: enabling rapid interactions with data using the crowd

Walter S. Lasecki, Mitchell Gordon, Steven P. Dow, and Jeffrey P. Bigham. In extended abstracts of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2014.

CrowdCrit: Crowdsourcing and Aggregating Visual Design Critique

Kurt Luther, Amy Pavel, Wei Wu, Jari-lee Tolentino, Maneesh Agrawala, Björn Hartmann, and Steven P. Dow. In extended abstracts of ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW EA 2014.

Conceptual Distance Matters When Building on Others' Ideas in Crowd-Collaborative Innovation Platforms

Joel Chan, Steven P. Dow, and Christian Schunn. In extended abstracts of ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW EA 2014.

Overreliance on conceptually far sources decreases the creativity of ideas.

Joel Chan, Christopher Schunn, and Steven P. Dow. In Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2014.

Cobi: A Community-Informed Conference Scheduling Tool

Juho Kim, Haoqi Zhang, Paul Andre, Lydia B. Chilton, Wendy Mackay, Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, Robert C. Miller, and Steven P. Dow. In Conference on User Interface Software and Technology, UIST 2013.

A Preliminary Study of Using Crowds in the Classroom

Steven P. Dow, Liz Gerber, and Audris Wong. ACM CHI Conference, 2013.

Let’s Get Together: The Formation and Success of Online Creative Collaborations

Burr Settles and Steven P. Dow. ACM CHI Conference, 2013.

Investigating the Solution Space of an Open-Ended Educational Game Using Conceptual Feature Extraction

Erik Harpstead, Christopher J. MacLellan, Kenneth R. Koedinger, Vincent Aleven, Steven P. Dow, and Brad A. Myers. Conf on Educational Data Mining, 2013.

Crowdboard: An Augmented Whiteboard to Support Large-Scale Co-Design

Salvatore Andolina, Daniel Lee, and Steven Dow. In Extended Abstracts of User Interface Software and Technology, UIST EA 2013.

Community Clustering: Leveraging an Academic Crowd to Form Coherent Conference Sessions

Paul Andre, Haoqi Zhang, Juho Kim, Lydia Chilton, Steven P. Down, Robert C. Miller, AAAI Human Computation, HCOMP 2013. (Notable Paper Award)

Shepherding the Crowd Yields Better Work

Steven P. Dow, Anand Kulkarni, Scott R Klemmer, and Björn Hartmann. ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW 2012.

Early and Repeated Exposure to Examples Improves Creative Work

Chinmay Kulkarni, Steven P. Dow, and Scott R. Klemmer. In Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2012.

Prototyping Dynamics: Sharing Multiple Designs Improves Exploration, Group Rapport, and Results

Steven P. Dow, Julie Fortuna, Dan Schwartz, Beth Altringer, Daniel L Schwartz, and Scott R Klemmer. ACM CHI Conference, 2011.

Parallel Prototyping Leads to Better Design Results, More Divergence, and Increased Self-Efficacy

Steven P. Dow, Alana Glassco, Jonathan Kass, Melissa Schwarz, Daniel L Schwartz, Scott R Klemmer, Trans on Computer-Human Interaction, 11(4), 2010.

Eliza meets the Wizard-of-Oz: Blending Machine and Human Control of Embodied Characters

Steven P. Dow, Manish Mehta, Blair MacIntyre, Michael Mateas, ACM CHI Conference, 2010.

The Efficacy of Prototyping Under Time Constraints

Steven P. Dow, Kate Heddleston, Scott R. Klemmer, ACM SIGCHI Conference on Creativity & Cognition, 2009.