Frequently Asked Questions

Before sending me an email, please look at these questions and see if there is an answer to your question. I wrote these up to try to bring the most useful information to you in a compact package! If your question is not covered here, you can message me using the email address on my home page.

This page answers questions for:

Ph.D. student applicants

What is your advising style? I am very hands-on. I care a lot about my students’ development, so I get down into the weeds with you in your work, ask lots of questions, and give lots of feedback. If you join our group, expect to do heavy revision in all stages of your work, especially in your experimental materials and papers.

What are you working on right now? Our group works on tools for thought. We blend together themes from interface design, coding, programming languages and logic, math, and science productivity tools. Most of the new students that we take on in the lab work on research problems within these themes. To figure out what projects I’m trying to push forward right now, read my papers from the last year, and look at the grant projects I have funded in my CV.

What do you look for in applicants? I look for:

Methodological potential in HCI. Our group loves doing thorough qualitative work, building interfaces with interesting technical components, and running behavioral lab studies. I filter for students who seem interested and have capacity for this kind of work.
Strong academics. In the Ph.D. program, you’ll be expected to become an expert on your research question. I look to your transcripts and your recommendation letters to get a sense of whether you are going to understand the topics you study thoroughly.
Polish. We put a lot of effort in our group into polishing our papers and materials. I look at your personal statement to see how much polish you put into your work. I care a lot about argumentative polish — did you describe your research problem and the evidence you’ve gathered about it precisely and clearly?

Can I introduce myself over email? Absolutely! It will probably only be net useful to you if you think my group is in the top 5 you would consider going to if accepted.

If you do write to me, please write a personal message. I think some applicants think their message needs all the right details, like a description of your past research and a reference to one of my papers. Actually, I’d much rather get a friendly hello with a brief statement of something that speaks to you from our group’s work, even if you haven’t read one of our papers thoroughly yet. If a message looks generated, I usually assume you aren’t that interested in connecting.

I typically don’t reply to email messages given the other demands of my job, though I do look at every one and will look at yours. I certainly remember those from people that look like they have potential to do well in our group.

Can I meet you at CHI? I’m happy to meet up in person at a conference. If you are traveling to CHI or UIST, feel free to send me an email. If I’m there, we can try and find a time to meet up over a coffee break.

Others outside Penn looking for research positions

Do you have any openings for research assistants — in-person/remote/over summer/fall/spring? My group advertises openings once or twice a year, typically for summer positions. I usually post them on my LinkedIn page—you may want to subscribe to it.

If you have prior research experience in HCI (i.e., have led or co-led a conference paper’s worth of research at CHI or UIST level) and you like what my group does, you can reach out to me and ask about opportunities for summer collaborations.

Do you have openings for postdocs? You are welcome to reach out and ask! Be aware that when I do, they are typically for specific funded projects (but they are always cool projects!)

Students in 4120/5120

Can you help me enroll in/tell me about my chances getting into CIS 4120/5120? Recently, 4120/5120 has had quite a long waitlist. We always let students in off the waitlist, but the waitlist is often double or more the number of spots that will open up during the add period. It’s best to have a backup if you’re on the waitlist. If you are trying to get into the course, make sure to do the following:

Complete a permission request for the course on Path@Penn.
Fill out a waitlist request. You will receive a link to the waitlist over email after you complete step #1.
We will approve your waitlist request. In past semesters, we have approved all non-empty requests. When I teach, approve requests at non-regular intervals based on teaching staff availability.
Watch the class on Path@Penn to look for seats to open. Open spots are first-come, first-serve. Note that historically, there are more students who receive waitlist approval than there are open seats. Seats tend to open in the greatest quantities in the first couple weeks of the new semester.

I’m going to be absent from class today/can I get an extension on the assignment/can you clarify this aspect of the assignment/etc.? Please make a private message to all course instructors on Ed. We set up our teaching team and processes to ensure consistent and timely messages over Ed. I can’t guarantee you a response over email.

Can we talk about ideas that I’ve found really interesting and/or opportunities to practice HCI? Yes! Talking about these things with you is one of my favorite parts of the job. Come to my office hours.

How do I get more experience in HCI? If I were a Penn student looking to develop as a human-computer interaction practitioner or researcher, I would:

Take CIS 4120/5120.
Sign up for for 3990 and 7000-level courses offered by Andrew Head, Danaé Metaxa, and Talie Massachi. These courses are often on advanced topics in HCI.
Review the course lists at the Weitzman School and the Integrated Product Design programs at Penn, which offer fabulous-looking courses touching on interaction design and cognition.
Join PennSpark, a group of Penn student designers.
Take part in hackathons.
Attend PhillyCHI meetings. PhillyCHI is an organization of UI/UX professionals that holds monthly events in Philadelphia. These events include both interesting talks and networking events.
Consider getting involved in HCI research (see questions below).

And as with any craft, seek out books and readings outside of class, find other people to practice with, and finish substantial, high-quality projects that can show off your skill.

Other Penn students

Can I do research with your group? My group posts openings in this Google Group. Sign up, watch out for messages, and apply when you see a role open up.

Sometimes I will launch a new project with a student outside of the usual process. This usually happens after the student has taken one of my upper division classes (3990/7000) and did very well (deeply engaged with the material, did high quality work consistently, communicated well, had interesting ideas for pushing forward some research topics).

Can I meet up with you in person? Yes, you can sign up to meet with me during my office hours. I often have openings in between meeting with students from my classes. Just let me know you are coming by signing up for a slot here. If you just want to introduce yourself and talk about research or HCI you can grab a 10-minute slot. If you feel you need more time, sign up for a 10-minute spot anyway and we can schedule additional time if I’m available and it makes sense.

Can you advise my capstone project? Every year, I advise a couple of capstone projects. Before you ask, please know:

I tend to give feedback on the user-centered parts of the work, and much less so the backend aspects. The most frequent advice I give on senior projects is “how do you know this is the right thing to build? have you talked to people about it? how is this different than [other interface]?” I’m not sure that’s useful feedback to everyone—if that’s not the angle you’re looking for, you should reach out to a different advisor.
Since this is just one part of my job, I tend to be very time-limited in my ability to meet—I can meet up once a month for 30 minutes within a 1-hour period that I offer.
If you don’t ask early in the semester, I will likely have reached my advising capacity and will not be able to advise your project.

Can you advise my thesis project? I can advise projects where I know the student and they have a well-formed idea that aligns with the areas I can evaluate. If the proposal is outside my area, loosely scoped, or insufficiently posed against recent research progress or product, I usually have to pass.

I sometimes can make bandwidth to advise theses if they advance a research project in our group. If you would be interested in a thesis of this kind, let me know. However, please know I’ll review your request in the same way I review all applicants to our research group including an expectation you have taken and done well in HCI coursework.

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