I’ve banned the word “explore” from all project proposals in my infovis class. No explore. No exploration. No exploratory. No, you may not create a tool to “allow an analyst to explore the bird strike data.” No, you can’t build a system for “exploration of microarray data.” And, no, you…

Warning: geeky stuff below I’ve been working recently on a project that involves geolocation. Naturally, the articles by Kashmir Hill and David Shamma caught my eye (h/t to Jessica Hullman for that last one). They’re somewhat depressing, but they also made me chuckle. …

Go read this first for context. Done? Good. (update: 2022, sadly Philip’s article isn’t online anymore) Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A mechanical engineer, a chemical engineer, and a computer scientist are driving down the street. The car breaks down and all three get out to see what’s…

Update (5/12/2011): I wrote a longer (but still short) paper about this for the Crowdsourcing workshop at CHI. It’s available here. (originally posted Nov. 11, 2010 and moved here) Ok, it’s not that I actually hate it, but in reviewing a number of Turk papers, reading many more, and listening…

I've had the opportunity to serve on various faculty hiring committees over the years which has forced me to think through the hiring process a bit: how can we make good decisions about the call we want to send out, whom to interview, and ultimately whom we make offers to…