Research – C3 Lab – The Mindful Academic

#PositiveComputing #SocialComputing #InclusiveDesign

Welcome to the C3 Lab!

Our research explores the design of human-centered technologies to bridge Cultural barriers, improve Collaboration, and build Community. On a high-level, our lab aims to tackle timely, high-impact, human-oriented societal challenges. Our goal is to design socially-conscious, technological solutions that can benefit social good. Check out our C3 Team and current research projects here!

Diversity and inclusion is a key focus of this work. The solutions we develop aim to embrace and leverage the many benefits of diversity, rather than being hindered by its challenges. Our research is highly interdisciplinary, and we regularly collaborate with psychologists and artists. Our work explores the following application areas:

Re-thinking social media design to foster meaningful connection (In collaboration with Prof. Ryan L. Boyd, Stonybrook University)
Biofeedback and artistic technologies to promote emotional regulation
AI interventions to foster equitable hiring across cultures
Collaboration systems to mitigate culture and language barriers in distributed work teams (In collaboration with Prof. Naomi Yamashita and Dr. Jack Jamieson, NTT Research Labs, Japan)
Interactive technologies to prompt spontaneous joyful encounters between strangers in public spaces
Meaningful data tools for emergency shelter staff (In collaboration with Prof. Geoffrey Messier [Engineering] and Prof. Gina Dimitropoulos [Social Work])
Empowering the public with open data and visualizations
Indigenous technology and data (In collaboration with Prof. Melanie Zurba, School of Environmental Studies, Dalhousie University)

This work is situated within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Inclusive Design, Social Computing and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Information Visualization (InfoVis). We draw heavily from psychology, cultural anthropology, media art and urban studies to design creative technological interventions and nuanced studies of the interplay between humans and machines.

c3 lab – Prospective students

Welcome students! Great that you’re here.

I’m seeking technically-skilled, highly creative students with keen intrinsic interest in issues of diversity, equity and inclusion and a passion for developing socially-conscious technologies. In particular, I welcome applications from students with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds to contribute their unique expertise to these challenging research domains.

Thank you for your interest — unfortunately, my lab is currently full and I am not taking on any new students for the foreseeable future. I will update this when I have open spots in C3 Lab again. The contact form is currently closed until I have open spots in my lab again. Thanks for your interest!

The C3 Lab Application Form is currently closed — What to expect when the form is open: I will ask you to read a couple short papers, and undertake a “design challenge” where I will give you an open-ended research challenge, and ask you to create some low-fidelity prototypes (hand drawn sketches) to convey your ideas and write a short description of what you did and why.

(Please note that due to the volume of emails I receive, I typically do not respond to emails regarding prospective research positions in C3 Lab. At the same time, I especially encourage students from equity-deserving or underrepresented groups to apply).

For more details for prospective students, go here. To check out other exciting Human-Computer Interaction research going on at the Interactions Lab (iLab), go here.

To submit an official application through the University of Calgary, go here.

Research areas

Below is a selected sample of previous research areas. New and ongoing research may not be featured here yet. For Dr. Helen Ai He’s Google Scholar profile, see here.

Cross-Cultural Collaboration Systems for Global Virtual Teams