1. Computers and People
Hao-Chuan Wang
Department of Computer Science
Institute of Information Systems and Applications
National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan
http://www.cs.nthu.edu.tw/~haochuan
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2. From Laboratory to Everyday Computing
• The use scenario of computers is changing over time.
– Very few professional users in early days; Billions of
professional and non-professional users today.
– Increasing connections and inter-dependence between
computers and people.
Robotron Computer (1970s) Today (2012)
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3. Computers & People
• Since the inception of CS, there’s no lack of interest in studying
people, and linking computers to people.
– One founding father of Artificial Intelligence, Herbert Simon
won Turing Award and Nobel Prize for this line of work.
Shakey Robot (1970s) IBM Deep Blue (1997) Herbert A. Simon (1916-2001)
ACM Turing Award, 1975
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Nobel Prize in Economics, 1978

4. Computers & People (cont.)
• Since 1990s, computers are becoming serious part of
people’s everyday lives.
– Computing with human purposes:
communication, socialization, collaboration, education,
health, entertainment etc.
• CS concerns these issues too, and considers their
implications to the design of interfaces and
interactions between computers and people.
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5. HCI- Human-Computer Interaction
Collaboration Visualization
Human-Robot Interaction 5
Social Networking

6. User Interface Designs Are Not All The Same;
Some Designs Can Be Confusing
What’s different
between “Don’t Save”
and “Cancel”?
Powerful
but unusable.
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7. Using Scientific Methods to Improve UI Designs
Eyetracking Studies
Commercial Google Search Results
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8. Some Interfaces Involve More Than One Person
• Using computers to mediate communication in new
ways.
Twitter Plurk
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9. Facebook
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10. From Communication to Social Networking
• People now can not only communicate with one
another, but also network with them online.
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12. MC
Studying Social Networks CY
Which person is more important,
SC, CY or MC?
SC is likely more important. Why? GH
SC knows more people, and may
mediate more information
exchange.
How to pass information
from one person to another?
SC
SC to GH: SC->TD->PQ->GH
SC to MC: none
Which sub-network (group) a
person belongs to?

13. Identifying the Group a Person Belongs To
• Insight: People in the same group stay close together.
People in different groups are further apart.
– Edges (“roads”) with heavy traffic are more likely for
inter-group transportation.
• Steps for identifying groups (clustering)
– Compute the betweenness value, the extent a node is
required by the transportation between any two people
in the network, for each edge.
– Remove high-betweenness edges to identify groups.
Pinney, J. W., & Westhead, D. R. (2007).Betweenness-based Decomposition Methods for Social and13
Biological Networks. Interdisciplinary Statistics and Bioinformatics.

14. Edge Betweenness-based Clustering MC
CY
GH
SC
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15. Concluding Remarks
• The range of topics that computer scientists look at
may be much wider than one considers
– Plenty of diversity
– Plenty of scientific challenges
– Ex. Sustaining tradition and interest in studying people,
such as individual behavior and social organization.
• Computing is more and more user-dependent and
socially relevant
– Usable and useful HCI designs are more essential
– “Computational social sciences”- new opportunities
and ways to understand people even more, e.g., the
analysis of online social networks.
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