Human-Computer Interaction in Biodiversity Informatics

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Human-Computer Interaction in Biodiversity
Informatics

• Workshop in association with the 22nd annual HCIL
  Symposium and Open House
• Sponsored by NBII and NSF
• http//www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/biodiversity/workshop

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Plan for the day

• talks (with a break in the middle)
• lunch (maybe walk?)
• panel
• demos
• dinner

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Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the extraordinary variety of all
life on Earth - from genes to species to entire
ecosystems. -- Smithsonian Institution
Monitoring and Assessment of Biodiversity Program
How can we improve interaction with biodiversity
information?
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Informatics
Modified from Wikipedia Ecoinformatics entry

• Facilitate research and management by developing
  ways to
• access biodiversity data
• integrate
• databases of biodiversity information
• computational services such as predictive models,
  analytical, and planning tools

Information and problem-centered
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Human-computer interaction
Wikipedia HCI entry

• The study of interaction between people (users)
  and computers.
• methodologies and processes for designing
  interfaces
• methods for implementing interfaces
• developing new interfaces and interaction
  techniques
• developing descriptive and predictive models and
  theories of interaction

People and task-centered
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HCI in Biodiversity Informatics

• reduction of information complexity (spatial,
  historical, numerical, etc.) for human scales
• potential for cross-over with other domains
• focus on organisms -- names, attributes,
  habitats, localities
• potential for non-expert users education,
  outreach

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Missing . . .

• data entry
• sensor nets
• algorithmic data mining
• text mining
• semantic web

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Organization of speakers

• Biodiversity
• plants (White, Jacobs)
• fungi (Farr)
• animals (Allen, Nardi)
• multiple (Parr, Shapley, Guimbetrere)

• Science process problems and tasks
• data collection (Farr, Jacobs)
• data exploration and analysis (Parr, Guimbetrere,
  White)
• education and outreach (Shapley, Allen)
• cross-cutting (Nardi)

• Technology
• identification (Farr, Jacobs)
• information retrieval (White, Allen)
• interactive data visualization (Parr,
  Guimbetrere, Shapley, White)
• collaboration (Nardi)

• Researcher background
• Biologist-turned-technologist (Parr, Allen, Farr)
• HCI researcher (Nardi, Guimbetrere, Shapley)
• Other (White, Jacobs)

• Approaches to biodiversity
• Evolution (Guimbetrere, Farr,
  Shapley, Jacobs)
• Ecology and Environment (Parr, Allen,
  White, Nardi)