Gary Hsieh
2015 Seminar Series
Incentive Design and User Diversity
Designing effective incentives is a challenge across many social technologies contexts, from attracting new users to encouraging user-generated content. However, one aspect of incentivizing that has been understudied is its impact on participation bias, as different incentives may attract different subsets of the population to participate. In this talk, Gary Hsieh will present two empirical studies in the crowdworking context that show that the incentive offered influence who participates in the task. He will also discuss the implications of this work for incentive design, and general technology and system design.
2014 Seminar Series
Designing Tailored Motivators
Designing effective incentives is a challenge across many domains, from attracting technology users to nudging behavior change to compensating study participants. Unfortunately, current designs often employ a one-incentive-fits-all approach, assuming that one single reward would work sufficiently for everyone. This overlooks the fact that people are heterogenously motivated; people do not all hold the same values and have the same needs. A single reward, therefore, may not appeal to everyone, and it could also undermine diversity by attracting only certain types of people to participate.
An alternative design is to offer individually tailored motivators. While this idea works well in theory, there are many unanswered research questions for this approach to be a viable option. What motivators should we use? Under what circumstances should we use these motivators? How do we design these systems to provide sufficient user control. In this talk, Hsieh will discuss early efforts and challenges in developing tailored motivators.
2013 Seminar Series
Designing for the Why: Studying and Predicting Motivation
Understanding users is one of the tenets of human-computer interaction (HCI). Traditionally, understanding users has focused on cognition (how we think), so that technologies may be designed with appropriate metaphors and affordances to maximize usability. However, it has become apparent that understanding motivations (why we perform certain actions) is also a critical part of understanding users. Through better understanding of users' motivations, we can build not only more usable systems, but also more rewarding systems. In this talk, Professor Hsieh will present three research projects on designing for the why. First, he will present a recent project on understanding why low-cost online activism (slacktivism) may undermine civic participation. Second, Gary will discuss his recent efforts in predicting users' motivations in social media. Finally, Professor Hsieh will conclude with current research on tailoring motivators to individuals' motivations.
Gary Hsieh is an Assistant Professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. His research focuses on studying, designing, and developing technologies that enable people to interact in ways that are efficient and welfare-improving. He was previously an Assistant Professor in Communication and Information Studies at Michigan State University and has conducted research at multiple industry research labs, including Microsoft, IBM, Intel, and Fuji-Xerox. He received his PhD from the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and his BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at University of California, Berkeley. He is a recipient of the NSF Career Award.
