Courses

Here are some resources about doing research that I found useful.

Inspirational

  • “You and Your Research” by Richard Hamming.
    Transcript of a very inspirational talk in which Hamming discusses the atmosphere at Bell Labs where he worked with famous researchers like Claude Shannon and John Tukey. He discusses the different traits of researchers who do “great” work — such as courage, drive and commitment.
  • “Technology and Courage” by Ivan Sutherland.
    Great article by one of the pioneers of human-computer interaction, computer graphics and virtual reality. Sutherland talks about the courage required to do creative, technical work.

General

PhD

Presentation skills

Writing skills

  • “How to write a great research paper” by Simon Peyton Jones (video).
    This is one of my favorite resources about paper w

    Technologiëen en Tools van User Interfaces

    Undergraduate HCI course that introduces different kinds of user interface technology (e.g. architectures and toolkits, speech interaction, iTV and virtual environments).

    I am the main teaching assistant for this course. My main responsibility is the lesson on High-Level User Interface Description Languages (HLUIDLs), in which the students get introduced to UIML and XUL. Duties include organizing the course project, supervising students in this project, giving the lecture on HLUIDLs and guiding the students in exercises for this subject.

    Humane aspecten van informatica

    Introductory course in Human-Computer Interaction (undergraduate level, freshman year).

    I am responsible for the lesson on user interface programming with GTK+ and for guiding student projects together with the other teaching assistants. My duties include introducing GTK+ to the students in a lecture and guiding them in their exercises. I also updated the existing GTK+ course material.

    Actuele trends in HCI

    Advanced course in Human-Computer Interaction (graduate level). The course introduces advanced topics and recent trends in HCI. The course project consists of a small research project in which students work closely together with an HCI researcher.

    I am responsible for guiding one or two student groups in their research project. I also provide a couple of interesting papers for the students to read.

    riting. Covers both the writing process and how to structure a research paper.

  • “How to Get a Paper Accepted at OOPSLA” by Kent Beck.
    Great advice on how to write a compelling abstract using four key sentences.

Reviewing

  • “Twelve tips for reviewers” by Henry L. Roediger III.
    Provides several guidelines for reviewing, based on the book “Reviewing Scientific Works in Psychology”. There are a few interesting points being made here, such as watching out for egocentrism (“The author should be citing my work more often”), explicitly making a recommendation instead of letting the editor guess what your overall opinion is, and signing your reviews (or at least write the review as if the author will learn your identity and you wouldn’t be embarrassed).

Conferences

  • “How to get the most out of conferences” by Scott Berkun.
    Lots of practical tips about going to conferences, from shipping the printed proceedings back to your office to how to meet and socialize with many people.