How to give a good research talk

So, it's now time to explain to various students how to give a good research talk and I found myself scouring the web for folks who've already written up great tips for giving a great talk. And thankfully, I have not come out shorthanded. So here's a few resources on how to give a good talk:

• How To Give A Great Research Talk by Microsoft Research starring John Krumm, Patrick Baudisch, and Mary Czerwinski 
• Philip Guo's advice on how to give a good talk
• Simon Peyton's advice (and again in written form)

Getting started as a Ph.D. student

I've been thinking about how to advise new Ph.D. students, along the lines of creating a list of "Things I wish I knew when I started my Ph.D." and in particular "Things I wish I knew when I started my Ph.D. in the U.S. as a foreigner". I figured this was a good excuse to resurrect my defunct blog and give this blogging gig one more shot, if for no other reason than to refer my Ph.D. students to these posts so I don't have to repeat myself.

So the first thing I thought of to prepare students before they even touch down in the U.S. or prior to starting is to get hold of these three handbook gems:

• A Ph.D. is not enough! A Guide to Survival in Science by Peter J Feibelman
• Getting What You Came For: The Smart Students Guide to Earning an M.A. or a Ph.D. by Robert Peters
• Tomorrow's Professor: Preparing for Academic Careers in Science and Engineering by Richard M. Reis 

I found "Getting What You Came For" particularly useful as a handbook to navigate different parts of the Ph.D. process and even for preparation for the faculty job search. "Tomorrow's Professor" is better reading for a little later on in the process when you're at the proposal stage after you've done a bit of research and also when you're starting to think about the job market.

Of course a couple of must-have links for Ph.D. survival, particularly for HCI or CS related fields are:

• PhdComics - this is surprisingly helpful not just for humor but to learn about the American style of Ph.D. including all the wonderful things like qualifying exams, thesis proposals, thesis defenses, publishing, and life as a grad student in the U.S.
• XKCD - because it rocks.

Finally, a quick Google search and then some turned up the following very useful links for prepping to start your Ph.D. journey:

• What I tell my graduate students
• Advice for new Ph.D. students
• How to do great research
• Michael Ernst's advice for students
• Jason Hong's advice for students
• A collection of useful links from Jen Mankoff

I'll continue to put up more tips as they come to me. Signing off for now (and hopefully not for several years like my previous post :)).

iPhone apps I can't live without

Time for a post on apps that I've found to be super helpful ever since I got my shiny iPhone 4—the apple of my eye (other than my sweetpea)!

Remember the Milk—I absolutely adore lists. To-do lists, lists of books I should read, music I like—pretty much anything I can put in a list format. This app has revolutionalized my list obsession. With it, I can set up email reminders for events, from Google Calendar, my Chrome browser or my iPhone. And I can get the warm fuzzy feeling every time I check off something on my list. If lists are your thing, you need RTM. Full stop.

Evernote—Along with my list obsession, I love taking random notes on my multiple devices, often resorting to Notepad on the PC, and Notes on the iPhone. I've just discovered the answer to organizing these notes into a searchable format and for syncing these random bits and bobs across my devices.

TripIt—Email all your travel plans—hotels, car rentals and most importantly, plane information to TripIt and it creates an itinerary with maps, departure and arrival information as well as confirmation numbers for you. All the information is presented in a nice easy to read format that's accessible via the web and the iPhone.

Remote—Want to change the music in iTunes from anywhere in your house using your iPhone? Remote has finally enabled music wars in our household. Thank you Apple.

Sunrise, Sunset—For planning activities during daylight hours, whether it's a run or a hike, or for finding out when that glorious sunset or sunrise is going to hit, this app is awesome, simple and free!

There are also other freebies that I highly recommend but don't deserve center stage. For example, the Yelp! app is a must for checking out restaurant options when you're in a foreign city. And, the DropBox app is great for syncing up photos with your dropbox and accessing pdfs on the iPhone.

That's it for now, I'll update this list as I find more apps that make my heart swell. Did I mention I love my iPhone?

Superstitious pigeons: An example of designing for cultural relevance

I found an interesting example of designing for cultural relevance in the most mundane place—paying for parking tickets. I've noticed that since parking lot ticket machines were first introduced into South Africa, a strange practice emerged. This practice is reminiscent of Skinner's superstitious pigeons (see this article for a layman's summary).

Essentially said practice unfolds like this:

1. A South African goes to pay for their parking ticket at the machine

2. They insert coins for the amount specified

3. One or more coins are rejected from the machine for no apparent reason

The superstition part comes in here. South African's believe that scratching the coin against the ticket machine somehow will make the machine accept the coin. So the next part of the process goes something like:

4. The South African rubs the rejected coin against the metal of the machine several times, re-inserts the rejected coin and hopes it gets accepted

5. If it is rejected again, the procedure is to repeat Step 4 until there is success.

Should Step 5 fail, the solution is to find other coins, use notes or in some cases, yell expletives and give up exasperated.

Now this process in itself has mostly just amused me but the other day, I noticed that the ticket machine designers take this superstitious practice very seriously. Case in point, to the left, this is a photo I took of a ticket machine at a major shopping center, Canal Walk, a few days ago. Notice the "Scratch Plate" which looks like it has seen good use and wear from users rubbing the coins, frantically trying to get the machine to accept their money offerings.

What I find fascinating is that this scratch pad serves no functional purpose, and may be totally based on superstition. Or perhaps, rubbing those coins does make the machine gods happy and I'm just not in the know.

In all, this example, warmed my HCI heart to see that sometimes, design really is about fitting the system to the local situation and not only about ease of use.

Qualitative research tools

As a somewhat seasoned qualitative researcher, I am always on the lookout for tools to improve the coding process for going through interview transcripts, particularly since I'm a fan of grounded theory. (As an aside, read this book to find out more about grounded theory or read my advisors take on the theory, noting that the strong-point of this approach is how operationalizable the steps are). I've used everything from MS Excel, to the open source tool Weft QDA to track codes for quotes and for open and axial coding.

Weft QDA was several steps up from Excel, allowing you to digitally annotate documents with codes and categorize them into higher level codes. However, using Weft, all documents have to be converted to plain text and the software is a little buggy. But on the other hand, given the unforgiving graduate student budget, this makes for a good option if you want to manage your codes digitally.

Recently, I started using Atlas.ti with a student licence and I am utterly pleased. The tool allows for easy open coding (or creating new codes), and you can also select from codes you've already created. I'm especially a big fan of the keyboard shortcuts for the coding process. What's better is that you can easily group codes into "Families" for axial coding. The tool also gives you counts of how many times a code has occurred and makes it easy to view quotes associated with a particular code, or family of codes, both in the editor or for printing purposes.

So for me, I'll look no further than Atlas.ti for now and I highly recommend investing in it if you can spare the change and you're a fan of having a digital copy of a qualitative analysis (even though its still nice to shift pieces of paper and post-its around!).

Seeing a new side of South Africa and Cape Town

I've decided to resurrect my failed attempt at blogging while on internship in my home town, gorgeous Cape Town in South Africa. This is a quick summary of the country's atmosphere as I am experiencing it since my arrival in mid-August.

So let's start with the bad news down here include the crippling public servants strike, causing education and healthcare to grind to a halt. Final year high school students' matric exams are being affected as as teachers lay down their chalk, and more sadly, patients and young babies are dying as nurses all over the country elect to stay away from work during wage negotiations. Coupled with that there's much hype over a proposed bill, The Protection of Information Bill, geared at censoring the South African media.

But as always, on to the good news. I've had somewhat of a nice barometer on the South African climate, visiting here once a year for the past 5 years. After seeing a particular slump in the country's morale in 2007, I'm glad to report that after the world cup, the country is in a positive upswing. Several months after the event is over, flags are still flying brightly all over the place. Never before, since our transition to a democratic government after our 1994 elections, have I seen such positivity or pride in the nation, or our colorful flag adorning cars and attire and flying high from Franschhoek to Salt River.

And because of this continuous positive energy, encompassed by one of our favorite phrases, "'n boer maak 'n plan" or "we'll make a plan", which generally means in any situation, that we will be alright and we will figure it out, this country continues to amaze me. I am soaking up, with delight, its diversity as I research home internet use, interacting with lovely people of different economic, racial and class backgrounds, each with their own accents and cultural nuances. What a great place to be and how lucky I am to enjoy this rich experience in my life as a researcher :). And on that ending note, I hope this post inspires me to write more on my adventures down here in my latest attempt at blogging.

i heart lolcats

Omg this is so cute!!!
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