Derek Lomas and Philip Guo Recognized by Premier International HCI Conference

Derek Lomas and Philip Guo Recognized by Premier International HCI Conference

Derek Lomas and Philip Guo Recognized by Premier International HCI Conference

UC San Diego Design Lab members Derek Lomas and Philip Guo were recently recognized by the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) 2017 Conference.  The SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This year, the event is being held in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Denver, Colorado from May 6 to 11. The CHI conference brings together people from multiple disciplines and a diversity of cultures to explore new ways to practice, develop and improve methods and systems in HCI, to discuss ideas that can lead to innovations, and to inspire us all.

This year, SIGCHI recognized Lomas for his paper “Is Difficulty Overrated? Measuring the Effects of Motivational Design Factors in an Educational Game” and Guo for his paper “Older Adults Learning Computer Programming: Motivations, Frustrations, and Design Opportunities” both received an honorable mention and ranked in the top 5% and top 100 of all 2,400 submissions to the SIG CHI 2017 conference.

Lomas Paper Abstract:

It is almost a truism that good games shouldn’t be too hard or too easy. It isn’t surprising that games can be too hard; after all, a core objective in HCI is minimizing user difficulty and maximizing ease-of-use. That makes it much more surprising that games can be too easy. Can games really be too easy? Or just too boring?

The evidence is mixed: in some studies, difficulty is good for intrinsic motivation and in other studies it is not. To clarify this issue for educational game designers and others, we ran three controlled experiments to test how various design factors modulate the role of difficulty on player intrinsic motivation.

Guo Paper Abstract:

This paper presents the first known study of older adults learning computer programming. Using an online survey with 504 respondents aged 60 to 85 who are from 52 different countries, this study discovered that older adults were motivated to learn to keep their brains challenged as they aged, to make up for missed opportunities during youth, to connect with younger family members, and to improve job prospects. Based on these findings, we propose new techniques to motivate older adults to learn programming and discuss broader societal implications of a future where more older adults have access to computer programming — not merely computer literacy — as a skill set.

UC San Diego Design Lab members Derek Lomas and Philip Guo were recently recognized by the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) 2017 Conference.  The SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This year, the event is being held in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Denver, Colorado from May 6 to 11. The CHI conference brings together people from multiple disciplines and a diversity of cultures to explore new ways to practice, develop and improve methods and systems in HCI, to discuss ideas that can lead to innovations, and to inspire us all.

This year, SIGCHI recognized Lomas for his paper “Is Difficulty Overrated? Measuring the Effects of Motivational Design Factors in an Educational Game” and Guo for his paper “Older Adults Learning Computer Programming: Motivations, Frustrations, and Design Opportunities” both received an honorable mention and ranked in the top 5% and top 100 of all 2,400 submissions to the SIG CHI 2017 conference.

Lomas Paper Abstract:

It is almost a truism that good games shouldn’t be too hard or too easy. It isn’t surprising that games can be too hard; after all, a core objective in HCI is minimizing user difficulty and maximizing ease-of-use. That makes it much more surprising that games can be too easy. Can games really be too easy? Or just too boring?

The evidence is mixed: in some studies, difficulty is good for intrinsic motivation and in other studies it is not. To clarify this issue for educational game designers and others, we ran three controlled experiments to test how various design factors modulate the role of difficulty on player intrinsic motivation.

Guo Paper Abstract:

This paper presents the first known study of older adults learning computer programming. Using an online survey with 504 respondents aged 60 to 85 who are from 52 different countries, this study discovered that older adults were motivated to learn to keep their brains challenged as they aged, to make up for missed opportunities during youth, to connect with younger family members, and to improve job prospects. Based on these findings, we propose new techniques to motivate older adults to learn programming and discuss broader societal implications of a future where more older adults have access to computer programming — not merely computer literacy — as a skill set.

UC San Diego Design Lab members Derek Lomas and Philip Guo were recently recognized by the Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) 2017 Conference.  The SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems is the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This year, the event is being held in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Denver, Colorado from May 6 to 11. The CHI conference brings together people from multiple disciplines and a diversity of cultures to explore new ways to practice, develop and improve methods and systems in HCI, to discuss ideas that can lead to innovations, and to inspire us all.

This year, SIGCHI recognized Lomas for his paper “Is Difficulty Overrated? Measuring the Effects of Motivational Design Factors in an Educational Game” and Guo for his paper “Older Adults Learning Computer Programming: Motivations, Frustrations, and Design Opportunities” both received an honorable mention and ranked in the top 5% and top 100 of all 2,400 submissions to the SIG CHI 2017 conference.

Lomas Paper Abstract:

It is almost a truism that good games shouldn’t be too hard or too easy. It isn’t surprising that games can be too hard; after all, a core objective in HCI is minimizing user difficulty and maximizing ease-of-use. That makes it much more surprising that games can be too easy. Can games really be too easy? Or just too boring?

The evidence is mixed: in some studies, difficulty is good for intrinsic motivation and in other studies it is not. To clarify this issue for educational game designers and others, we ran three controlled experiments to test how various design factors modulate the role of difficulty on player intrinsic motivation.

Guo Paper Abstract:

This paper presents the first known study of older adults learning computer programming. Using an online survey with 504 respondents aged 60 to 85 who are from 52 different countries, this study discovered that older adults were motivated to learn to keep their brains challenged as they aged, to make up for missed opportunities during youth, to connect with younger family members, and to improve job prospects. Based on these findings, we propose new techniques to motivate older adults to learn programming and discuss broader societal implications of a future where more older adults have access to computer programming — not merely computer literacy — as a skill set.

Read Next

Brian LeDuc

Brian Leduc on Learning Agility & Career Changers | Design Chats


Brian LeDuc, Design Lab Designer-In-Residence, talks about his work on creating resources for career changers.

Design Chats is a video series where we sit down with design practitioners to answer questions about how they utilize human-centered design.

View our Design Chats playlist on the Design Lab YouTube Channel
Don Norman On User-friendly Design

I wrote the book on user-friendly design. What I see today horrifies me

The world is designed against the elderly, writes Don Norman, 83-year-old author of the industry bible Design of Everyday Things and a former Apple VP.

More people than ever are living long, healthy lives. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the average life expectancy is 78.6 years for men and 81.1 for women. More relevant, however, is that as people grow older, their total life expectancy increases. So for those who are now 65, the average life expectancy is 83 for men and over 85 for women. And because I’m 83, I’m expected to live past 90 (but I’m aiming a lot higher than that). And these are averages, which means that perhaps half of us will live even longer.
Design Lab Uc San Diego Don Norman Creative Education

Rethinking Design Education

Don Norman, Design Lab Director

The Challenge

The requirements of the 21st century are quite different than those of earlier years. New needs continually arise, along with new tools, technologies, and materials. Designers are starting to address some of the major societal issues facing the planet. Does design education prepare them to work with and lead the multidisciplinary teams required to work on these complex sociotechnical systems?

The Origins

We are embarking on a serious effort to rethink design education for the 21st century. We started with the multiple thoughtful articles in two special issues of the journal She Ji on design education (download from our website). This inspired us to assemble a team of senior designers from academia and business to serve as a steering committee to start a large effort to rethink design education.
Announcing The New Graduate Student Specialization In Human-centered Design

Announcing the new Graduate Student Specialization in Human-centered Design

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock

Announcing the new Graduate Student Specialization in Human-centered Design in partnership with the UC San Diego Design Lab, Cognitive Science (CogSci), Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), and Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science (HWSPH).

The Design Graduate Specialization is a set of courses graduate students can choose to take that fit into their home degree program requirements. It is analogous to receiving a minor, but at the graduate level. The courses fit into their home program as either electives or as courses that were already part of their core requirements, plus the option to take courses from other programs taking part in the specialization outside of their home program. In addition, students will be required to take at least one course that explicitly addresses and discusses issues of power, privilege, and ethical responses. The Design Graduate Specialization is created so that it can be integrated into a one or two-year Master program or a Ph.D. program.

Design and Innovation Building Grand Opening: UCSD’s front door to community collaborations

In November of 2021, the UC San Diego Design Lab unveiled their long-awaited new home in the recently constructed Design and Innovation Building, or as it is affectionately referred to, the DIB. The DIB will serve as a hub for academia, industry and community innovators to participate in design events, lectures, and other working partnerships within the design community that aim to create human-centered solutions to the complex problems facing our region and beyond. The grand opening of the DIB showcased the potential for such gatherings, boasting the presence of organizations like the UCSD Design Co., Girls Who Code, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, to name a few. Such groups showcased current and past projects to the students, professors, and industry leaders in attendance. 

The opening of the DIB marks a momentous occasion in the history of the Design Lab, as the building itself, which is a multi-use environment bringing together multiple disciplines under one roof, represents the journey and philosophy at the heart of the Design Lab’s mission–making UC San Diego a world center for design research and education that fosters a new way of thinking, which addresses the core issues with a systems point of view, and emphasizing the role of people in the complex systems of the modern world.
Don Norman

Design a Better World, with Don Norman

UX Cake kicks the season off with a fascinating conversation about changing the world with design, with Don Norman.

"There are really creative people in all these communities. And there aren’t enough experts to go around anyway. What we want to do is go around the world and find these people and facilitate, help them, empower them, give them expert knowledge and allow them to decide how to apply that to their problems." - Don Norman
Back To Top