HCII20: Ph.D. Alumni in Industry

Ph.D. Alumni in
Industry
Turadg Aleahmad, Daniel Avrahami, Jeffrey
Nichols

Format
10 minute talks
30 minutes of Q&A

One Ph.D. in Industry
Daniel Avrahami

about.me
 Joined the HCI Masters program in 1999
 Here is one of my first projects:

about.me
 Joined the HCI Masters program in 1999
 In 2001, joined the 2nd class of the PhD program
 My thesis was on something important, no doubt

Timeline and Outline
Daniel Avrahami
200720112014
Senior Researcher & UX Innovation Lead
PC Client Group, Intel
Masters and Ph.D. in HCI
Carnegie Mellon
Senior Researcher
Intel Research Seattle
Senior Research Scientist
FX Palo Alto Lab

(at least ) 5 types of industry environments
Industrial
Research
R&D
(Big Company)
Product Group
(Big Company)
Join a Startup
Found a
Startup

Intel Research Seattle
 Small, interdisciplinary, approximately 15 Ph.D.s
 One of three “lablets” that were set to collaborate
with specific universities (CMU, UW, UC Berkeley)
 Goals: External and Internal impact through
involvement and leadership in the research
community, tech-transfer and thought influence
within Intel

Nomadic Smart Spaces
UIST’09
UIST’11IJCAI
UbiComp’10

Nomadic Smart Spaces
Shaun Kane (CU Boulder) Adam Rea (elarm) Stephanie Rosenthal (CMU) Ken Lafond (InspectorADE)
Jake Wobbrock (UW) Georgios Theocharous (Adobe) Richard Beckwith (Intel)

Intel Research shut down
 It was during Intel’s highest earning year of all
times ($54 billion in revenue)
 I was (almost) too “Researchy” for industry
 This year, when I decided to leave the product group, I
was (almost) too “Industry” for research
 A necessity for introspection:
 What is my dream job?
 What is important for me?
 Get things “out”
 A conversation with Bo Begole about model airplanes
 Make work my hobby
 I was asked to help create a UX team in Intel’s PC
group

My work at Intel’s PC Group
 Helped build a UX team
 Guided product planning through prototypes and
interactive concepts
 Led a program focused on content creation for
everyday people

R&D: Prototypes and Concepting
 Enhancing media creation and consumption
 A trick to use: Set an imaginary peer-review bar

Product Development
 Enhancing media creation and consumption
 A trick to use: Set an imaginary peer-review bar
 Forming a x-division “Digital Storytelling” task force
 Worked with a software vendor to ship a product in 9
months
 Launched a Video Metadata Framework development
effort (still ongoing! W00t!)

Direct and Indirect Impact
 Took a product from initial research, to an active
x-group program, to shipping on ~10 million PCs
 Broadened the company’s focus on content
creation beyond the professional user
 Launched the Video Metadata Framework dev.

Research at FXPAL
 Stands for FX Palo Alto Laboratory
 An industrial research lab that started 19 years ago
 17 researchers (soon to be 18)
 Multimedia, HCI, Smart Spaces, Telepresence, Data
Science
 Full-time and internship opportunities
(fxpal.com/careers)
 Joined 6th months ago. Working on
 Remote collaboration and telepresence
 State and activity recognition with wearable sensors
 Multimedia

Study of remote telepresence
 In a controlled study, groups of 3
evaluated a “sales trainee”
 Local participants in the Kinetic
condition behaved differently from
local participants in the Static
condition
 Behavior and perception of remote
participants was not sig. different
 Need to enhance a user’s sense
of presence in the remote space
To appear in CSCW’15
Face-to-Face
“Static” video conferencing
“Kinetic” video conferencing

Why is industrial research work awesome?
 You get to explore topics that interest you
 You need to wrap it in a reasonable story
 You don’t need to worry about funding
 At work or at home ;-)
 You can be involved in the broader research
community
 You can share and talk about your work
 However, the ability to have direct impact on the
company and its products is very difficult
 Examples: PerC Group, PlaceLab

If you go to industry…
 Realize that things can change abruptly
 Figure out what options you want to keep open
 Q: What would I talk about if I can’t talk publicly about
my main projects?
 Q: I can’t publish. What can I do so that my CV won’t
stay the same for years?

Ph.D. in Startup
Turadg Aleahmad

PhD in a Startup
Turadg Aleahmad @

n=1
Why I chose industry
What it’s like in a startup
Value of a PhD in a startup

My interests
Improve education using technology at scale.
Make things in the world that people use.
Spread knowledge.

1998 Programming Web-based learning
2006 Started HCII
2010 Considered leaving for industry
Changed gears in research
My PhD

Towards industry
2011 Won Startup Weekend
2012 Defended
Cofounded a startup
2013 Coursera

Universal access to world-class education.
Great people. Great impact.
Huge potential.
Coursera

Move very fast, no time to think deeply
Things changed constantly
Coding a lot more than I had planned to
If you like publishing, forget it for a while
Cons of a startup for PhDs

Work with brilliant ambitious people to make
something happen; everyone very aligned
Super rewarding to be making the mission
happen; takes many different skills
Learn about what it takes to make an
innovation self-sustaining
Pros of a startup for PhDs

● researchers unhappy
o data sharing policy
o access rights
● job system kept breaking
o rewrote it in place
● no team serving our university partners
o eng manager
o data quality
o dashboard architecture
● frontend code reuse difficult as we scaled
o building new stack for componentization
No shortage of problems

Research question: can we find a sustainable
business model for the thing that we want to
exist in the world?
● Resourcefulness
● Skill at prioritization
● Risk-taking
● Comfort in roles you’re not good at
● Being data-driven and empirical
Value of PhD training at a startup

Start-ups are a great place to learn.
Taking a good company from one stage to the
next is both challenging and interesting.
There are companies with great social missions
to contribute to.
Coursera is a great place to work, talk to me if you want to.
Take-aways

I should have a better
title for this talk
Jeff Nichols

My Research
2000 2006 2014
Mobile
Web
Social Media
UI AutoGen
End-user Programming

Q&A
Some sample questions:
• How is industry different than
academia?
• Can I still publish?
• Should I still publish?
• How do I convince my boss to let
me go to CHI?
• How do I politely refuse requests
for funding from my academic
friends?
• …

HCII20: Ph.D. Alumni in Industry

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