MSCS and Society Series

MSCS and Society Lecture, 2023-24

Dan Keefe Ph.D., University of Minnesota

Monday, March 25, 2024, 4:40pm-6:00pm
John B. Davis Lecture Hall

Designing Mixed-Reality and Tangible Data Experiences with Artists and Indigenous Communities

As the ways we work with computers become increasingly tangible, blending the physical and digital worlds, the field of computing has an opportunity to learn from and partner with communities with deep expertise in traditional, physical ways of knowing our world. This talk will describe co-design processes, artifacts, and lessons learned from two projects that explore this potential. The first is a collaboration between technologists, visual artists, and climate scientists. The goal is to discover how skilled artists and designers working with physical art media (e.g., paint, clay, found objects) can “sculpt” accurate, data-driven climate science visualizations with an expanded visual vocabulary that has benefits for both scientific discovery and public discourse. The second is a collaboration with a community of climate and economic refugees from Micronesia who have settled in Milan, Minnesota. Now, in a landlocked region far from their home islands, our interdisciplinary team is partnering in efforts to maintain their culture, reviving knowledge of building and sailing canoes and of traditional celestial navigation systems. In both projects, designing for tangible computing, including both physical inputs and physical outputs, has been the key to creating experiences that are inviting, dignity-affirming, and useful. I look forward to discussing the themes of designing user experiences, data physicalization, immersive visualization, tangible and embodied user interfaces, and mixed-reality environments through the lens of these collaborative projects that challenge us to rethink the current goals and users of computing in society.

Dan Keefe is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and a Distinguished University Teaching Professor at the University of Minnesota. He is also an artist, designer, social justice advocate, woodworker, sailor, and prolific collaborator across disciplines. Keefe’s research on data visualization and interactive computer graphics has been supported with numerous grants and has won best paper and similar awards at top international computing conferences. His teaching and mentoring have also been recognized with multiple awards. In addition to his work in computer science, Keefe is also an accomplished artist and has published and exhibited digital and physical artwork locally in Minneapolis and in top international venues. Before joining the University of Minnesota, Keefe did postdoctoral work at Brown University with the Department of Computer Science, the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and the Department of Illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design. He received the Ph.D. in 2007 from Brown University’s Department of Computer Science and the B.S. in Computer Engineering summa cum laude from Tufts University in 1999.