Interview Series with designers — Narges

(Originally posted March 20, 2017)

Narges Mayhar recently joined the Design Lab at the University of California as a postdoctoral fellow. She comes as a very experienced computer scientist with a focus on social challenges such as engaging citizens in collaborative decision-making. During my first encounter with Narges, I learned that she is a fine artist with a long-standing record of exhibitions, a dedication for artistic expression and a clear sensitivity to visually communicated information.

As a German myself, I was curious to learn from Narges about her origins in Iran, and her time spent working in countries like Malaysia and Canada. In addition, she emanated a calm and centered attitude as a professional on her career path. What did she figure out that is worth sharing? And what a great fit for my interview series.

You will learn more in this blog post about Narges’ work as a human-centered designer and as an advocate for aspiring professionals that struggle with issues of minority as she has voiced them before in her twitter feed. And I would like to credit her with giving my interview series a new spin. But first things first…

Narges Mayhar — designing visual solutions for collaborations and taking a stance for minorities

JL: What is your professional role and line of work, Narges?

N: I am researcher in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) but more specifically I am working on collaborative visualization and collaborative technology to help a group of people to solve complex problems. A visualization helps with visualizing abstract data to communicate meaning and allowing people to explore those relationships between data and meaning underneath the complex data sat. So it definitely includes user interface design, information visualization, computer supported collaborative work as well as collaborative visual analytics. I have worked with large interactive surfaces and studied how they can facilitate collaborations. My work includes different topics in terms of how to use technology to help people solve complex problems.

JL: This is a great introduction. What’s your title at the UCSD Design Lab?

NM: I am a design fellow contributing post doc research.

JL: What are typical tasks in your day-to-day, Narges?

NM: There are many! There are research based tasks which takes up a lot of time. There are coordination tasks that involve my students, scheduling meetings with my supervisors, attending group meetings with the whole lab, attending talks. Then there are professional activities like reviewing for the program committee members for conferences. These are basically the main ones.

In terms of the research, it spans quite a large set of activities. It comes with finding that research question, that has a novel angle for further explorations. I review an extensive amount of literature to understand what has been done before and what has been left for me. I am especially interested actually in understanding the relationships between people rather than between people and computers. So it is not only human computer interaction, but also human to human interaction and for that I need to learn a lot about social science and social behavior. For example I am working right now on civic innovation and how to facilitate civic discourse. I need to understand what kind of environment and platforms is more effective to gather issues and help citizen to remain involved through coming up with ideas for civic issues and proposing feasible and innovative solutions. This again requires understanding prior work, reaching out to people, interviewing with both experts and citizens to understand their point of views because it is important to me to capture their views and what the real problems are. And after that, whenever we catch on to that unique problem, we begin designing, prototyping, and testing to develop a system or user interface.

As any creative process, it is a a constant loop of evaluating and refining, in this case getting feedback from users and from experts to refine the system. And again, at the end, I test the outcome with real users. It presents itself as a real challenge to find those real user for participation but that is what I am hoping to do with this work.

JL: It was a provocative question of me to ask for your “day-to-day?” as we see it can vary a lot and is quite layered. There seem to be daily, repeating activities like attending meeting, and abstract things like developing research questions. I noted that instead of human-computer-interaction, you described it as human through technology to human interaction or collaboration? Is it true that your focus is really on the person?

NM: No, my focus is not only on human-computer-interaction and on how they interact with the computer, but also on how people interact with each other. Because I am designing for collaborative work. That collaborative dynamic is really important for me to understand. I aim to design systems in a way that help people maintain and leverage social interactions, while they are using technology.

JL: I very much liked your notion on how you dig for an area of research that has been left for you. This is inspiring for me as I am developing this interview series. Since my series explicitly targets design, how do you define design?

NM: Design is such a broad term. I don’t feel qualified to define design. Design can span to many different fields such as industrial design, mechanical engineering design, it could be computer interaction design, or others. It is such a broad term that I don’t want to give you a definition. I can give you a definition for my own work which is information visualization and design. In my field, it is meant with the purpose of creating images from abstract data to help people understand what’s underneath. It is meant to help people with exploring further questions and gain insights from the data.

JL: I appreciate that you are specifying your focus in design for me. While design is the headline, I see how your work within a defined space of it. Do people have misconceptions about design? Say, you tell someone about your work, do you think it is very clear to them?

NM: It is not clear. And it is a very good question. A lot of people from the field of information visualizations have to make it clear that this type of visualization is not about creating pretty pictures. It is about creating images out of data that help people to understand or explore further, and to analyze such data. It is about getting more inside those images, or about interacting with those visualizations. They can be attractive, too, and not static. Most of the time, they are interactive visualizations. The question of how you design those visualization is very serious science, and way more than just creating pretty pictures.

JL: Your visualizations need to be primarily functional and data-based rather than pretty?

NM: Definitely. Function comes first!

JL: People have different interpretations of your work and they need to be educated about the purpose of your visualizations. Now, in my interview series, Narges, I set out to understand whether gender plays a role in your work, in your research or perhaps even in the collaboration of people using your work?

NM: You touch on a lot of elements, so allow me to explain one by one. In terms of my research, I have been very lucky that I work in Human Computer Interaction. The big picture is that women are really good in HCI research and in design. And we have a lot of great female faculty members and researchers that are leading outstanding research in this field. With that regard, I don’t have a problem research-wise. In terms of collaboration or work environment, I can agree that there are gender issues. I have felt that a lot of times since I received my degree in electrical engineering and then I switched to Computer Science where both of those fields are very male dominated. I always felt that I am a minority and that I have to work really hard to battle all of those stereotypes and discriminations. But this is not the case in my current research. In terms of collaboration, yes, I do feel when the environment is very male-dominated, then it is harder for me to collaborate as opposed to when we have a better balance of females and males. I think it is much easier for everyone if there is a balance. And I mean this in terms of persuading and collaborating, it gets easier and feels more natural if there is a good mix.

JL: That’s describing collaboration in your research work. What about the collaboration between people that use your visualizations? What are the gender phenomena you notice about people that are using your tools?

NM: I am not very aware of the impact of gender in these collaborations yet. I am not sure what role gender plays in decision-making and using visualization tools. In terms of team performance, Anita Woolley, a professor in Carnegie Mellon, and her colleagues have found that collective innovation of a team is correlated with the average social sensitivity of group members, the equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking, and the proportion of females in the group.

They associated that with the way that women communicate and with their emotion quotients (EQs) with regards to how women understand relationships. I feel this as well. Women are really good at channeling discussions or coordinating stuff. That finding stood out to me and will guide my research in the future. In my research, a lot of time we recruit groups of people to use our tools. I am really interested now to study this phenomenon further and see what are the effects of having females in groups. How do female-dominated groups perform? How do male-dominated groups perform?

JL: Perhaps such outcomes are not tied to the sexual characteristics of a person, but rather to their gendered, social behavior. I understand this, the success of mixed teams as a benefit from mingling a part of society that has been focusing on a certain set of tasks with another part that has been focusing on another set of tasks. What do you think?

NM: There are definitely differences between men and women themselves.

JL: You may have read my interview with Marit Brademann from Berlin. She described something similar about mixed teams. She said that with women in the room, teams would “get to the underwear quicker” meaning that they get to the point faster by touching on issues that a male-only team might not ask. She described that women tend to go deep with questions like “Why do we ask this?” rather than saying “Let’s get to the solution!” What stereotypes relating to gender have you observed in your work?

NM: I have a hard time answering this question… One stereotype is that men are better than women in computer science. Nowadays, there is a lot of support for women in computer science and for hiring female faculty members for diversity. Still, there are instances when you find yourself answering these kind of questions: “Do you think you got the best award paper because you supervisor is really great or do you feel that it was your own work that deserved the award?”

JL: You have described to me that in academia you observed a more egalitarian nature of interactions when it comes to group work. However, you also described more gendered phenomenon in mixed gender groups.

NM: It’s more like a comment that I’ve heard. There is a certain intimidation when most of the group members are male. It just creates that imbalance that you don’t want to see. Rather you need to see that harmonized community which is diverse and includes everyone and reflects different point of views.

JL; Whenever you have found yourself in a situation of imbalance, what was something that worked for you and that you would hence recommend to someone else?

NM: I think the most important thing is to be bold and speak up. When you are part of a group, speak up even if it is hard for you. Speak up even if you feel like you might sound stupid or your point of view might not be welcome. You should not stay silent. You should state your opinion and through that practice you learn better how to articulate your opinion and how to be more actively part of a conversation and shape the conversation. If you stay silent and you are a minority, you will remain a minority. But if you take more active part, if you explain your opinion and stand out for what you believe is right, you will become part of the community and of the communication. And you will better learn how to blend in. So it is best for you as well as for the community to have your opinions and voice them.

JL: You encourage people to speak up to practice and to get really good at it despite any discomfort they might initially have.

NM: This is not specifically meant for persuading others in meetings where you are a minority yet rather more general im terms of research. I have spoken with many PhD students in computer science. Some of them found me through my LinkedIn, and they were going through this same experiences. One PhD candidate told me that she felt not confident, because she did not get the the position she applied for, and she was sure it is because of her lack of qualifications. But then I looked at her publication list — turns out she was publishing really solid research! I said, “You should be proud of yourself!”. Based on my experience, creating a supporting network around you is really important. I think that if you are a minority you should continue to push forward and should become really great at what you are doing, get support when needed and be as bold as possible.

Good quality work is the first step, of course. Then you should learn how to present your work, and communicate it with others in an effective way. It is just as important to persuade in meetings and at conferences by talking about yourself and your work.

JL: Narges, I find your story very eloquent and it seems like you did what you preach for others to do. This was a message for people that are in a space of discomfort. Is there anything that you would like to add to the interview?

NM: I think you covered it pretty well.

JL: Sometimes we do not know what we do not know or should have have thought of… So anything for me to consider?

NM: One thing you should ask is whether people have ever felt discriminated before due to things other than gender. Ask about their experience with discrimination, such as racial discrimination, or cultural discrimination. I have seen a lot of non-native speakers who have been having problems in terms of presenting themselves in terms of showing off their work. And it is really tough. Having a mentorship for those kind of problems will help. I have always been part of women in computer science and women in engineering. I have been in contact with female students, and as a group we tried to build supporting system and encourage young women. At the University of British Columbia, we expanded our women in computer science group to not only invite women but also others who felt they are minority. I truly think that having been part of these communities has given people power and help throughout tough times!

JL: Narges, thank you for your time, insight, and encouragement for students that struggle as minorities, that have experienced discrimination and for role-modeling excellent work and solutions.

While Narges is an impressive painter of “pretty pictures” (they are truly more though), her design work is about creating functional and interactive visualizations for people to collaborate. While these visualization can be pretty, they must not. Narges visualizations are also tested with real participants and feedback will impact future versions of these designs. So her research and design is a great example of design work, in case you were unclear about it or need an example to share for someone that still is unclear.

Narges described that gender issues were rather rare in the field of Human Computer Interaction as women seem to be represented, respected and present in larger numbers. However, Narges also shared with me or rather us her observations around the presence of women in teams. She has found mixed teams to be more productive and conducive for success as women seem to channel certain information better. And in contrast, she has found male-dominated experiences rather intimidating and more challenging for collaboration.

In my interview with Narges, I discovered her courageous yet careful exploration with how to be effective as a minority in White culture. I appreciate her ongoing efforts in terms of groups for women and minorities in computer science as well as her wisdom on how to make a difference on a daily basis: speak up and get involved. She acknowledges the discomfort that women or minorities can experience, yet inspires to steadily try and continue. This is where I’d like to widen the scope of my series to explore more than gender issues and include experiences in design around discriminations. Thank you, Narges!