Alan Borning's home page

I am a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, an adjunct professor in the Information School, and a member of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Urban Design and Planning. My current reseach is primarily in human-computer interaction and designing for human values; in the past I've also worked in object-oriented languages and constraint-based languages and systems. I've been at UW since 1980. Sabbatical visits include Xerox EuroPARC in Cambridge, England (1989-1990); Monash University and University of Melbourne in Australia (1996-1997); University of Hamburg in Germany (2003); Ashesi University College in Accra, Ghana (2004); and Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany (2010-2011).

Research

• How to better support public engagement and participation in interacting with government (work with Travis Kriplean, Deen Freelon, Sam Kaufman, Jonathan Morgan, Lance Bennett, and others, including external partners). Please see the Engage Project homepage for more information and links. Our first major project has been the Living Voters Guide.
• Tools to make it easier to use public transit, particularly by providing real-time arrival information, and assessing the effects -- see www.onebusaway.org (work with Brian Ferris and Kari Watkins).
• Integrated simulations of urban land use, transportation, and environmental impacts -- see www.urbansim.org (joint work with Paul Waddell, now at UC Berkeley, Hana Ševčíková, and many others).
• Accounting for human values in mobile personal privacy and security technologies, e.g. for implantable medical devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators, and cell phones for safety and independence, in particular for supporting blind and deaf blind people in using public transit (work with Shiri Azenkot, Tammy Denning, Sanjana Prasain, Batya Friedman, Yoshi Kohno, Richard Ladner, and others). Also see the Value Sensitive Design Lab website.
• And an earlier project returns: the Cassowary solver that we developed around 1997 is now used as the layout engine in the new Macintosh Lion OS.

Recent Publications

• Alan Borning and Michael Muller, “Next Steps for Value Sensitive Design,” to appear, CHI 2012 (Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) [pdf].
• Travis Kriplean, Michael Toomim, Jonathan Morgan, Alan Borning, and Andrew J. Ko, “Is This What You Meant? Promoting Listening on the Web with Reflect,” to appear, CHI 2012 (Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) [pdf].
• Travis Kriplean, Jonathan Morgan, Deen Freelon, Alan Borning, and Lance Bennett, “Supporting Reflective Public Thought with ConsiderIt,” CSCW 2012 (2012 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work) [pdf].
• Shiri Azenkot, Sanjana Prasain, Alan Borning, Emily Fortuna, Richard E. Ladner, and Jacob O. Wobbrock, “Enhancing Independence and Safety for Blind and Deaf-Blind Public Transit Riders,” CHI 2011 (Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) [pdf].
• Alexei Czeskis, Ivayla Dermendjieva, Hussein Yapit, Alan Borning, Batya Friedman, Brian Gill, and Tadayoshi Kohno, “Parenting from the Pocket: Value Tensions and Technical Directions for Secure and Private Parent-Teen Mobile Safety,” Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security, Redmond, Washington, July 2010 [pdf]. Winner of the Multidisciplinary Privacy Award for the 2011 Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection Conference, Brussels, Belgium.
• Travis Kriplean, Alan Borning, Paul Waddell, Christoffer Klang, and James Fogarty, “Supporting Agile Modeling through Experimentation in an Integrated Urban Simulation Framework,” Proceedings of the 11th International Digital Government Research Conference, Puebla, Mexico, May 2010, pages 112-121 [pdf].
• Brian Ferris, Kari Watkins, and Alan Borning, “OneBusAway: Results from Providing Real-Time Arrival Information for Public Transit,” CHI 2010 (Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) [pdf]. Best Paper Nominee.
• Tamara Denning, Alan Borning, Batya Friedman, Brian T. Gill, Tadayoshi Kohno, and William H. Maisel, “Patients, Pacemakers, and Implantable Defibrillators: Human Values and Security for Wireless Implantable Medical Devices,” CHI 2010 (Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) [pdf]. Honorable Mention for the Multidisciplinary Privacy Award for the 2011 Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection Conference, Brussels, Belgium.
• Brian Ferris, Kari Watkins, and Alan Borning, “OneBusAway: Location-Aware Tools for Improving Public Transit Usability,” IEEE Pervasive Computing, Vol. 9 No. 1, Jan-March 2010, pages 13--19 [pdf].
• Brian Ferris, Kari Watkins, and Alan Borning, “OneBusAway: A Transit Traveler Information System,” Proceedings of the First Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing, Applications, and Services, San Diego, October 2009 [pdf].
• Alan Borning, Paul Waddell, and Ruth Förster, “UrbanSim: Using Simulation to Inform Public Deliberation and Decision-Making,” in Hsinchun Chen et al., Digital Government: E-Government Research, Case Studies, and Implementation, Springer-Verlag, 2008 [pdf].
• Alan Borning, Hana Ševčíková, and Paul Waddell, “A Domain-Specific Language for Urban Simulation Variables,” Proceedings of the 9th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, Montréal, Canada, May 2008 [pdf].
• Batya Friedman, Alan Borning, Janet Davis, Brian Gill, Peter Kahn, Travis Kriplean, and Peyina Lin, “Laying the Foundations for Public Participation and Value Advocacy: Interaction Design for a Large Scale Urban Simulation,” Proceedings of the 9th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, Montréal, Canada, May 2008 [pdf].

Teaching

Here are web pages for courses I've taught recently:

• CSE 142: Computer Programming I (Spring 2009)
• CSE 341: Programming Languages (Winter 2010)
• CSE 599p: Value Sensitive Design (Autumn 2009)
• CSE 481e: UrbanSim Software Project Capstone (Winter 2008)
• CSEP 510: Human-Computer Interaction (Professional Masters Program) (Winter 2006)

Academic Degrees and Such

Contact Information

Address:

Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Washington
Box 352350
Seattle, WA 98195-2350
USA

For express mail add the building name and main office room number:
Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering, Room CSE 101

Office: Allen Center 644
Phone: 206-543-6678
Fax: 206-543-2969
Email: borning ... (you can probably guess the rest of the email address, unless you're a spambot, but if you need a hint it's at cs.washington.edu)