Our work in human-centered computing explores and enhances the ways in which people and communities engage with and experience technology.
Our research considers the personal, educational, cultural, and ethical implications of innovation. Drawing upon techniques from human-computer interaction, learning sciences, sensing and more, we aim to maximize the potential benefits of technology while minimizing potential harms to individuals, groups and society.
Groups & Labs
Human-Centered Robotics Lab
In the Human-Centered Robotics lab we aim to develop robotics that are useful and usable for future users of task-oriented robots.
Tsvetshop
Tsvetshop researchers aim to develop practical solutions to natural language processing problems that combine sophisticated learning and modeling methods with insights into human languages and the people who speak them.
Faculty Members
Centers & Initiatives
Change is a cross-campus collaboration that explores the challenges of developing technology in the context of positive social change. It seeks to make connections between researchers, outside organizations, and the public to inspire the development of new capabilities aligned with the interests of those most in need.
Society + Technology is a cross-campus, cross-disciplinary initiative and community at the University of Washington that is dedicated to research, teaching and learning focused on the social, societal and justice dimensions of technology.
Highlights
Allen School News
Sharma (Ph.D., ‘24) won the 2024 award from the Association for Computing Machinery for leveraging AI to make high-quality mental health support more accessible, and Min (Ph.D., ‘24) received an honorable mention for developing a new class of efficient and flexible language models.
Allen School News
Researchers in the Allen School’s Security & Privacy Research Lab studied online ads and found that not only can they be annoying, but they are also inaccessible for screen reader users. Their work earned a Best Paper Award at last year’s Internet Measurement Conference.
University of Washington Magazine
Allen School Ph.D. student Kate Glazko and her collaborators at UW CREATE explore how generative technologies can be both a help and a hindrance for people with disabilities.