Research Interests
I am interested in developing methods for design of sociotechnical systems. I understand this activity as guided evolution in sociotechnical ecologies. In particular, I have three areas of interest:
- Developing methods of structuring the rich detail present in many ethnographic research studies so that it is useful for design activities.
- Exploring how design techniques used in HCI and CSCW, such as participatory design, patchwork prototyping, scenario-based design, and various methods of rapid prototyping and evaluation can be used to guide evolution in the broader context of sociotechnical ecologies.
- Exploring how theoretical concepts developed in Social Informatics and Social Studies of Technology can be used to inform and improve designed interventions in sociotechnical ecologies.
Education
Research Experience
Research Group Participation
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
- Eclectic Design Research Group (EDRG) (was the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Group) – Active Member: 2004 - 2014
- The Electronic Publishing Research Group (EPRG) – Active Member: 2005 - 2007; Casual Member: 2007 - 2008
- Ecoinformatics/Landinformatics Initiative – Volunteer: 2007 - 2008
- Metadata Roundtable – Casual Member: 2004 - 2009
- Language Evolution and Distributed Information Systems (LEADS) Research Group – Casual Member: 2006 - 2008
- Inquiry Research Group (is now the Community Inquiry Research Group) – Active Member of the iLabs Project: 2004 - 2005
Research Work Experience
- Performed research on rapid design and design evaluation methods, including various forms of rapid prototyping, paper prototyping, scenarios, personas, and some agile methods.
- Researched ways of obtaining some of the benefits of Participatory Design with more rapid methods, especially regarding user participation in making design decisions and creating usable prototypes that users could integrate into their daily work activities.
- Identified and described patchwork prototyping, a method of participatory rapid prototyping common in use but not described in the research literature.
- Studied barriers to technology adoption, especially collaboration, collaboratory, and cyberinfrastructure software with a special emphasis on interaction and interface problems.
- Studied how social relationships, institutional culture, and familiarity with technology interacted with system & interface design.
- Studied design education, and participated in the exploration of rapid/agile research methods.
- Maintained Eclectic Design Research Group (EDRG) website.
- Organized and led EDRG meetings.
- Researched and helped pursue grants and other funding opportunities, including NSF, Mellon, Kauffman Foundation, etc.
- Helped run a Wildcard Session at the iConference 2008
- Helped create alumni survey.
- Developed survey questions.
- Set up online survey software.
- Processed Survey Data & Wrote Report.
- Participated in developing iLabs, an experimental web-based collaboration-support support system, by gathering usability data and design requirements.
- Studied the adoption of the technology by particular user communities, with a particular focus on barriers to adoption and how they can be overcome.
- Conducted brainstorming sessions with the main developer regarding information architecture and interface design of the system.
- Helped to construct a research framework to investigate New Orleans schools post-Katrina using a Social Informatics perspective.
- Created the first version of the Center for CHASS website (http://www.chass.uiuc.edu/), including both content and design.
- Processed data collected in a semi-structured survey.
- Organized events such as lectures, workshops, and mini-conferences.
- Successfully managed and completed an independent research project that investigated the relationship between behavior and memory formation in rodents by monitoring the activity of multiple hippocampal place cells using adjustable microdrive arrays during spatial navigation tasks
- Personally responsible for in depth literature research (library, database and on-line), experimental design, apparatus construction and assembly, animal training and care, assistance with surgery, data collection and data processing using advanced mathematical techniques isolating cells by clustering data spike points across six dimensions and performing statistical analysis on the results.
- Professional presentation (written and oral) of analysis in group meetings involving multiple labs to professors, post-doctoral associates, graduate student researchers, administrators and managers
- Experimental preparation consisted of constructing conical microdrive arrays of 25 to 35 tetrodes (bundles of four microelectrodes), surgically mounting the arrays on the animal subjects (rats), lowering the electrodes into the hippocampus, animal behavioral training and care, and data collection utilizing a specialized array of amplifiers and computers.
- Collaborated in research of neural learning funded by a 1.2 million-dollar Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) research grant.
- Used knowledge of C, HTML, MATLAB, postscript, and UNIX scripting commands to write, proofread and optimize programs and scripts.
- Aided in maintenance of local area network comprised of both Unix and Windows machines.
- Collaborated in research of the behavioral and pharmacological effects of Cocaine, Dexfenfluramine ("phen-fen"), and Melatonin, especially regarding activity levels, weight, levels of various neurotransmitters (Serotonin, Dopamine) in the brain, and levels of various intracellular neural messengers (cyclic AMP, cyclic GMP).
- Extensive qualitative, quantitative and statistical analysis of complex behavioral data.
- Designed and constructed equipment to aid in laboratory investigations using the MIT BCS machine shop.
- Collected behavioral data, pharmacological data using radio-chemical assays, and contributed to the application of new experimental methods.
- Responsible for care and handling of over 60 animal subjects (rats) at a time.
- Assisted in research using a 3+ Tesla toroid with low density plasma to simulate atmospheric plasma.
- Constructed probes and machined probe components out of aluminum & ceramic for immersion in simulated atmospheric plasma.
Other Research-Oriented Activities
- Participated in the Inaugural Research Institute for the Science of Socio-Technical Systems (2008) as a "camper", a.k.a. student/pre-tenure faculty participant. Created and maintained the CSST website in 2008 and 2009.
Teaching Experience
Instructor Positions
- Courses part of year-long professional development activity for librarians (public, school & university) aimed at teaching design and technology skills. Focused on student projects. Solely responsible for developing and teaching all materials.
- Introduction to User Experience Design, Rapid Iterative Methods, Rapid Prototyping, User Testing, Personas, Scenario-Based Design
- Hands on workshop: students developed personas for their project, and then ran a quick user test
- Hands-on workshop introduction to Paper Prototyping, completed at least 2 interface iterations
- Workshop introduction to community outreach for librarians to build support for library activities.
Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
- Co-Instructor of Record: With other co-instructor, responsible for all aspects of teaching the course, including developing course materials/syllabus, teaching/lecturing, and grading.
- Course Description: Introduces students to a range of rapid prototyping techniques and methods to analyze needs, opportunities and design spaces. Students will work in teams to develop ideas for novel computational devices or applications to meet identified needs. Covers the interlinked entrepreneurial skills of identifying an unmet need, exploiting technological opportunities, exploring a design space to refine an idea, and communicating a design vision through demonstrations with prototypes and proofs of concept. This enables developers to show how their envisaged working interactive technology will be used productively in a particular real-life context. Communicating the vision of computational devices is a challenge because dynamic use in context is hard for people other than the device's developers to imagine. The ability to produce convincing, clear, powerful demonstrations even at the early stages of a project is a highly valuable entrepreneurial skill, and also highly applicable within an organization.
- Instructor of Record: Solely responsible for all aspects of teaching the course, including developing course materials/syllabus, teaching/lecturing, and grading.
- Course Description: This course provides an introduction to the technologies behind the Web. Topics covered include: hypertext, hypermedia, the history of the Web, the role of Web standards and their impact on the development of Web resources. The course introduces principles of Web design and usability. Students will gain an understanding how the Web works and how to design, construct, evaluate, and maintain Web-based materials.
- Teaching Assistant: Led weekly discussion section, led one full-class lecture, fully responsible for grading and providing personalized feedback to students. Teaching styles used included lecturing, group work, and fostering discussion.
- Course Description: This course introduces students to the field of Social Informatics. Social Informatics analyzes interactions among people and information/communication technologies (ICTs). This includes attention to a range of social, political and economic issues from the individual to societal levels. The class also explores the effects of different social and technical contexts on the creation and use of information/communication technologies. Issues covered in this class include: basic concepts of social systems, ICTs, and their interactions; uses of mobile information technology devices (such as cell phones, smart phones, and tablets); online interaction and virtual community; information technology and work; and laws and policies related to information technologies. This class serves as one of the three required core courses for the UIUC Informatics Minor.
- Teaching Assistant: Assisted with developing the syllabus, teaching/lecturing, grading, and personalized feedback. The course was an online distance education course, thus helped students with technical support and supplemented lecture with backchannel communications. Engaged students in forum discussions.
- Course Description: Covers information organization and access in museums, exploring the relationship between information technology and modern museum environments. Students learn about classification systems for museums, computer systems for information storage and retrieval, universal access to shared electronic data, copyright in the digital world, virtual museums, interactive exhibits, and information management in museums, through lectures, computer-based activities, and interactive discussions. The final project involves design of an electronic portfolio of virtual museum resources. Students are encouraged to approach class topics from their individual backgrounds in the humanities, sciences, or social sciences. There will be additional assignments required of graduate students.
Other Teaching Experience
- Instructed clients of various backgrounds, including home-schooled high school, undergrad, and grad level students.
- Subjects taught include: math of various levels including calculus; written and verbal English—including pronunciation, slang, improving a client’s accent, grammar, reading comprehension, literature, writing skills, essay writing and vocabulary; American history; American culture; and GED, SAT, GRE, GMAT and Citizenship test preparation. Instructed clients in both learning skills and test-taking skills.
- Provided introductory lessons in Windows, MS Office, the internet and web-browsing, and simple customization and maintenance of personal machines to novice computer users.
- Provided consultation on business school applications and essays for top MBA programs.
- Instructed classes of 20-35 students in Verbal, Math, Analytic, and test-taking skills for the SAT & GRE.
- Used an interactive format and structured the classes to cover the maximum amount of material while keeping the class focused on the areas where the students felt they needed the most work.
- Approached lessons by keeping in mind the perspective of the students so as not to overlook details important to the understanding of the material.
- Included emphasis on test-taking skills and strategies, and on familiarizing students with the format of the test.
- Developed strong presentation, organizational and interpersonal skills while maintaining classroom discipline.
Other Work & Volunteer Experience
- Serviced 46 Locals in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, & Southern Illinois ranging from 3 to 250 people in bargaining unit.
- Turned around 4 locals that had one leader and got high-functioning leadership teams in place and active.
- Increased membership in Right to Work states in several locals from 10% to 40%+ in less than 1 year.
- Bargained Contracts, Handled Grievances, Local Organizing, Leadership Recruitment and Training, etc.
- Bargaining victories included: 3 year contract with $1.00/$0.50/$0.50 hourly raises & plant-wide raise should minimum wage increase above starting wage; a yearly contract that got the first pay increase in over 5 years.
- Contract Bargaining included getting member input through meetings & surveys, writing contract language, serving as lead negotiatior, running ratification votes.
- Filed and pursued Grievances on behalf of locals, filed Board Charges, pursued arbitrations.
- Organized locals, trained stewards, recruited and trained local leadership, fought Decerts.
- The Graduate Employees' Organization (GEO) Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT)/American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Local 6300, AFL-CIO is the union for graduate employees at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. The Bargaining Unit (BU) has ~2,700 people. Furthermore, any graduate student can become a voting member even if they are not part of the bargaining unit, thus total membership is approximately 2,700.
- Planned and coordinated an organizing drive that increased membership from 44% to 54%.
- Co-chaired the Coordinating Committee (CC), the GEO's executive body.
- Worked with the Treasurer and other Co-President to restructure the $750,000 annual budget to match actual GEO expenditures, to simplify the accounting process, and to eliminate lines of spending that were no longer needed.
- Direct Supervisor of GEO Staff (2 full-time permanent organizers, 1 part-time administrative assistant, plus 3 temporary organizers during Fall 2009).
- Conducted office visits with members and staff.
- Conducted and coordinated systematic turnout efforts for rallies, important General Membership Meetings, and other events. This included phonebanking, individual personalized emails, hard commits, and office visits.
- Member of Coordinating Committee; developed long-term strategy.
- Trained new officers & new organizing staff; taught office visits, systematic turnout, department meetings, and other organizing activities.
- Lobbied Illinois State Senators and Representatives in Springfield on behalf of the GEO and the IFT.
- Despite a recession in 2009, successfully negotiated contract after a two day strike in November that gained approximately $1.5 million/year in wages and benefits and secured tuition waivers for the Bargaining Unit.
- Negotiated a successful contract in 2012 that maintained tuition waiver protections, despite a 3 year concerted effort by the university to eliminate them.
- Surveyed membership about contract issues, developed the bargaining platform that was approved by a membership vote, developed contract language for our contract proposal, developed counter-proposals, did research necessary to write precise contract language and to make effective arguments both in the bargaining room and in the press.
- Coordinated a strike in November 2009 with over 1000 people on our picket lines.
- Planned strike logistics; served as a runner & coordinated the picket lines during the 2009 strike.
- Planned strike logistics and organized members to strike in 2012; strike was averted.
- Hired 3 temporary organizers and 1 permanent organizer in 2009. Hired 1 permanent organizer in 2011.
- Developed text for job advertisement; reviewed resumes; developed interview questions; conducted interviews both on the phone and in person; checked references; participated in the hiring decision; notified candidates of acceptance or rejection decision in person, over the phone, and via email (as appropriate).
- Conducted staff bargaining in Summer 2010 & 2011.
- Reviewed and edited posters, fliers, and press releases.
- Helped with migration of website from Moveable Type to Wordpress; performed requirements analysis for new site.
- Updated database scripts for processing member information; brainstormed update to database structure.
- Conducted training on wikis, blogs, and mailing list software with members.
- Setup, maintained, and migrated email lists.
- The UGA is a coalition of undergraduate activists from many different UIUC Registered Student Organizations (RSOs) and graduate students from the GEO focused on building solidarity for on-campus activism including union support, tuition freeze advocacy, & undocumented immigrant support.
- Helped plan & organize UGA activities including rallies, town hall meetings, awareness-raising activities, tabling & flyering.
- Developed long-term organizing strategies.
- Provided guidance, instruction and training to undergraduate members of the UGA based on the organizing knowledge developed from service with the GEO.
- Participated in phonebanking, attended member organization rallies, attended planning meetings, marshalled for events.
- Volunteering included: Fight for $15 events, Ferguson October, Medicaid phonebanking, Home Healthcare Workers rally, Metrolink Drivers rally, etc.
- Participated in monthly planning meetings, helped organize around issues, promoted GEO participation in JwJ events.
- Ground Team lead for ongoing voter registration drive.
- Canvasser during campaign
- Helped create, maintain, and organize materials in the GSLIS community of IDEALS. IDEALS is the UIUC Institutional Repository.
- Publicized the community within GSLIS, recruited and facilitated faculty, staff, and student submissions.
- Walked faculty through the submissions process, answered questions and concerns that were raised.
- Collected feedback from faculty and staff about IDEALS in general and about the submissions process in particular, including process, interface, and presentational issues; provided it to the IDEALS administrators.
- Contacted publishers to establish copyright permissions for placing their publications in IDEALS
- Collected information about, prepared, and organized materials being sent to a mass digitization effort.
- Gathered publication information from faculty, compiled it, and researched copyright policies of publishers.
- Helped organize the Association of Internet Researchers 6.0 Conference. Duties included assembling the list of reviewer, contacting reviewers, monitoring the submissions process, distributing abstracts to reviewers, organizing the sessions, etc
- Helped with organizing submissions and running the review process for a special issue of the Journal for Computer-Mediated Communication
- Trained new employees, explaining: the LAN setup & login; the email system; the phone system; the internet and web browsing; use of MS Office programs such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook; and how to use the company’s LAN effectively and according to company policy.
- Acted as Help Desk answering people’s questions and providing instructions for more effective use of the IT systems while providing company-wide technical support and troubleshooting on both hardware and software.
- Trained new employees in warehouse work including order pulling/packing/labeling, forklift driving, etc.
- Supervised shipping and customer service departments when managers were absent.
- Setup, customized, instructed employees in use of Great Plains Dynamics (now Microsoft Dynamics) POS software package.
- Gathered complete inventory data, entered information into a flat file, setup system for import of data into Great Plains Dynamics.
- Wrote PHP scripts to process customer and product data, including the inventory flat file into wholesale price list, retail price list, price lists for holidays, etc.
- Reorganized and restructured presentation of items on website, in catalog and in pricelists to increase usability.
- Provided hardware/software Technical Support and maintained multiplatform TCP/IP network of Windows and Linux machines, on a Windows 2000 server, including managing connectivity issues between buildings, naming conventions, installing new software, configuring clients, and setting up schedule tasks.
- Maintained website and upgraded software to new version of the on-line store.
- Answered incoming phone calls and either handled complaints or redirected calls to the appropriate department.
- Trained new employees on proper phone procedure and etiquette.
Publications & Presentations
Selected Peer-Reviewed Publications
Schmidt, Ingbert (2013). Re-Inventing the Wheel: The Re-Creation of Documents in a Bumble-Bee Organization. iConference 2013. [notes paper]
Twidale, Michael B.; Schmidt, Ingbert; Ginger, Jeff; Organisciak, Peter; Lueg, Christopher (2013). Design Jams in iSchools: approaches, challenges and examples. iConference 2013. [alternative event]
Twidale, Michael B.; Cunningham, Sally Jo; Howison, James; Williams, Kate; Organisciak, Peter; Ginger, Jeff; Smith, Brittany; Schmidt, Ingbert (2013). Tech Learning Potluck. iConference 2013. [alternative event]
Reynolds, Rebecca; Allen, Warren; Erickson, Ingrid; Ho, Shuyuan Mary; Howison, James; Schmidt, Ingbert (2013). Sociotechnical Systems Research: Advancing Clear Definitions, Conceptual Boundaries, Shared Understandings, and Promising and Fruitful Research Problem Domains. iConference 2013. [workshop]
Schmidt, Ingbert R. (2013). Document & Knowledge Reincarnation in a Bumblebee Organization. ALISE Annual Conference 2013. [poster/abstract]
Floyd, Ingbert R.; Dousa, Thomas M.; Twidale, Michael B. (2009). From the Social to the Individual and Back: The Cognitive Materialist Interpretation of Boundary Objects and Its Implications for Knowledge Organization. Special Interest Group: Classification Research pre-conference workshop at The American Society for Information Science & Technology Annual Meeting 2009. [poster/abstract]
Floyd, Ingbert R. (2009). Multiple Interpretations: Implications of FRBR as a Boundary Object. The American Society for Information Science & Technology Annual Meeting 2009. [poster/short paper]
Floyd, Ingbert R.; Gurzick, David; Haythornthwaite, Caroline; Brock, Andre (2009). Engaging Multidisciplinarity in Sociotechnical Internet Research: A hands-on workshop. Internet Research 10.0 - Internet: Critical. [workshop (co-organizer)]
Goggins, Sean P.; Floyd, Ingbert R.; Grudin, Jonathan; Sawyer, Steve; Erickson, Ingrid; Dabbish, Laura; Reddy, Madhu; Ribes, David (2009). The Science of Socio-Technical Systems in iSchools. iConference 2009. [workshop (co-organizer)]
- Workshop wiki: http://sociotech.net/wiki/index.php?title=IConference_2009
Floyd, Ingbert R.; Jones, M. Cameron; Twidale, Michael B. (2008). Resolving Incommensurable Debates: A Preliminary Identification of Persona Kinds, Attributes, and Characteristics. Artifact, 2(1), 12-26. [journal article]
Floyd, Ingbert R.; Twidale, Michael B. (2008). Learning Design from Emergent Co-Design: Observed Practices and Future Directions. Presented at Designed for Co-designers workshop at the Participatory Design Conference 2008 (PDC 2008). [workshop position paper]
Twidale, Michael B.; Floyd, Ingbert R. (2008). Infrastructures From the Bottom-Up and the Top-Down: Can They Meet in the Middle? Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2008 (PDC 2008). [short paper]
Jones, M. Cameron; Floyd, Ingbert R.; Twidale, Michael B. (2008). Teaching Design with Personas. Proceedings of the Human Computer Interaction in Education 2008 (HCIEd 2008) Conference, Rome, Italy. [conference paper]
Jones, M. Cameron; Floyd, Ingbert Robert; Twidale, Michael B.; Adamczyk, Piotr D. (2008). Mapping the Design Space of Design Education in iSchools. iConference 2008, Los Angeles, CA, USA. [wildcard session (co-organizer)]
- Electronic Infrastructure to support the wildcard session: http://design.lis.uiuc.edu/ed/
Floyd, Ingbert R.; Renear, Allen (2007). What Exactly is an Item in the Digital World? The American Society for Information Science & Technology Annual Meeting 2007, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. [short paper/poster]
Floyd, Ingbert R.; Jones, M. Cameron; Rathi, Dinesh; Twidale, Michael B. (2007). Web Mash-ups and Patchwork Prototyping: User-driven technological innovation with Web 2.0 and Open Source Software. HICSS 2007: 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2007. [conference paper]
Jones, M. Cameron; Floyd, Ingbert R.; Twidale, Michael B. (2007). Patchwork Prototyping with Open-Source Software. In The Handbook of Research on Open Source Software, St. Amant, K. and Still, B. (Eds), Idea Group, Inc., PA. [book chapter]
Unpublished Presentations
Schmidt, Ingbert R. (2014). Knowing What Knowledge to Manage: What Knowledge is Worth Documenting, What Documents are Worth Keeping, and When is Documentation Too Much? GSLIS Research Showcase, School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. [slides]
Schmidt, Ingbert R. (2012). Re-Inventing the Wheel: The Re-Creation of Documents in a Bumble-Bee Organization. PhD Seminar Guest Presentation, School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. [slides]
Schmidt, Ingbert R. (2012). Re-Inventing the Wheel: The Re-Creation of Documents in a Bumble-Bee Organization. GSLIS in a Flash, School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. [slides]
Floyd, Ingbert R. (2005). The Use of Feedback and Research in a Successful Distance Education Program. Association of Internet Researchers Conference 6.0: Generations, 2005.
Professional Service
Professional Organizations
- American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) – Member: 2007 - 2009
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) – Member: 2007 - 2009
- Design Research Society – Member: 2008 - 2009
- Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) – Member: 2008 - 2009
- Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) – Member: 2012-present
- American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) – Member: 2008 - 2009
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
- Doctoral Studies Committee Student Representative – May 2005 - August 2007
- PhD Student Orientation Committee – May 2005 - October 2009
- Lecture Committee – 2004 - 2006
Reviewing
- CSCW; PDC; ASIS&T Annual Meeting; Interacting with Computers (IwC); alt.chi; HICSS; AoIR; iConference; Sociotech Interaction Design Workshop (2008).
Other Professional Service
- Participant in The Consortium for the Science of Sociotechnical Systems (CSST). Attended the CSST 2008 Summer Camp. Co-organized the iConference 2009 workshop & the Association of Internet Researchers 2009 workshop. Primary webmaster & maintainer of the CSST website & wiki at http://sociotech.net/.
- Co-creator with Cameron Jones of the unofficial GSLIS Wiki. Performed administration tasks and created a significant amount of content.
Skills
Computer, Technical: Windows 7/XP/2000/98/95/Servers, Mac OSX, UNIX, Linux; SSH; HTML & CSS; PHP, C, MATLAB, Javascript, Lisp, Scheme; Statview; TCP/IP Networking.
Computer, Internet: Can administer, install & customize Open Source Software applications (esp. PHP-based applications) like Drupal, Wordpress, Mediawiki, Moodle, Moveable Type; used Dreamhost, Nearlyfreespeech.net.
Computer, Office: MS Office (Word/Excel/PowerPoint); Google Docs; Google Calendar; Corel WordPerfect; LaTeX; Lotus Notes; QuickBooks; data entry; type 75 wpm.
Management: Direct Supervisor; Employee Training; Hiring/Firing; Developing and Codifying Office Procedure: write-up & enforcement; Scheduling; Leadership; Communication Skills.
Teaching: Individual & Classroom Teaching Experience, ability to adjust teaching to level of students, extensive use of feedback to measure effect of teaching on students.
Librarian: Internet & Database searching, information organization & classification including taxonomy creation.
Languages: Conversant in German.