PDF (3 pages) - Patrick Baudisch

TEACHING STATEMENT
Patrick Baudisch
While I have been working in research labs since my PhD, I have gained experience with teaching and student
advising by volunteering to co-teach several classes in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at
the University of Washington (UW). I have begun co-advising doctoral students and in 2005 I was appointed as
an Affiliate Assistant Professor in that department.
My interest in teaching comes from my own curiosity and desire to explore the world. As a teacher, my goal is
to elicit a similar enthusiasm toward learning in my students and to provide them with the skill set they need to
become successful researchers and practitioners. Thankfully, I have had a diverse education experience, attending
universities in Germany and France, gathering teaching experience in Germany and in the United States,
and learning from industrial research. Throughout my career, I have tried to see the strengths of each system
and to blend them into a unique and effective teaching style. In this teaching statement, I am focusing mainly
on the UW graduate level human-computer interaction class (CSE510) that I co-taught with Alan Borning in
spring 2005, and how it informed the design of the professional masters program that Alan and I were coteaching
in winter 2006. I hope that the specific details of these experiences will illustrate my overall teaching
philosophy and methodology: the process of teaching collaboration and communication skills, integrating research
and industrial practice, and using the experience from one course to improve the next.
In addition to my teaching at UW, I have also been able to gather teaching experience by leading seminars and
projects at Darmstadt University, by advising a PhD student and 9 Masters students, by mentoring summer
interns at PARC and MSR, and by assisting in an undergrad HCI class at UW with James Landay. Please see
my curriculum vitae or http://patrickbaudisch.com/teaching for a complete list of my teaching experiences.
TEACHING ASPIRING RESEARCHERS
In the spring 2006 HCI class, Alan and I jointly selected the research papers to be read, gave the students guidance
in the reading process, and each of us gave several lecturers and advised part of the project groups. My
lectures were on interaction and visualization, as well as on research methods and writing. It was an enjoyable
and rewarding experience and I learned at least as much from the students as they learned from me. Based on
these experiences, I took on a broader range of responsibilities for the professional master’s program in winter
2006. We also made several changes to the class format that I will describe in the following.
Collaboration skills: Research projects in human-computer interaction almost always involve more than one
contributor. A key component of an HCI class therefore is to give students the opportunity to practice their
collaboration skills—if possible across disciplines. A class project that students undertake in groups of four is
therefore a key component of our class.
In the winter 2006 class, collaboration was more challenging because the students had daytime jobs and saw
each other less often than full-time students do. To help use the limited face-to-face time in class more effectively,
we switched all class material produced by us or the students to a shared web space—a Wiki. Students
used the Wiki to brainstorm research questions, jointly collect related work for all projects in the pool, and form
project teams of four. Students read each other’s Wiki contributions and provided feedback and suggestions to
each other.
The Wiki was very well received. We received more than twice the number of project proposals we had in the
preceding class. Also shared annotations took off well; some project proposals received contributions from six
different students and these contributions were picked up by the project groups. I particularly enjoyed seeing
how students have started to take ownership of the Wiki. Students reorganized project pages, made printed
reading material more accessible by uploading scans, added link sections, etc. One group of students studied

and experimentally evaluated Wiki usage in the classroom as their class project which helped us maximize our
learning experience and to pinpoint the benefits and pitfalls of wikis.
Communication skills: Another
component I consider
important is the ability to present
work in written or oral
form. In our class, students
wrote 500-1000 word essays
for each of the four homework
assignments, as well as one
longer project report. Since
each student wrote about a
different topic we could once
more leverage the shared work
space; it allowed students to
see how their fellow students
Student Meredith Skeels presents her project in the class Advanced Topics in Human-
Computer Interaction (University of Washington, Spring’05, used with permission)
approached the problem. To assure that student could practice their oral presentation skills, we included an
additional midterm project presentation.
When I advised students about their projects, my primary goal was to inspire them to come up with good research
questions. In my experience, the large amount of technical training students receive throughout college
can lead them to focus too much on the question of what can be done. While implementation is a highly relevant
skill, becoming a successful researcher requires going beyond what has been done. Brainstorming skills
and ‘deferred judgment’ in particular are keys for coming up with ideas that go beyond the constraints technology
is facing today. In addition to mentoring students in class, I started mentoring UW Ph.D. student Susumu
Harada in his work on the vocal joystick project, including meetings on a biweekly schedule. He was a member
of the spring 2005 HCI class.
BRINGING EXPERIENCE FROM INDUSTRY INTO THE CLASSROOM
Teaching human-computer interaction not only involves teaching research skills, but also teaching the skills
required to be a practitioner. My work at Microsoft Research has allowed me to work with a wide range of
practitioners, such as usability engineers. Taking these experiences into account, we made changes to some of
the homework assignments we used in class. The first assignment, for example, was inspired by Don Norman’s
“Design of Everyday Things”. The initial version of this assignment, as we had used it in the preceding class
required students to find a hard-to-use object and describe what was broken about it. Although the lab had gone
well and students had come up with good examples, I felt that we were missing part of the objective. What
seems to separate successful usability workers in industry from less successful ones is the ability to understand
the tradeoffs involved in the given design and the ability to “pick their battles”. We revised the lab exercise by
adding the following questions: What might have been the constraints and tradeoffs that motivated the decisions
behind this design (e.g., cost cutting, graphics design, or marketing)? Can this usability problem be fixed
or would the attempt make things worse? Which people would one need to get involved to fix the problem?
Etc. Taking these tradeoffs into account will help students who choose to work in industry maximize their impact
and minimize friction with other team members.
Another noteworthy update is that we modified the structure of the class project, such that we required students
to perform at least two design-prototype-evaluation iteration cycles. To make sure students had the skills required
for the process, we provided them with an introduction to collecting user requirements, brainstorming
designs, paper prototyping, and user testing. I also taught a class on prototyping in Macromedia Flash.
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
In-classroom teaching can go a long way, but there are limits. Internships are a wonderful opportunity for students
to learn about the realities in the “real world”. They allow students to try out their skills and acquire the
experiences they need to succeed at whatever career path they choose. In the past, I have been able to see the
industry side of this, while mentoring summer interns at PARC and MSR. In academia, I plan to leverage my
industry connections to place students in internships at top-tier companies and research labs.

While I am in industry, I use my two hats as a Research Scientist at Microsoft Research and as an Affiliate
Assistant Professor at UW to get students interested in both worlds. Last year, I brought the “dub” group (special
interest group in HCI at UW, 35 students and faculty) to MSR. Students saw demos and presentations of
about 10 different projects and had the chance to exchange thoughts with MSR researchers.
My latest teaching experience was a class on the Design of Input Devices in the Industrial Design Department
at the University of Washington (with Assistant Prof. Ahn Sang-gyeun). For their final presentations, I brought
the students over to Microsoft Research for a 90min design critique with MSR researchers and members of
product teams. I continue to work with these students to help them participate in design competitions and research
publications.
Students Zac Krane, Scott Tsukamaki, and Shayna Esteban present first drafts of their input device concepts in the class
ART 316 Design for Industry (University of Washington, Fall’06, used with permission)
In summary, as I continue to develop my teaching philosophy and methodology I have found key principles
to include: teaching collaboration and communication skills, teaching students to ask interesting research questions,
teaching students to see problems from an academic and an industrial point of view, and raising comprehension
by involving students hands-on. My next teaching plans include designing and teaching a more specialized
visualization and interaction class in the UW CS department.
CLASSES I WOULD ENJOY TEACHING
I would like to help develop and maintain a well-rounded curriculum in the field of human computer interaction,
from introductory classes to advanced seminars. I think this curriculum should emphasize the multidisciplinary
nature of the field and should offer tracks well suited for both future practitioners and research-minded
students. In particular, I would enjoy teaching the following courses:
• Introduction to Human Computer Interaction (undergrad): This introductory class would cover the
characteristics of human and computer systems, major models for user interaction, task analysis and evaluation
techniques, as well as rapid prototyping techniques and tools. It would include a small project so that
students can get their first hands-on experience in the field.
• Introduction to interaction design (undergrad): As a follow-up to the introductory course, this class
would focus on techniques. At the core of the course would be a significant design project, which would
cover the basic steps of interface design.
• Visualization: from perception to understanding (grad): Starting from the basic principles of human
perception, this research seminar would explore how to develop more effective visualization techniques.
• Designing for small screens and mobile devices (grad): Visualization techniques for small screens;
mobile applications, sensors, location, and ubiquitous computing, pen input, social mobile applications, interaction
with mobile devices.
Besides these core classes, I am comfortable teaching classes in Information Retrieval/Information Ubicomp,
Filtering, Databases, Graphics, as well as undergraduate classes on general CS topics, such as programming
languages and data structures.