I am an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department of Columbia University. My research is in human-computer interaction (HCI), crowdsourcing, and computational design.

I build tools enhance people's problem solving ability. The three main approaches are to:

• organize massive amounts of information and make sense of it
• design better solutions through brainstorming, synthesis, and iteration
• communicate complex ideas more easily with visual symbols and illustrative metaphors

Key Insights of Computational Design

Design is a highly creative domain with many excellent solutions for a single design challenge. It seems highly unlikely that there is no simple formula for good design.

However, centuries of thinkers and practitioners have come up with structures they use to describe their process, either abstractly or anecdotally. We can borrow structures and define them more rigorously.

The central model of design according to the the philosophies of design thinking is the notion of flare and focus.

• The designer consider many aspects of the problem environment before defining the problem.
• The designer should ideate many ideas before embarking on pursuing a solution.

We borrow the flare and focus model and apply it to both visual blends and humor, using “brainstorming tools” to expand the input into many different ideas, and using "synthesis tools” to combine the pieces we need together.

Constructing visual metaphors for creative ads

HumorTools: Writing news satire like The Onion.