Design examples can powerfully illustrate concepts and alternatives. Online media offer an example corpus at unprecedented scale and diversity. How can we leverage these resources? My group's research tools harvest and synthesize examples to empower more people to design interactive systems, program, learn new skills, and produce more creative work. In tandem, we study the psychological and social ingredients of design excellence — focusing on the role of alternatives and prototyping. Demonstrating the power of examples beyond design, we create mobile interfaces for expertise sharing and goal achievement. This research shapes my project-based design teaching, which emphasizes creating diverse alternatives and self-assessment.

bio · Scott is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. He co-directs the Human-Computer Interaction Group and holds the Bredt Faculty Scholar development chair. Organizations around the world use his lab's open-source design tools and curricula; several books and popular press articles have covered his research and teaching. He has been awarded the Katayanagi Emerging Leadership Prize, Sloan Fellowship, NSF CAREER award, Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship, and several best paper awards at the premier HCI conferences (CHI and UIST). His former graduate students are leading professors, researchers, founders, social entrepeneurs, and engineers. He has a dual BA in Art-Semiotics and Computer Science from Brown University, Graphic Design work at RISD, and an MS and PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley. He serves on the editorial board of TOCHI and HCI, was the program co-chair of UIST 2011, and co-chaired the systems area of CHI 2010. He is teaching a free, online HCI class.