skip to main content
Caltech

IST Lunch Bunch

Tuesday, May 24, 2016
12:00pm to 1:00pm
Add to Cal
Annenberg 105
Data-Driven Design
Ranjitha Kumar, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,

The Web has transformed the nature of creative work.  For the first time, millions of makers have a direct outlet for sharing their creations with the world.  As a result, the Web has not only become the largest repository of design knowledge in human history, but it continues to grow exponentially as content begets new content.  The key to this unprecedented growth --- and what Hofstadter called the very "crux" of creativity --- is remixing: designers leveraging, adapting, and repurposing existing work.

In this talk, I'll discuss how data-driven tools can empower designers to explore and draw from data in new ways.  My research aggregates large repositories of design information from the Web to model and extract latent concepts shared across designs.  These semantic handles power tools that scaffold the design process: from searching for inspiration, to prototyping alternatives, to evaluating existing artifacts.

For more information, please contact Diane Goodfellow by phone at 626-395-6842 or by email at [email protected].