The 2025 DTR annual letter is out! I open up about how we care for our students, and help them grow in ways that universities often overlook. I also share thoughts on the activity of research, and how we can engage with it in light of its goods. Enjoy!

Really enjoyed visiting @allen_ai today to share how we help students grow as researchers, and as people. Tomorrow at noon, I’ll be at the UW DUB seminar talking about advancing human values and tackling the human problems that computing has yet to solve:

This year’s topics: - celebrating success - a college education - movement - wild geese - take a break - interruption, discord, and drama - exit meetings - beyond production - single representation - HCI studio - why DTR exists. https://t.co/a3Tt6tv2yY Lmk what you think! 🩷

This year’s letter reflects on the 10 year anniversary of DTR & talks about the good in research, 🩷, troubles with goal-oriented thinking, breaking the jump (parkour!), support for junior faculty, perfection, and more. I hope you find something in it that resonates with you.

I share with you the 2024 DTR annual letter. The letter shares my reflections on mentoring and learning, and on our evolving culture and practice. This is a personal letter, from me to learners & educators everywhere. l hope you enjoy reading it!

Amazing Faculty Position here at UC Berkeley! ⚡️Very short application window (16 Sept!!!) Apply now and spread the word – Assistant/Associate/Full Professor - Cluster Hire in Artificial Intelligence, Inequality, and Society https://t.co/bqcnvgzWw1

“Students in DTR learn planning, help seeking, reflection, critical thinking, whole-brain thinking, and collaboration — the stuff that we all need as we go out and face the really complex challenges in the world," says Haoqi Zhang. @DTR_DeltaLab @hqz https://t.co/7ZYheIst7y

Celebrating DTR's 10 year anniversary this week with the DTR exhibition, a special screening of the DTR documentary, and an amazing alumni panel! @DTR_DeltaLab @DeltaLabNU @northwesterncs @segaldesign @NorthwesternEng @TheGarageNU @NorthwesternU @nu_hci

Celebrating DTR's 10 year anniversary this week with the DTR exhibition, a special screening of the DTR documentary, and an amazing alumni panel! @DTR_DeltaLab @DeltaLabNU @northwesterncs @segaldesign @NorthwesternEng @TheGarageNU @NorthwesternU @nu_hci https://t.co/A5MULmV7PZ

CASMI researcher @hqz is sharing his philosophical journey, which has reshaped his way of thinking about human values and engagement. He presented his paper at @acm_chi on Tuesday. READ MORE: https://t.co/JrrNsIYwHU

You can read my paper here: https://t.co/1o5dpFKNXi I hope you find it an engaging, thought-provoking read. Enjoy. /end🧵

We are still left to search for the good in our activities, in the context of the socio-technical configuration in which we find ourselves. This is a foundational challenge in learning to live a good life, and one that, may help us to think a bit more about, in HCI and in CS. 17/

In a way, the paper is a simple reminder that computation, while useful, can't replace certain human ways of being. These days, it seems antiquated to suggest that technology alone cannot advance the human values we hold dearest. But it can't..16/

I also provide many examples to help us think through these important challenges -- in using AI for art-making and ethical reasoning, in helping young researchers to not only produce papers but to see the good in research as a human activity, in learning from the Amish (yup)..15/

In the paper, I discuss how we can better support these human activities in HCI. I also introduce the concept of computational ecosystems, as a way to think about consequential outcomes *and* our intrinsically valuable activities when designing our socio-technical systems....14/

When we look, we can see that encodings of intrinsically valuable human activities as ends to be achieved are everywhere. To the extent that these ends are what we forefront, computers amplify consequentialist ways of thinking & being, and the limitations inherent in them....13/

This is a real problem for HCI. If we are to care for these human activities and the intrinsic value of engaging in them, what are computers able to do in this space, and where might computers distort our understanding of the value of our very human activities? 12/

If we overly focus on what computers can do, we are going to end up solving consequentialist problems, than advancing intrinsically valuable forms of human engagement. We lose sight of a valuable way of leading a human life, one imbued with human goodness & meaning..11/

But just as a consequentialist, production driven mindset cannot be the be-all-and-end-all for advancing intrinsically valuable human activities, neither can computers, which encode consequentialist thinking. This is a fundamental, non-human limitation of computing machines..10/

I trace this consequentialist focus back to computers, which are fundamentally, consequentialist machines. Computers are input-output machines that reliably produce desired outcomes, which is to say they produce desired consequentialist outcomes..9/