Marshini Chetty is a postdoctoral researcher in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, where she recently graduated with her Ph.D. in Human-Centered Computing. She received her Bachelors of Science, Bachelor of Science(Hons) and Masters of Science degrees in Computer Science from the University of Cape Town in 2001, 2002, and 2005 respectively. Marshini was a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in 2005, a Google Anita Borg Scholarship in 2007, a GVU Foley Scholar award in 2009, and an Intel PhD fellowship in 2010. During her PhD, she undertook internships at IBM Research (Hawthorne), Microsoft Research in Redmond, Microsoft Research in Cambridge (UK), and Microsoft Research in Cape Town (South Africa). Her research, which fits broadly into the areas of human computer interaction and ubiquitous computing, has focused on home networking, sustainability, and international development.

SWS   Info

MPI Audience

English

60 Minutes

Kaiserslautern

We are increasingly dependent on networked infrastructure, such as the Internet, for professional and personal reasons. Yet, users still struggle with managing such complex systems because they lack visibility into how these networks work. In addition, the network controls exposed to them are not necessarily centered on the tasks they most want to undertake. Given that users need reliable Internet access to take advantage of the latest online applications, particularly in their homes, how can we better help them manage these networked systems? My talk answers this question by describing how to provide users with increased visibility and control over networked infrastructure to make these systems more manageable. Specifically, I examine the case study of home networking. First, I present empirical evidence of the visibility issues that home networks present to users and the types of control that users desire for their networked infrastructure, performance, and policies. Next, I discuss how these issues can be addressed by describing the design and evaluation of two prototypes that visualize aspects of the home network—Kermit and uCap. Finally, I illustrate how encouraging results with my prototypes show that making networks more visible, and exposing controls to match user tasks, can help people better manage complex networks. I conclude the talk with future research directions for human-centered networking and related domains.

Maria-LouISE Maggio

9604

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Saarbrücken

E1 5

Wartburg, 5th floor

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