The Variation Lab @ Harvard SEAS
augmenting human intelligence with variation
Science and Engineering Center
Rooms 2.347 (Student Office) & 2.108 (Faculty Office)
John A. Paulson School of Engineering & Applied Sciences
Harvard University

Vision & Values

What we do
AI is powerful, but it can make objective errors, generate contextually inappropriate outputs, and offer disliked options. We defined and build AI-resilient interfaces that help people use AI while being resilient to AI choices that are not right, or not right for them. This is critical during context- and preference-dominated open-ended tasks, like ideating, searching, sensemaking, and reading or writing text and code at scale. AI-resilient interfaces improve AI safety, usability, and utility by working with, not against, human perception, attention, and cognition. To achieve this, we derive design implications from cognitive science, even when they fly in the face of common usability guidelines.

What success looks like
A vibrant, supportive community of undergraduates, masters, PhD students, Postdoctoral Scholars, and collaborators who are creating tools that augment human sensemaking and human-computer collaboration.

How we’re getting there
  • Frequent feedback from each other
  • Reflecting on our personal and community practices
  • Getting enough sleep so we can bring our best selves to our work
Latest Publications (CHI'24, DIS'24, & ICML'24 Pre-prints)
Recorded Public Talks

HCI + AI

  • Stanford CS Seminar On People, Computers, and Design Jan 20th 2023
    Systems for Supporting Intent Formation and Human-AI Communication [YouTube]
  • Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Public Lecture Oct 13th 2021
    Novel Interfaces to Support Human Intent Formation and Communication to Humans and Computers Alike (for the general public)

HCI + PL

  • ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP) Keynote August 24th 2021
    Building PL-Powered Systems for Humans
  • ACM SIGPLAN conference on Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications: Software for Humanity (SPLASH REBASE) Speaker Nov 20th, 2020
    PL and HCI: Better Together
Additional Selected Publications

HCI + AI

HCI + Program Synthesis

HCI + Software Engineering

HCI + Online Information

HCI + Reading

Additional Working Drafts

About Prof. Glassman

Bio

Elena L. Glassman is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, specializing in human-computer interaction. From 2018-22, she was the Stanley A. Marks & William H. Marks Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and, more recently, she was named as a 2023 Sloan Research Fellow. At MIT, she earned a PhD and MEng in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a BS in Electrical Science and Engineering, supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the NDSEG Graduate Fellowship. Before joining Harvard, she was a postdoctoral scholar in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where she received the Berkeley Institute for Data Science Moore/Sloan Data Science Fellowship.

Curriculum Vitae

Administrative Support

Mark Peterson ([email protected])

Archive of Faculty Application Materials
Current Lab Members
Prof. Elena L. Glassman
Elena Glassman's professional headshot

Assistant Professor of Computer Science, SEAS, specializing in human-computer interaction

Katy Ilonka Gero, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar, who is on the faculty job market this year!
Priyan Vaithilingam
PhD student, Computer Science
Tyler Holloway
PhD student, Computer Science
co-advised by Nada Amin (PL)
Ziwei Gu
PhD student, Computer Science
Chelse Swoopes
PhD student, Computer Science
Recent Alumni
Prof. Ian Arawjo
Postdoctoral Scholar, now Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Montréal in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research (DIRO)
Related Courses
(New!) CS 178: Engineering Usable Interactive Systems
  • Public course website forthcoming
CS 179: Design of Useful and Usable Interactive Systems
Blog posts & short video commentaries
CHI'23 Trip Report [Blog]
Information Scent and Interface Design [YouTube, 2 min]

When we're actively recruiting, instructions will be linked here.