Kristen Shinohara
I am an Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the Rochester Institute of Technology where I co-direct the CAIR Lab. My research focuses on the design of technologies usable by people with disabilities, making design practices accessible, supporting students with disabilities in graduate school, and teaching accessibility in computing. I have NSF funded projects investigating accessibility issues and experiences for graduate students with disabilities, and facilitating teaching modules to infuse accessibility into computing courses. I received my PhD from the University of Washington Information School in 2017, where I was advised by Jacob O. Wobbrock and co-advised by Wanda Pratt.
I developed the Design for Social Accessibility (DSA) perspective, which includes consideration for social situations experienced by people with disabilities. The DSA perspective frames tenets for design and inlcudes a set of method cards to help designers engage in a design process sensitive to disabled user needs and preferences. Special thanks to Stephen Cady and Nayeri Jacobo for their help in preparing these tools for designers to download and use for free: Download DSA Method Cards Here
I am a member of the faculty team of the AWARE-AI NSF Research Traineeship Program. Graduate students from associated RIT Ph.D. and MS programs are invited to review information on how to apply and benefits for Trainees at our NSF Research Traineeship website. Women, Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing, and African American, Latino/a American, or Native American students are especially encouraged to apply.
Design
Accessible Design
Work in these projects focus on the accessibility of different aspects of the design thinking process (including approaches such as user-centered design), toward learning what can be done to improve accessibility of design tools and techniques.
Teach
Teaching Accessibility in Computing
We investigate how to infuse accessibility into computing courses, focusing on two key considerations: increasing student awareness and learning of accessibility topics and skills, and ensuring teaching materials and content are readily usable by instructors.
Supported by NSF #2121549
Empower
Empower Disabled Graduate Students in STEM
We investigate how graduate students with disabilities manage inaccessibility in research. This work focuses on graduate students in STEM fields pursuing their doctoral degrees.
Supported by NSF #1926209; RIT Grant Writer's Bootcamp
Recent Papers
Emily Kuang, Ehsan Jahangirzadeh Soure, Mingming Fan, Jian Zhao, and Kristen Shinohara. 2023. Collaboration with Conversational AI Assistants for UX Evaluation: Questions and How to Ask them (Voice vs. Text). In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 116, 1–15.
Franklin Mingzhe Li, Lotus Zhang, Maryam Bandukda, Abigale Stangl, Kristen Shinohara, Leah Findlater, and Patrick Carrington. 2023. Understanding Visual Arts Experiences of Blind People. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 60, 1–21.
[Honorable Mention, top 5%] Laleh Nourian, Kristen Shinohara, and Garreth W. Tigwell. 2023. Understanding Discussions Around Culture Within Courses Covering Topics on Accessibility and Disability at U.S. Universities. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 221, 1–14.
Kristen Shinohara, Murtaza Tamjeed, Michael McQuaid, and Dymen A. Barkins. 2022. Usability, Accessibility and Social Entanglements in Advanced Tool Use by Vision Impaired Graduate Students. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 6, CSCW2, Article 551 (November 2022), 21 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3555609
Jaisie Sin, Cosmin Munteanu, Michael Nixon, Velian Pandeliev, Garreth W. Tigwell, Kristen Shinohara, Anthony Tang, and Steve Szigeti. 2022. Uncovering inclusivity gaps in design pedagogy through the digital design marginalization framework. Frontiers in Computer Science. 4:822090.
[Honorable Mention, top 5%] Matthew Seita, Sooyeon Lee, Sarah Andrew, Kristen Shinohara, and Matt Huenerfauth. 2022. Remotely Co-Designing Features for Communication Applications using Automatic Captioning with Deaf and Hearing Pairs. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 460, 1–13.
Franklin Mingzhe Li, Franchesca Spektor, Meng Xia, Mina Huh, Peter Cederberg, Yuqi Gong, Kristen Shinohara, and Patrick Carrington. 2022. “It Feels Like Taking a Gamble”: Exploring Perceptions, Practices, and Challenges of Using Makeup and Cosmetics for People with Visual Impairments. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 266, 1–15.