Patrick C. Shih

Hello! I have just recently obtained my Ph.D. degree from the Department of Informatics at UC Irvine (Fall 2011). I was co-advised by Gary Olson and David Redmiles. They, together with Gina Venolia, formed my dissertation committee. Gillian Hayes and Peter Krapp were the remaining members of my candidacy committee. They provided me with inspiration and fresh perspectives. More importantly, they helped keep me sane and grounded throughout the Ph.D. process.

I currently sit in the Hana Haven along with Julia Haines and Jingwen Zhang. I also share laboratory space at the Cradl Lab with my wonderful colleagues: Benjamin Koehne, Bryan Semaan, Erik Trainer, and Oliver Wang.

My current collaborators are Matthew Bietz, Judy Olson, and Steve Voida.

Currently, my research focuses on idea generation practices in the software industry.

My CV.

Site last modified: November 30, 2011

Education

I recently obtained a Ph.D. in Information and Computer Science from UC Irvine in 2011. Previously, I received a M.S. in Information Networking from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005 and a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from UCLA in 2003.

I attended Monta Vista High School (class of 2000) and Hyde Middle School (formerly Hyde Junior High School) in Cupertino, CA. Before that, I spent the second semester of 7th grade at Mildred E. Strang Middle School in Yorktown Heights, NY, and the majority of my childhood in Taipei, Taiwan.

Academic Activities

Conferences

• Paper Reviewer at CHI 2012, CSCW 2012, and CHI 2011
• Student Volunteers Co-chair at CSCW 2011
• Student Volunteer at CSCW 2010 (Team Leader), GROUP 2009, and CSCW 2008

Student Organizations

• UCI Informatics Graduate Student Association (IGSA), Board Committee and Social Co-chair (2010-11), Member (since 2007)
• UCI Taiwanese Graduate Student Association (TGSA), Member (2007-09)
• UCI Republic of China Student Association (ROCSA), Member (2006)
• UCI Badminton Club, Member (since 2006)
• CMU ECE Graduate Organization (EGO), Member (2003-05)
• Golden Key International Honor Society (GKIHS), Member (since 2003)
• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Member (since 2002)
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Micromouse Team Officer (2001-02), Member (since 2002)
• Tau Beta Pi National Engineering Honor Society (TBP), Resume Book Committee Chair (2001-02), Member (since 2001)
• Eta Kappa Nu National Electrical and Computer Engineering Honor Society (HKN), Project Committee (2001-02), Member (since 2001)
• Engineering Society of UCLA (ESUC), Junior Class Representative (2002-03), Member (2000-03)
• UCLA Taiwanese American Union (TAU), Member (2000-03)
• UCLA Badminton Club, Internal Vice President (2000-03)

Robotics

I have been fascinated by Lego and robots ever since I was a kid. From time to time, I engage myself in building interesting robots. I have participated in the following robotic competitions:

• CMRobobits: AIBO Obstacle Avoidance Challenge (2004-05)
• IEEE Micromouse Robotic Competition (2001-02)
• US FIRST Robotic Competition (1998-99)

Work

While I was attending UC Irvine, I did an internship at Microsoft Research in Summer 2010, Almaden Research Center in Summer 2008, and an Extreme Blue internship in Summer 2007.

In between UC Irvine and CMU, I worked at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA in 2006, WebSphere Business Integration in Austin, TX in 2005. Before I graduated from CMU, I did an Extreme Blue internship at IBM's Almaden Research Center in Spring 2005, and a developer internship at IBM's Printing Systems (acquired by Ricoh Company, Ltd. in 2007) in Boulder, CO in Summer 2004.

I contributed to the following projects while I was at IBM: Koala/CoScripter (2008), Maricopa/Sasquatch/FileNet (2007), eMerridy/Rel8/Enki (2006), WebSphere Integration Developer (2005), WebSphere Process Server (2005), J9 JVM (2005), Performance Inspector (2005), InfoPrint Manager (2004), and InfoPrint Server (2004).

In college, I interned at MSC.Software's High Performance Computing (HPC) division in 2002 (now a division of Hewlett-Packard Company), where I worked on MSC.Nastran and MSC.Linux (now HP Linux), and managed supercomputer built on BladeCenter clusters. I also worked part-time at UCLA's SEASnet Computing Facility as a system administrator throughout my UCLA career.

Patent

• Kuiper, K. G., Levine, F. E., Pineda, E. M., & Shih, P. C. Call Stack Sampling for a Multi-Processor System. U.S. Patent 20100017583, Jan. 21, 2010. (PDF)

Open-Source

• Performance Inspector (code)

Research Interests

Human Computer Interaction, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Ubiquitous Computing, Creativity, Visualization

Research Areas

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is an idea generation technique that occurs in early-stage design activities. Brainstorming and its variations have become synonymous with idea generation, and are used virtually across all phases of software development. Our research aims to better understand how brainstorming is practiced and how we can better support it in a variety of different settings.

• Shih, P. C., Venolia, G., & Olson, G. M. (2011). Brainstorming Under Constraints: Why Software Developers Brainstorm in Groups. Proceedings of the British Computer Society Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (BCS-HCI '11).
  Full Paper: (PDF)
• Shih, P. C. & Olson, G. M. (2009). Using Visualization to Support Idea Generation in Context. ACM Creativity and Cognition Conference Workshop: Creativity and Cognition in Engineering Design (C&C '09).
  Position Paper: (PDF)
• Shih, P. C., Nguyen, D. H., Hirano, S. H., Redmiles, D. F., & Hayes, G. R. (2009). GroupMind: Supporting Brainstorming through a Collaborative Mind-mapping Tool. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP '09).
  Full Paper: (PDF)

Distributed Collaboration

Globally distributed teams have become an essential part of how companies conduct businesses in the modern day era. "Out of sight, out of mind" is a problem that all remote team members face under this setting. Past literature has suggested best practices on how to mitigate the issues that are inherent in collaboration across distance. Our research focuses on understanding how individual remote workers modify their work patterns in order to maintain visibility while not being able to be physically present with their core teams.

• Koehne B.*, Shih, P. C.*, & Olson J. S. (2012). Remote and Alone: Coping with Being the Remote Member on the Team. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW '12).
  *These authors contributed equally to this work and are listed in alphabetical order.
  Full Paper: (forthcoming)

Personal Information Management

Research on Personal Information Management (PIM) systems focuses primarily on employees at the workplace settings. We investigate people's personal information management practices for their work, school, and personal activities. In this context, people are situated in more dynamic and fast changing settings, face varying levels of workload, and exhibit less defined roles than large organizational settings.

• In Progress.

Healthcare

Personal health records (PHR) have enormous potential to improve both documentation of health information and patient care. The adoption of these systems, however, has been relatively slow. We investigate the effects of both usability concerns and socio-cultural influences on PHR adoption and use.

• Liu, L. S., Shih, P. C., & Hayes, G. R. (2011). Barriers to the Adoption and Use of Personal Health Record Systems. Proceedings of the 2011 iConference.
  Full Paper: (PDF)

Video Games

The latest in the most popular head-to-head fighting video series, Super Street Fighter IV by Capcom, now features spectating functionality. Coupled with audio chat, players can both watch and participate in matches with anyone in the world. This new hybrid spectator sport blurred boundaries between actor and audience are blurred. We examinate the computer mediated communication effects on gameplay and how they afford virtual spectating.

• Su, N. M. & Shih, P. C. (2011). Virtual Spectating: Hearing Beyond the Video Arcade. Proceedings of the British Computer Society Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (BCS-HCI '11).
  Full Paper: (PDF)

Thesis

• Shih, P. C. (2011). Brainstorming Beyond the Laboratory: Idea Generation Practices in the Software industry. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of California, Irvine.
  Full Paper: (PDF)
• Shih, P. C. (2005). Fault-Tolerance for Distributed Publish-Subscribe Systems. Masters Thesis. Carnegie Mellon University.

Research Affiliations

I'm affiliated with the following Research groups.

Behaviorial Science
Hana Lab

Software Engineering
Collaboration Research in Action, Design, and Learning Lab (CRADL)

Teaching

UC Irvine

• Guest Lecturer for Human Computer Interaction taught by Yang Wang, (Summer 2009)
• Project Mentor for Ubicomp Projects taught by Gillian Hayes, (Winter 2008)
• Teaching Assistant for Introduction to Software Engineering taught by Ban Al-Ani, (Winter 2008)
  • Overall Rating (1-9): Mean = 8.50, Median = 9, Std Dev = 0.65
• Teaching Assistant for Communications Skills for Computer Scientists taught by Venita De Souza, (Fall 2007)
  • Overall Rating (1-9): Mean = 8.09, Median = 8, Std Dev = 1

CMU

• Teaching Assistant for Embedded Real-Time Systems taught by Priya Narasimhan and Rajeev Gandhi, (Fall 2004)
  • Overall Rating (1-9): Mean = 8.22, Median = 8, Std Dev = 0.70
  • Nominated for the Best Teaching Assistant Award (2004-05)
• Teaching Assistant for Internet Services taught by David O'Hallaron, (Spring 2004)
  • Overall Rating (1-9): Mean = 8.77, Median = 9, Std Dev = 0.26

UCLA

I tutored lower division undergraduate level math, science, and engineering courses for Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu throughout my college years.

MVHS

In high school, I completed the Teacher Cadet program (Fall 1999) under the supervision of I-Heng McComb. This is where I was inspired to be better at teaching as I had the opportunity to learn about child development theories and participate in fieldworks at the Kindergarten, grade school, middle school, and high school level. I also taught lectures on math, biology, and physiology to middle school and high school students throughout the program.

Aside from the more technical aspects of education, I've also participated in another program called "Peer Counseling" (Spring 1999) that involved being mentally supportive of my student peers. Although the program taught us mentoring and counseling techniques, I wasn't mature enough to take advantage of the program fully at the time being, and it wasn't until much later on that I began to become more aware of the psychological impacts on learning and teaching. The ability to learn about theories, conduct fieldworks, and apply those knowledgement in practice set the foundation of my educational perspectives early on.

Contact

patshih [at] ics [dot] uci [dot] edu

Mail

Office

Department of Informatics
Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences
University of California, Irvine