Norman Makoto Su


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Contact

Pronouns: he/him

Room #3259
UCSC Silicon Valley Campus
3175 Bowers Ave
Santa Clara, CA 95054 USA
normsu at ucsc.edu

LinkedIn
mastodon: @normsu@hci.social
twitter: @normsu
google scholar profile

About

I am an associate professor of Computational Media and the Vice Chair for the Human Computer Interaction MS program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I am also an affiliated faculty member in the Institute of Software Research at the University of California, Irvine.

I direct the Authentic User Experience Lab (AUX Lab) where we integrate empirical and humanistic methods in HCI to study and design with subcultures. By amplifying and predicting societal concerns and innovations, my research on subcultures envisions designs for members of marginalized and mainstream cultures. With my collaborators, I’ve studied a wide range of “users,” including corporate tech workers, roboticists, hardcore video gamers, hunters, small farmers, minimalists, Shia photographers, and Irish traditional musicians.

My academic interests lie in human–computer interaction (HCI), computer–supported cooperative work (CSCW), the humanities, ubiquitous computing, organizational/management science, and science & technology studies (STS).

I am serving as a paper chair for the 28th ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW 2025), the premier venue for research in the design and use of technologies that affect groups, organizations, communities, and networks.

Selected publications

(See all publications)

Samuel Goree, David Crandall, and Norman Makoto Su. (2022). “It Was Really All About Books:” Speech-like Techno-Masculinity in the Rhetoric of Dot-Com Era Web Design Books. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 30(2):18. [Blog post] [Tweet]

Norman Makoto Su and David J. Crandall. (2021). The Affective Growth of Computer Vision. Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR’21). [Preprint] [Poster] [Video]

Norman Makoto Su, Amanda Lazar, and Lilly Irani. (2021). Critical Affects: Tech Work Emotions Amidst the Techlash. Proceedings of the ACM: Human Computer Interaction (PACM HCI), 5, CSCW, Article 179.

EunJeong Cheon, Shenshen Han, and Norman Makoto Su. (2021). Jarvis in Motion: A Research Artifact for Circulating Lifestyle Values in Public. Proceedings of the ACM: Human Computer Interaction (PACM HCI), 5, CSCW, Article 105.

Norman Makoto Su. (2020). Threats of the Rural: Writing and Designing with Affect. In Scott McCrickard, Michael Jones, and Timothy Stelter (Eds.), HCI Outdoors: Theory, Design, Methods and Applications (pp. 51-79). Berlin: Springer.

Stephen Tsung-Han Sher and Norman Makoto Su. (2019). Speedrunning for Charity: How Donations Gather Around a Live Streamed Couch. Proceedings of the ACM: Human Computer Interaction (PACM HCI), 3, CSCW, (November 2019). Austin, TX. New York: ACM. [Medium Article]

Rosemary Steup, Arvind Santhanam, Marisa Logan, Lynn Dombrowski, and Norman Makoto Su. (2018). Growing Tiny Publics: Small Farmers’ Social Movement Strategies. Proceedings of the ACM: Human Computer Interaction (PACM HCI). Presented at the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, Jersey City, NJ.

Majdah Alshehri and Norman Makoto Su. (2018). The Beauty of Ugliness: Preserving while Communicating Online with Shared Graphic Photos. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 27(3-6), 355-388. Berlin: Springer. Presented at the European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW’18), Nancy, France.

EunJeong Cheon and Norman Makoto Su. (2018). Futuristic Autobiographies: Weaving Participant Narratives to Elicit Values around Robots. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI’18), Chicago, Illinois, 388-397. New York: ACM.

Norman Makoto Su and Erik Stolterman. (2016). A Design Approach for Authenticity and Technology. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS’16), Brisbane, Australia, 643-655. New York: ACM.

Norman Makoto Su and Bryan Duggan. (2014). TuneTracker: Tensions in the Surveillance of Traditional Music. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS’14), Vancouver, BC, Canada, 845-854. New York: ACM. (Honorable Mention)

Norman Makoto Su. (2010). Street Fighter IV: Braggadocio Off and On-Line. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’10), Savannah, Georgia, USA, 361-370. New York: ACM. (Best Paper Nominee)

Travel

10/2/2018
University of Michigan, MISC Talk

1/23/2019
UC San Diego, Design@Large

2/1/2019
Indiana University Bloomington, Informatics Colloquium

2/6/2019
University of Washington, DUB Seminar

2/15/2019
Indiana University Bloomington, IU Food Institute

3/15/2019
UC Irvine, Informatics Seminar Series

6/26/2019-6/29/2019
San Diego, ACM Designing Interactive Systems 2019 conference

8/13/2019
Midwest Deer and Turkey Study Group Meeting, Nashville, IN

2020-2021
No travel


News

Most current news at my lab page.

12/2018
Honored to have received the NSF CAREER award for “Integrating a Data-Driven Approach with Technologies for Sharing Rural Knowledge and Values”! I’m excited to push forward an agenda to design with rural subcultures in America.