Responsive design is about building a website with a grid-based layout, images that resize and media queries, as described by Ethan Marcotte. After Marcotte defined the technique, responsive design frameworks began to emerge that incorporated these principles. Mostly based on CSS and JavaScript, many of these frameworks are open-source, free to download and quickly customizable.

Some of the most popular today are Bootstrap and Foundation, which we’ll focus on in this article.

As responsive design frameworks became popular, a big debate emerged: Why would a professional designer use a responsive design framework?

Internet debates rage on. Many declare that responsive design frameworks are awful, that only people who don’t know HTML and CSS would ever use such a thing. Here were the standard arguments against frameworks:

• A designer could write their own grid system, and they probably should if they know any HTML and CSS.
• Websites based on frameworks load slowly.
• All websites based on frameworks look the same.
• Bloat is common, whether due to the extra div tags, the 5000+ lines of CSS or the large JavaScript files.

While detractors complain vociferously, responsive design frameworks continue to grow in popularity. I suggest that these frameworks have positive aspects, even for the most experienced front-end Web developer, and I’ll outline these below.

The website for Pexcil, a digital creative studio, was built with Foundation.

A Place For Responsive Design Frameworks

One morning, I was listening to Eli White’s keynote presentation at the Northeast PHP Conference. White is a PHP developer, and his talk was a retrospective of the development of the Web and PHP over the last 20 years. One point he made was that, 15 years ago, back-end developers built everything from scratch. Not much was available in the open-source world at the time, and proprietary content management systems (CMS) cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you wanted a survey for your website, for example, you had to write one from scratch.

Now in 2014, back-end developers no longer do this. Why would they, when they can use SurveyMonkey’s API to create something for their client in 10 hours, rather than 100 or 1000 hours? Is SurveyMonkey’s code the most awesome in the world, the most efficient, the most cleverly written and bloat-free? I am not a PHP developer and don’t know the answer to that. However, the API is tested and debugged, it runs well, and it is ready to be incorporated in your next project — and that has tremendous value.

Unless your client wants something very specific and has the money to fund such a project, as White explained, most PHP developers would argue that there is no good reason to write your own survey by hand in 2014.

So, what’s the equivalent technology shortcut for the front end of a website? Unfortunately, we don’t have one.

Currently, we have two choices for creating the front end of a website. The first choice is to download a template (or theme). Commonly used with CMS-based websites, a theme might come with a few color choices and a few variables to be tweaked. On the plus side, most themes are available for free or a very low cost relative to the cost of the overall website. Downloading a theme, changing some colors and dropping in a logo takes little time.

What’s more, a good theme will be updated regularly, and it will come with documentation, making it much more straightforward to modify. On the negative side, a theme might be used by many and not be unique in the slightest, and it might even make the website look like it belongs to a particular CMS.

The second choice is a fully customized solution. A graphic designer would be hired to discuss branding, and they would iterate through three designs and two rounds of revisions, perhaps prototype directly in the browser or convert the designs to HTML and CSS, integrate the design with a CMS or their back end of choice if desired, and deliver the (hopefully) perfect result to the client. On the plus side, each tag would be precisely placed, and the code would be perfectly semantic, with not an ounce of fat or an excess div to be found.

To achieve this, though, the developer must be highly trained and experienced — and whenever a developer of that caliber is involved, the price tag goes up accordingly, putting the project out of financial reach of small clients and adding significantly to the expenditures of large clients. Furthermore, unless additional dollars are spent on documentation (which is unusual in my experience), if the initial developer leaves, then the next developer would have to figure out the code in order to modify it. That’s an additional cost to the client.

Where’s the middle ground between downloading a low-end design, used all over the Internet, and creating something highly customized and expensive? Where is the equivalent of a back-end developer’s API or code library? Can we create some kind of mass customization for the front end?

We need to be able to tap into some prewritten elements, combine them with customized additions, and develop a solution that’s more customized than a canned theme but less customized than a high-end solution. By not starting from scratch, we’ll have saved hours of time in development and saved money for the client.

Am I saying we should ditch customized solutions for frameworks? No, of course not. A fully customized solution has its place in the Web development world, just as canned CMS themes have their place. If your client has the time and money to achieve perfection and a fully customized solution is a sound approach for the project, then why not?

But many clients have very limited time and money, and they might not be able to wait or pay for perfection. Can we get something that’s “pretty good” instead? Perhaps not every div would be perfectly placed, and there might be a few too many of them. Perhaps the code takes a bit longer than necessary to download. Nevertheless, the solution would be documented, in active development and customizable, and it could be built on quickly for much less than a custom website. There is value in that.

Like every other technology at our disposal in the Web development world, a responsive design framework has its own positives and negatives that we need to consider.

The website for Greek restaurant Grk was built with Bootstrap.

Positives And Negatives Of Responsive Design Frameworks

Focusing on Bootstrap 3 and Foundation 5, let’s explore many of the positive and negative aspects of building your next website with one of these frameworks.

Browser Compatibility

Debugging for browsers sometimes take as long as developing the website itself. If you can reduce the time spent on debugging, you could save significant costs for the client (and your own hair).

Responsive design frameworks have already been tested on a specific set of browsers and devices, which reduces the work required to launch a website. (The amount of testing you’d have to do will vary according to how much you’ve customized the framework. If you’ve changed only a few colors, then only minimal testing is required. If you’ve hacked the grid system, then testing would need to be extensive.)

The latest versions of Bootstrap and Foundation support Internet Explorer (IE) 9 and up. There are tricks to making the frameworks work in IE 8, but IE 6 and 7 are not compatible with either. In general, these frameworks also support the latest versions of other common browsers, including Firefox, Safari and Chrome, as well as different sets of mobile browsers.

Unfortunately, if you want to support a browser that hasn’t been tested, then you might discover bugs that need to be fixed in code that you aren’t familiar with.

Customizing Files

Bootstrap and Foundation have standard download packages that contain all of the required files, styles and widgets. Some files are large, and there are several files to download. In general, files come in both human-readable and minified formats.

Just because your framework of choice ships with styles and JavaScript to support dozens of components doesn’t mean you have to download and integrate them all. Bootstrap and Foundation allow you to customize your download package, so you can grab only the CSS and JavaScript that you need to run your website. This reduces bloat and, as a result, reduces downloading times, a common argument against frameworks.

Later, if you want to add a widget or style that you previously excluded, you might need to reconfigure the package. This can be avoided, though. I recommend developing the website first, without customizing the look, to determine exactly which features you need. You can then customize the download package to include code for only those features. Once the framework is in place, you can then customize the look of the website.

Note: When the next minor version of Bootstrap or Foundation is released, you’ll need to redownload the customized package. Take careful notes of what you have and have not downloaded, so that you can repeat the process when updating your files.

CMS Critic, a website that reviews content management systems, was built with Foundation.

Customizing Code

Some level of customization is likely required. You will probably want to change colors. If you’re more experienced, you may wish to hack the grid system.

Just because you’re using a framework doesn’t mean your website has to look like one. You can customize the CSS to give the website its own unique look, either by using LESS (for Bootstrap) or Sass (for Foundation) or simply by writing CSS from scratch.

The styles that come in Bootstrap out of the box are quite extensive, and the assumption is that you won’t be changing them extensively. You can override the CSS in a separate style sheet or by using LESS or Sass files. Unfortunately, little documentation is provided for LESS and Sass files, so you’ll need to figure out much of the code on your own. The abundant styles built into Bootstrap make it a popular choice for inexperienced front-end Web developers. (Note that Bootstrap has released Sass files within the last month. Prior to this, only LESS files were available for it.)

Foundation has fewer styles out of the box. While you can customize it with a separate style sheet, Foundation is more efficiently customized through its extensive Sass files (for which documentation is provided). With less CSS to override, you can build a fully customized look more easily. However, less experienced front-end developers might find Foundation more difficult to work with because of the greater knowledge of CSS and Sass required.

Bootstrap and Foundation can also be customized even before being downloaded, through simple changes to LESS and Sass variables. In Bootstrap, the customization options go on for pages, whereas only a handful of changes may be made to Foundation. But if you are not familiar with LESS or Sass, this is a quick and dirty way to customize the look of the framework.

Likewise, you can leverage the JavaScript provided to customize the functionality. The most recent versions of Bootstrap and Foundation require jQuery for customized widgets to work.

If you use the dedicated screens for Bootstrap and Foundation, then your download package will be customized. When the next minor version of each framework is released, you will need to customize the variables all over again for a new package.

Note that Foundation’s JavaScript includes a lot of well-placed semicolons. Bootstrap contains very few semicolons. This affects some developers’ choice of framework.

Accessibility

Accessibility is becoming increasingly important to developers. Both frameworks offer valid HTML, but let’s consider accessibility beyond valid HTML.

Bootstrap has made some advances with the help of Joomla. Joomla, an open-source CMS, incorporated Bootstrap into version 3. Its developers have a long-standing commitment to accessibility, and they added Bootstrap to make it more accessible. As a result, in Bootstrap 3 you’ll find ARIA codes and screen reader-only styles.

Foundation, unfortunately, has not prioritized accessibility thus far. It does not come with ARIA codes or screen reader-only styles. Zurb has stated, however, that it wants to do more.

Webflow, a drag-and-drop website builder, was built with Bootstrap.

Conclusion

No responsive design framework is perfect. For a tool that performs various jobs, extra code is required to make that tool flex to your needs. Granted, completely custom code would probably be more efficient for a website than a framework.

Some front-end developers tell me that they have their own grid system, CSS and JavaScript components that they maintain for their own websites. Certainly nothing is wrong with this approach. But you have to maintain that code yourself. A popular framework minimizes the need for maintenance and testing.

I’m calling on my fellow front-end Web developers to reconsider the prospect of using a responsive design framework. Think of it as a productivity tool that you can draw on in full or in part. Download just the grid system, or take the whole package with all of the extras. Perhaps use a framework just for prototyping purpose or actually reuse the parts of the framework that you know well in your own project.

A framework is intended to get a website running quickly, with minimum debugging. Customize the heck out of it to look completely different, or change just a few colors and be done. However you use it, you’ll have standardized, documented code that can be easily passed on to another developer for maintenance and tweaking and that looks reasonable and functions well. The code is not perfect of course, but it’s pretty good. It cuts down the time required to create a website, which will make the website cost a bit less, too.

The world certainly has room for fully customized websites. I don’t mean to suggest dropping them in favor of mass customization. However, the next time a client wants a bit more in their design but is stretched for budget, perhaps it’s a good idea to consider a responsive design framework after all. You might find it to be a helpful tool in your arsenal, for quick prototyping, testing or even production code — one that expands your range of products and makes clients happy.

(al, ea)

© Jen Kramer for Smashing Magazine, 2014.

With so many new mobile phones, tablets and other devices coming out every day, designers have to be prepared to make common functions easy to do on these devices. The usual approach to this is responsive design. However, what some of us are still trying to figure out is how to use responsive design for things other than viewing.

Forms are one of the most common elements on the Web, without them the conversation is only going one way. Forms are used for purchasing, contact, and so much more. It’s vital that the forms you produce are equally functional across the full range of devices, from smart phones to desktops. Mastering the art of making these types of functionalities small yet user friendly can be a task.

Today, we’ve found a few responsive web sites that do a great job in keeping their forms both intact and useful not just on desktop, but on mobile too.

Theme Foundry

Emporium Pies 

Samuel Mealing

Awesome NYC

Ola Kvernberg

Symbolset

Built Things

World Meeting Time

Oscar

Moving Things

Nest

Yellow Marshmellow

Kin

Retr.io

Svkariburnu

Kingshill Cars

Stuff & Nonsense

Humaan

Ony 

Cafe Evoke 

How do you prefer to design responsive forms? Are there any other elements harder to make responsive? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Learn to Build a Flat Responsive Website from Scratch – only $37!

Academics at CMU will try to extend Yahoo’s services with mobile apps that act like personal assistants.

Yahoo’s future mobile apps could come with a dash of intelligence that lets them act like personal assistants. The company has made a $10 million grant to Carnegie Mellon University for a project called InMind, which is intended to create and test assistant-style services for mobile devices.

Heard of the bloody protests in Ukraine?

These are the most recent battles in an increasingly hostile confrontation between The West and Russia, as both sides scramble for global influence.

In November, the President of Ukraine decided to pull out of talks with the European Union over an economic agreement, which was seen as a stepping-stone to full EU membership. Instead, Russia approached Ukraine about entering the Russian-led Customs Union– but Russia’s offer had a catch: Ukraine had to scrap it’s EU deal.

The Custom’s Union is Russia’s answer to the EU.  Ukraine’s possible accession to the Russian-control organization has caused mass protests in Ukraine, lasting more than 3 months.

The protests, and the government’s often harsh response, turned the streets of Kiev into what looked like a war zone. Protests leaders disappeared, and would reemerge beaten and in critical condition.

All of this happens as Russia and the EU are intensifying their efforts to build spheres of influence in the world. The battle over members, political influence, and resources is becoming increasingly aggressive, and has unleashed an economic “cold war” that will have repercussions the world over.

We, here at US Democrazy, want to know who you think will win this “war,” and what is in Ukraine’s future?

Happy Birthday, Stimulus!

Republican or Democrat, everyone has an opinion about President Barack Obama. If you are in favor of the current regime, you may view him as a revolutionary leader who has expanded presidential power and authority for the better.

On the other hand, if you are not a fan, you may discard the legitimacy of Obama’s regime with the simple argument made by Skowronek: that every president grabs and expands executive power…And Obama has happily done his share.

Whether you love him or hate him, we’re thinking on this five-year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, ( AKA the Stimulus) it might be a good time to reflect briefly on Obama’s economic stewardship. How will history remember his legacy? 

It is worth remembering the bad hand he inherited (if bad is not an understatement).  That hand included an economy close to shambles, a record high unemployment rate, the devastating remains of the housing market crash and a grumpy population.

So his answer was The Stimulus, a monster $787 billion bill consisting of 40% tax cuts, short-term initiatives as temporary fixes for the rising unemployment rate, and long-term job creation. This expensive legislation passed through Congress at a time when little to nothing seemed negotiable.

The medium term sucess of the program is debatable. Today unemployment is down (but not down enough) from its post-crash highs. But economic growth is stubbornly slow, the auto industry is back… but so are the bad boy banks that got us into this mess. Then there’s the debt incurred…

It’s a mixed bag.

Then again…what would the economy look like today if there had been no stimulus…? ( that discussion alone could last 5 years)

So considering the inconclusive evidence at hand, we’re tempted to hold our rash opinions on the Stimulus and President Obama… let time run its course and revisit the subject again in a few years.

But we welcome you to leave your Happy Birthday thoughts below!

UMBC alumni, professors and students find new spaces and places for innovation.

Photography by Marlayna Demond ’11

* * * *

Much of the journey of creation takes place in the space of the human mind. Yet that journey is not a solitary one. Intellects require companionship. Great ideas spark new approaches – and more new ideas – when they are tested by conversation and forged in collaboration. And those combinations require spaces to encourage and enhance their work.

A research university such as UMBC excels in creating such spaces. Not only do its professors and students create them on (or nearby) the campus, but the university’s alumni carry that spirit of exploration into our community.

We invite you to take a closer looks at these spaces where the next great ideas in numerous disciplines are being developed or taught right now by members of the UMBC community.

BETAMORE

Reminders of the urgency of connecting are everywhere at Betamore – a business incubator occupying nearly 8,000 square feet on the top floor of a four-story building in Federal Hill with a view of South Baltimore that could get anyone’s creative juices flowing.

A screen-printed poster in the front room puts it bluntly: “Stop Tweeting Boring Shit.”

Co-founded by Greg Cangialosi ’96, English in January 2013, Betamore offers entrepreneurs who pay a monthly membership fee the chance to share everything from a beer-stocked fridge or an internet connection to nooks and crannies in which to take refuge and large couches for the occasional power nap.

Startups in fields including healthcare, education, software development and cybersecurity currently share the space. Yet what these entrepreneurs discover is that knowledge is the most important thing shared at Betamore through a regular lineup of guest speakers, classes, happy hours, and old fashioned mentoring from Cangialosi and his fellow co-founders Mike Brenner and Sean Lane.

Part of Betamore’s attraction for its resident companies is that variety and unpredictability. “It’s the mystique of not knowing who’s around you,” quips Cangialosi.

Brenner concurs: “By programming the space and bringing in different minds, there’s bound to be a really interesting outcome.”

After graduating from UMBC, Cangialosi started Blue Sky Factory – a successful email marketing company that he sold in 2011 to pursue Betamore and a number of other projects. (Cangialosi is also the managing director of Baltimore Angels, a group that nurtures and invests in local entrepreneurs.)

The space itself is only one element of the Betamore complex. Its founders also created an “Academy” – which features open, fee-based classes for those who want to learn technology and business skills (such as web development or digital marketing sales) from those already succeeding in business. The Federal Hill site also provides a headquarters for Betamore Works – a matchmaking venture that hooks up Betamore graduates with potential employers.

Betamore’s flexible design reflects the way creative people tend to work. While the site itself is a key part of Betamore, Cangialosi says that the venture’s potential to create new collaborations and innovations in Baltimore are even more important than the space itself.

“We love the space, and we love Federal Hill,” says Cangialosi. “The density of its ‘live, work, play’ environment – and its potential to become a serious tech hub in Baltimore – is what we really love about it.”

– Sarah Truckey

Find out more about Betamore at: http://www.betamore.com/

IMDA STUDIOS

Each year, Imaging and Digital Arts (IMDA) students at UMBC nearing completion of their Master of Fine Arts degrees present their work in an exhibition at the Center for Arts, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC), bringing a wide range of visually stunning and socially conscious multimedia installation, photography, sculpture and design to the campus community. Yet much of the work displayed each year at the CADVC is created and shaped in the program’s off-campus studios in nearby Pigtown.

When the IMDA Studios were founded 13 years ago, the only on-campus spaces available for graduate students to pursue their work were scattered across multiple buildings, So Jon Sturgeon (chair of visual arts in 2001) and Vin Grabill (present chair and the director of the IMDA program at the time) sought an off-campus site to provide unified studio space for graduate students.

They settled on a space in the Raleigh Industrial Center. Stephen Bradley, director of the IMDA program, says that “the purpose of the Raleigh studios was to offer students a unique fabrication space where they could experiment with installation, performance and other hybrid artistic forms that required larger open raw space.”

Experimentation is a key concept behind the 4,800 square foot space, which has an open floor plan that allows for customizable individual studios. Students drape, shift, and even remove the false walls that compose their spaces, or install televisions and projectors and mount shelves and speakers as their projects develop and transform.

Indeed, Bradley sees the space as a laboratory of sorts. “Artists work like chemists in a lot of ways,” he observes. “They’re bringing things together, creating hybrid works, mixing metaphors.”

For Jason Hughes ’15, the studio is where he investigates the relationship between labor, value and self-worth in complex and provocative collages, sculptures and art objects made from millions of dollars in shredded U.S. currency. Taking notice of Baltimore’s many crumbling, vacant buildings, Hughes’ began creating his own bricks made with shredded cash, and plans to rebuild disintegrating walls in nearby homes and yards with these bricks and then photograph them.

For Charlotte Keniston, the IMDA Studios are a staging ground for community focused projects and collaborations. She lives a few blocks away from the space and works directly with Pigtown residents, exploring and challenging the persistence of food deserts in Baltimore neighborhoods. Keniston’s “pop-up groceries” make overstocked, fresh produce that would otherwise go to waste available for Pigtown residents.

Keniston also engaged her community in a collaboration called A Full Plate, which delved into what food means to the project participants “in relation to their families, their communities, their health, power, place and spirituality.” Participants had a meal and then painted on the ceramic plates from which they had eaten.

Bradley observes that the location of the studios in the community has allowed students to question their responsibilities as artists and cultivate relationships. “It’s not a one way street,” he concludes.

– Alicia Dewitt

For more about UMBC’s IMDA program: http://art.umbc.edu/graduate/overview.php

BALTIMORE FOUNDERY

It begins with a spark.

A group of strangers gathers at one end of an old copper mill. The air smells of sawdust and machinery grease. Feet shift nervously as welding instructor Audrey Van de Castle instructs her students to don heavy visors to protect their eyes from the flash.

“It’s brighter than staring at the sun,” she says, demonstrating the fusion of steel to steel with a careful wave of the wand. “Watch you don’t get a sunburn.”

A few safety and procedure points later, the Welding 101 students are ready to practice their new skills. This mix of artists, tinkers – and the just plain curious – is part of a growing “maker” culture sweeping the nation. And since July of last year, the Baltimore Foundery has nurtured those with that particular drive to create.

At the helm is co-founder Corey Fleischer ’05, ’08, mechanical engineering, a senior mechanical engineer at Lockheed Martin who has many of the same tools found here in his own garage workshop. (Fleischer was also the winner of The Big Brain Theory: Pure Genius – an engineering-based reality competition that appeared last summer on the Discovery Channel.)

“This [space] has always been in the back of my mind,” says Fleischer, who opened the not-for-profit space to provide access to industrial grade tools and education with the goal of sparking innovation within the Baltimore community. “We knew Baltimore needed a place like this.”

Since its opening, the Foundery has hosted an increasing number of classes, including the popular Welding 101, aluminum brazing, and even an introduction to microcontrollers. At Halloween, Fleischer and other involved in the project carved pumpkins using power tools, and they recently built their own steel sign, which welcomes all who pass their South Central Avenue doorway.

“You don’t think welding is approachable, but it’s not that hard,” said Fleischer, who learned how to weld in high school specifically so he could build his own go-karts for racing. “And like everything, the only way you’re going to get good is through practice and trial and error.”

One of the first students to arrive on this night is Hayley Evans, an art student who has brought her own visor. Behind a red protective curtain, she waits patiently for her turn to wield the flux welder.

“Think I could try that again?” she asks a fellow student. Moving to a prime spot at the workbench, she carefully pulls a bead of liquid 600-degree steel in a straight line. Although she’s studying environmental design, she’s interested in artistic metal work as well, she explains.

“We’ve had fathers and sons, we’ve had wives and husbands come in together. And artists…lots of artists,” says Fleischer, who notes a nearly equal interest from women and men.

“I thought it would all be tinkers or garage mechanics like me,” he concludes, “but all kinds of people show up. I love that.”

– Jenny O’Grady

Learn more about the Baltimore Foundery at bmorefoundery.com

THE COLLABORATORY

Measurement is the key to everything in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. It’s also the key to demonstrating how these disciplines are tied together. But how can one make that point to a freshman STEM major?

William LaCourse, the dean of UMBC’s College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, has created a new interdisciplinary course for freshmen to illuminate just why measurement matters.

He is excited about the new offering: “This [class] goes right to the heart of what science is all about.”

Yet a course that seeks to explain measurement across disciplines requires a space that is adaptable, flexible and collaborative. Thus, the measurement class will be the first to be taught in UMBC’s newest space: the Collaboratory.

The Collaboratory is a joint venture between UMBC and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). UMBC provided the space and HHMI funded the $1.7 million build out. The space will be shared between the university (which will use it during the academic year) and the institute (which will use it in the summer).

The faculty who are involved in the creation and teaching of the new course are delighted by the possibilities offered by the Collaboratory.

“This space is pretty unique compared to other labs on campus set up to allow for different types of experiments that are not department specific,” says Tara Carpenter, a senior lecturer in chemistry. “The fact that the lab benches can be repositioned allows for a unique group dynamic, which is not something that can be done in other laboratories.”

Sarah Leupen, a senior lecturer in biological sciences, agrees. “You’re not limited by physical space to find the answer to the question you’re asking.”

The Collaboratory is designed so that almost every inch of it can be adapted to some sort of purpose in pedagogy or research. Even the walls.

“The ability to write on the walls is really cool,” observes Anne Spence, a professor of the practice in mechanical engineering.

– Nicole Ruediger

THE CYBER HIVE

Proximity. Potentiality. Coffee.

This morning, you can almost hear the first two qualities over the hiss of the coffeemaker as the employees of Integrata Security watch a presentation by their CEO, Mike Geppi in the CyberHive – a joint project between bwtech@UMBC, the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, Corporate Office Properties Trust (COPT) and Merritt Properties.

The Cyber Hive is a collaborative space with four tenants (including Integrata Security) and six affiliates. Tenants have dedicated office space and access to the common areas, while affiliates have access to the common areas. “It’s very high tech,” says Geppi.

Integrata Security is developing technology for secure wireless networks. The National Security Agency (NSA) was interested in how to make wireless networks secure, and after a survey of commercially available solutions, the agency determined that none was secure enough. So the NSA invented a new technology, which Integrata has licensed and is developing for commercial and government use.

For Geppi, part of the CyberHive’s allure is its location. “Being close to the NSA is fantastic,” he says. “Not only is the location of the CyberHive great but we also have access to the talent on the UMBC campus.”

Ellen Hemmerly, president and executive director of bwtech@UMBC, says that combination was just what she and her team had in mind with the venture, which will further boost the research park’s already burgeoning presence in the cybertechnology field.

“It adds to our cyber program at bwtech@UMBC by providing co-working space and meeting space that will facilitate the growing of our affiliate program, which houses cybersecurity companies that don’t need a dedicated office space,” she says “We also hope it will facilitate partnerships between cyber companies, UMBC faculty and students.”

Geppi says the design of the Cyber Hive makes it a naturally collaborative environment. “We do interact with other companies and that’s a real benefit. Having startups talk with each other. It typically leads to opportunity. We can develop strategic partnerships or find customers. Some of the entrepreneurs here are going through the exact same thing I’m going through and it’s good to be able to compare notes.”

While Geppi meets with his team, Tyler Simon and John Linford meet in a private office. They are both research scientists for Paratools, a software engineering firm. Simon, who is also a research scientist in the computer science and electrical engineering department at UMBC, agrees with Geppi about the Cyber Hive’s possibilities for collaboration.

“People are more likely to collaborate because they just walk by,” Simon observes. “It’s better than just a bunch of closed offices.”

Linford concurs: “It’s the first incubator I’ve been in that has that feature.”

– Nicole Ruediger

For more information about the Cyber Hive: http://www.bwtechumbc.com/pdf/cyberhive.pdf

Professors Amy Hurst and Shaun Kane have created a community that helps open up the world for people with disabilities through assistive technology.

By Kathryn Masterson

Every Monday morning at UMBC’s Prototyping and Design Lab (better known on campus as “The Pad”), Amy Hurst and Shaun Kane convene a meeting of students across disciplines who work in the space. Some of the students come to the lab to build things, but many are exploring how to use technology to make computers and the wider world accessible for people with disabilities.

Hurst and Kane are both assistant professors of human-centered computing in UMBC’s department of information systems. It’s a field that focuses on the user end of technology, combining elements of computer science, design, and behavioral science.

In mainstream human-computer interaction studies, Kane observes, the work often centers on making small improvements in a user’s computer experience, such as making a mouse respond better. In the accessibility research that Kane and Hurst focus on – which investigates how to put technology to work for people whose physical or mental disabilities make even simple tasks difficult – the chance for a breakthrough is higher.

“There is a great potential to make a substantial difference in people’s lives,” Kane says.

The projects that their students bring to Monday meetings are as diverse as the majors of the attendees. An engineering major is building a device to create plastic molds using a wooden box, a metal frame and what looks like a vacuum cleaner. An undergraduate biology major is experimenting with electroplating figures built using the lab’s 3-D printers. And a doctoral student in human centered computing is experimenting with ways to help visually impaired people choose outfits that are both fashionable and appropriate for different situations. Another engineer shows off a decorative lamp he created with “Twinkle”– The Pad’s collective nickname for its laser cutter.

Hurst and Kane help these students and others refine their ideas and provide positive and constructive feedback. Yet the weekly meeting is more than a taking of the pulse of campus undergraduate and graduate research being done. The gathering also reinforces a culture Hurst and Kane have intentionally built at The Pad: an atmosphere of collaboration and teamwork where members of the community are invested and involved in each other’s work.

“We really started to develop a community” in the past year, Hurst says. “You can go to the lab and know people will be there, all the time. Students have ownership of the space.”

Both professors observe that human centered computing is a field where sharing ideas, expertise and energy is the only pathway to success. After less than five years, their own collaborations with students and other faculty are already winning recognition and grants – and drawing those on campus who are interested in using technology to help people into their orbit.

Collaborators at The Pad don’t just revel in the act of creative partnership. Hurst and Kane also celebrate the simple joys of making and building in an atmosphere that allows for play and fun.

Kane insists that assistive technology that stretches beyond aiding in daily tasks can add richness to people’s lives. At times, Kane tells his students: “Let’s try to do something that’s not useful, that’s just for fun.”

USER FRIENDLY

Assistive technology can be something as simple as the white cane used by a blind person to tiny wearable computers such as Google Glass, with which people with physical disabilities can take pictures, search the web and crowdsource opinions on various things. It is a field thathas opened up into new vistas in recent years, and Hurst and Kane and their research are right in the thick of it.

Smartphones, tablets and other handheld technology gadgets are putting greater computing power at the fingertips of the population as a whole. Developments in 3-D printers, which can produce prototypes more quickly and cheaply, are also pushing the possibilities forward.

“The work is really exciting,” Kane says. “There is a lot of potential.”

Both in The PAD and in other research, Hurst and Kane design assistive technology for people with visual impairments, aphasia, and also people with motor-control issues that make it difficult for them to point and click.

One important mantra in the field of accessibility and human computer interaction is: “You are not your user.”

It’s an admonition of sorts for the designers and engineers involved to look beyond themselves and put themselves in the place of (or better yet, collaborate with) the people who will use the technology.

One of the problems of assistive technology is that users commonly abandon it if it does not meet their specific wants or needs. So getting feedback from the users is critical if assistive technology is to be both useful and used.

Hurst believes the best way to get true feedback is to dive in and volunteer with groups that serve the disabled and build relationships that will guide research. As a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, Hurst spent three years working at a cerebral palsy center in Pittsburgh. Her time in the center’s computer lab led her to research software that detects when someone seems to be having a problem operating a computer. (She recently received a grant from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research to continue that work.)

“Go out and find ways to do service,” Hurst says. “I make my students do that.”

One of Hurst and Kane’s Ph.D.students, Patrick Carrington ’16, spent last summer volunteering in a spinal cord clinic in Baltimore to further his research on developing interfaces for power wheelchairs. He worked as a therapy tech, helping people from their wheelchairs to therapy mats and working with physical therapists.

Working alongside colleagues at the center allowed Carrington to develop relationships with people for whom he was designing technology. “I didn’t have to sit and be creepy in the corner,” he says.

At times, the relationships go beyond volunteering into direct collaboration. Working with the National Federation for the Blind in Baltimore, Hurst and Kane developed tactile plates to help display traditionally visual information – graphs of equations, or a picture from the Hubble telescope – as plastic plates that people could touch to understand shapes or curves.

The tactile plates may seem plain when compared to the sleek design of a pair of Google Glasses. But for a visually impaired person, the plates not only offer a chance to better understand something they may not have been able to access before, but are something they can create themselves on a 3-D printer.

In 2012, Kane, Hurst and several students travelled to New York to display these tactile plates, Braille rings and other pieces at Maker Faire – an invention festival that attracts thousands of people. Their work received the festival’s editor’s choice award and a blue ribbon hangs right inside the front door of the Pad.

“AMYANDSHAUN”

Michele Williams ’16 is a doctoral student who works with both professors. She specializes in developing navigation aids for the blind and in helping make fashion more accessible to blind people. She says that the success of The Pad and its collaborative atmosphere are rooted in the deep partnership between Hurst and Kane.

Williams say that students often refer to as a single entity: “You say it all as one: AmyandShaun.”

Hurst grew up in California, making things with her dad in the family garage. She recalls that as an undergraduate studying computer science at Georgia Tech, she was more inspired by what technology could do for people than what the latest trends in software were.

The possibilities to use technology to help people really clicked for her, Hurst says, when she participated in research at a hospital clinic involving patients with Parkinson’s disease. The effort to develop software that would replace a paper test for detecting tremors didn’t go anywhere, but the experience of working with people in need and using technology to assist them stayed with her.

Kane, who grew up in Massachusetts, was born with a physical disability. His limbs are short and he has the use of only one arm and hand. When he was younger, he recalls, the “moody teenager” in him was resistant to doing work involving disability. But after enrolling at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Kane observed a class that was designing toys for an autistic boy. The design challenges of the work, coupled with the altruistic possibilities, appealed to him.

Hurst and Kane’s collaboration started in graduate school, when Hurst, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon, approached Kane, who was studying at the University of Washington, at a conference. She introduced herself and told him they should get to know each other because they had worked with the same people and did similar work. Soon, they were seeing each other at conferences, skipping sessions to take walks and talk.

When it came time to look for jobs (Hurst completed her Ph.D. in 2010; Kane in 2011) neither one of them wanted to teach at a university or department where they were only researchers working in their area of interest. So they both were attracted by UMBC’s information systems department – which boasts one of the few human computer interaction specializations in the country – and by the breadth of knowledge among the faculty at the university.

“Being in a place with a lot of experts makes it really fun,” Hurst says.

MAKING GOOD

There is a sign on the door of Hurst’s office: “Keep Calm and Make.” When she first visited UMBC, she remembers asking: “Where do you make stuff?”

UMBC did not have a specific space dedicated to the rapid prototyping necessary to keeping up with technology, so when Kane came to UMBC a year later, they launched The Pad.

The Pad is a place to collaborate and make. “We let people loose,” Hurst says. And after the Monday meeting, the students in The Pad go directly back to making things. There are the telltale bleeps and bloops of the 3-D printer, where Joshua Dutterer ’14, the lab’s resident prototyper, makes a Statue of Liberty figure that he will try to electroplate at Hurst’s suggestion.

Hurst wants Dutterer to make something that conducts electricity but is also beautiful, and then publish an article about it so he gets recognized for what he’s done. “I don’t think anyone else is doing this,” she says of Dutterer’s work. “It’s a nice opportunity for us to be first on the scene.”

The electroplating work also interests others in The Pad. For Carrington, it may offer a way for a power wheelchair to charge a tablet or another piece of technology on the go.

Work made by students at The Pad is celebrated a few steps inside the door in a “museum” – a bookshelf of toys, trinkets and small pieces of assistive technology built by 3-D printers. Braille rings, can openers and bottle holders for people who have problems gripping sit side by side with UMBC tchotchkes, interlocking puzzles, figurines of an angel, a DNA helix, a hand making the hang-ten sign, a Yoda head and an Iron Man reactor for a Halloween costume.

The smart, quirky ebullience of the museum is a reflection of the sort of students who end up finding a home in The Pad. Hurst and Kane say specific areas of study pursued by undergraduates or graduate students who show interest are less important than the qualities of independence, teamwork, adventure and a passion to build that they bring to The Pad.

“We demand passionate people,” says Hurst. “This environment does not work for everyone.”

It also helps to not take oneself too seriously. Hurst and Kane took the team out for a night of laser tag after a particularly intense deadline had passed.

REPLICATING SUCCESS

Hurst and Kane’s spirit of collaboration is starting to spread across campus.

Each semester, The Pad hosts an intern from The Shriver Center’s SUCCESS program, which helps people with intellectual disabilities acquire post-secondary-school skills. These interns help with coding or other research, giving them job skill experience and making The Pad an even more diverse work space.

The duo’s research into assistive technology – and the energy of its students – has also been a key element in work done at The Erickson School. Judah Ronch, the school’s director, works with Hurst and Kane and their colleagues on projects that use technology to help the aging population. Ronch marvels at the possibilities of the work. “I think it’s really accelerated the rate we can develop solutions for the elderly,” he says.

Collaborating on societal problems with people who come from a multidisciplinary approach has been exciting and rewarding, Ronch says. “These are the kind of hybrid, interdisciplinary individuals our field needs. To them, nothing is not interesting, and nothing can’t be done. It encourages us to think bigger.”

The Pad is not a literal factory. The things made there are prototypes, not products. Yet even in the initial making, the work that Hurst and Kane and their students are doing is a leap into a world where technology can improve more lives of those whose existence is circumscribed by disability. Their intellectual contributions are helping to open up technology and the world beyond for many more people.

“The world is a better place when people can do the things they want to do without barriers,” says Kane.