Clarity Sponsoring CHIFOO October Meeting about Awesome Education Apps

Clarity Innovations is sponsoring the October meeting of the Computer-Human Interaction Forum of Oregon (CHIFOO). Karen Mahon will be giving a talk entitled, Finding and Measuring the "Awesome" in Education. She is a Learning Scientist and Educational Psychologist with expertise in instructional design and behavior change strategies. As this topic is near and dear to what we do, we're sponsoring the event and making it free for non-members of CHIFOO to attend. Seating is limited so register in advance to make sure you can attend.

About the Talk

There are hundreds of thousands of apps available in the app store and the numbers are ever increasing. A reasonable percentage of these apps focus on education. But there are few apps that quantify their effectiveness or value for the students who use them or the teachers and parents who purchase them.

How can behavioral science, instructional design, gaming and UX/UI design assist in this effort, not only to build products that are effective and fun, but to define these metrics and educate consumers about how to identify them? What makes an app AWESOME and how can we quantify that? Not only in terms of fun, but in terms of teaching kids meaningful stuff! This talk will explore these questions, using example apps to illustrate the relevant features.

About the Speaker

Karen Mahon (@balefirelabs) is a Learning Scientist and Educational Psychologist whose expertise is in Instructional Design and Behavior Change programs. She holds an M.A. and Ed.D. in Educational Psychology, with a graduate minor in the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, from West Virginia University and a Certificate in Product Management from the University of California at Berkeley. 


Karen has spent the last 15+ years in education technology and instructional software. Following graduate school she was a Research Faculty member at the University of Kansas, before moving to the private sector. For almost 10 years she wrote grants, funded by the National Institutes of Health, to support the design and development of educational software for the most difficult-to-teach kids, those with severe developmental disabilities. Following that, she spearheaded the global digital content strategy for a manufacturer of classroom technology hardware products, Mimio Interactive Teaching Technologies.

About CHIFOO

Founded in 1991, CHIFOO (pronounced ‘ky - FOO’), the Computer-Human Interaction Forum of Oregon, is the local chapter of ACM SIGCHI, the ACM’s Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction, and hosts lectures, workshops and networking events in the areas of User Experience, Usability and Interaction Design. Membership in CHIFOO is open to anyone who shares an interest in people and their interaction with technology.