📺 Recording of June Reading Group + Details for July Session (w/ Ian Arawjo)
Hi everyone,
Thank you again for joining us for the June session of the Dynamic Abstractions Reading Group and for engaging in the discussion with Andy Matuschak on Simulations and Understanding!
📼 Recording:
For those who couldn’t attend, you can now watch the session here:
We’re excited to share the details for our next reading group in July!🎉
🧠 Topic: The Creation, Evolution, and Formalization of New Notational Systems
🎙 Speaker: Ian Arawjo
🗓 Date: Friday, July 25, 2025
🕛 Time: 12 pm EST / 9 am PST
📍 Zoom Link: TBD (will be shared closer to the date)
About the Session
We will discuss the topic of the "Creation, Evolution, and Formalization of New Notations"—why and how are new notational systems made? How do they evolve? How do they become “formalized” over time (come to be seen as “formal”... what does being "formal" mean)? And finally, how could a better, systematic understanding of notation evolution shed light on interface design (in this new era of LLM-frozen-culture, where systems tend to amplify existing, popular notations)?
Speaker Bio
Ian is an Assistant Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Montréal in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research (DIRO), where he is also affiliated with Mila. He founded the Montréal HCI group and created the popular ChainForge visual programming environment for prompt engineering and LLM evaluation. His recent work deals with topics around LLM evaluation, human-AI grounding, and pen-based notational interfaces. In the past, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University, working with Professor Elena Glassman.
Optional Readings
No reading is required, but for those interested in the topic, Ian recommends the following books/bodies of work he is currently reading or has read:
Languages of Art by Nelson Goodman (esp. the chapter on notation)
Experiments, Models, Paper Tools by Ursula Klein
Where Mathematics Comes From by Lakoff & Núñez
Drawing Theories Apart by David Kaiser
Cognitive Dimensions of Notations by Green, Blackwell et al.
To Write Code: The Cultural Fabrication of Programming Notation and Practice (Ian's own work 🙂)
We hope to see many of you in July! Please feel free to share this with others who might be interested.
Best regards,
Sangho on behalf of the Dynamic Abstractions Team