Steven P. Dow

Steven P. Dow is a Professor at the University of California San Diego leading the ProtoLab, which investigates collective intelligence, creativity, and decision-making through social computing and human-centered design. His work develops systems leveraging LLMs, crowdsourcing, and visualization to scaffold problem-solving for individuals and communities.

His research spans Social Computing, Human-Computer Interaction, and Participatory Design, focusing on cognitive/social aspects of collaborative processes. Key areas include AI-augmented creativity tools, value-centered civic engagement frameworks, and metadata-driven collective ideation systems that bridge technical and cultural dimensions of design.

2025 publications reveal a strong trend toward LLM-crowd integration for creative workflows, with work appearing at UIST and Collective Intelligence conferences. Research emphasizes inclusive idea convergence in civic contexts and dynamic exploration in design processes using forward-backward propagation techniques.

Prof. Dow actively mentors students, with advisees like Sangho Suh and Nancy Qiu leading publications on AI storyboarding and self-reflective crowds. His ProtoLab drives projects including community-driven design environments and context-aware exploratory search systems.

The ProtoLab serves as an interdisciplinary hub developing socio-technical systems for community co-design, leveraging ubiquitous devices and mixed-initiative interfaces to transform how teams solve complex problems through emergent scaffolding and value-centered frameworks.