| My research lies in the general area of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). I specialize in utilizing interdisciplinary research methods to broaden our understanding of perceptual and motor abilities, and applying that understanding to the design of present-day and emerging technologies to solve identified problems. These technologies include multi-touch tabletop and mobile devices, and includes both their hardware and software interfaces. This research has been conducted at all of Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, the University of Toronto, and the Initiative in Innovative Computing at Harvard University. | |
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| Mail:
c/o MERL
201 Broadway, 8th floor Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA |
E-mail:
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Fellow
I am currently conducting research as a Fellow at the Initiative in Innovative
Computing at Harvard University
in Cambridge, MA, USA. |
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Intern
Since 2005, I have been an intern as part of the Diamond Space project at the Mitsubishi
Electric Research Labs in Cambridge, MA, USA. |
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PhD Candidate
I began my PhD in computer science in 2004. I have been a
member of the
Dynamic Graphics Project in the Department
of Computer Science of the University of Toronto since
I joined as an undergraduate in 2001. |
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Co-Founder
In 2003, I co-founded Iota Wireless, a company dedicated to the commercialisation of text entry techniques for mobile phones.
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The Dynamic Graphics Project of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto is celebrating its 40th year. I am pleased to be serving on the steering committee for the DGP is 40 Conference, to take place from May 28-30th, 2007. We hope that most of the nearly 350 DGP alumni will attend. |
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Tabletop
2008:
I
am serving on the Program Committee for
Tabletop
2008 in Amsterdam. Submission deadline is June 11
for full papers.
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PPD 2008: I
am serving on the Program Committee for the Workshop on designing
multi-touch interaction techniques for coupled public
and private displays, a part of AVI
2008 in Napoli, Italy. Submission deadline is March 25.
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CollabTech
2008: I am serving on the Program Commmittee for The Fourth Annual Conference on
Collaboration Technologies in Wakayama,
Japan. Submission deadline is March 14. |
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Tabletop
2008: I am serving as Publications Chair for Tabletop 2008 in Amsterdam.
Submission deadline is June 18 for full papers. |
Table Centric Interactive Spaces: interactive tables augmented with one or more large ancillary displays.
Direct-Touch and Tabletop Interaction: developing and adapting interactions and platforms for direct-touch interfaces and tabletops.
Mobile Phone Text Entry: techniques for rapidly entering unambiguous text to mobile phones.
Volumetric Displays: single and multi-user interaction with a true enclosed 3D display.
Hunter Gatherer: within web page collection making of dynamic web content.
Massive Change: an artful exploration of the power of various forces for change in our world.
Tables have historically played a key role in many real-time collaborative environments, often referred to as "war rooms". Today, these environments have been transformed by computational technology into spaces with large vertical displays surrounded by numerous desktop computers. However, despite significant research activity in the area of tabletop computing, very little is known about how to best integrate a digital tabletop into these multi-surface environments. In this project, we set out to identify various design requirements for the implementation of a system intended to support such an environment, and to design interactions and other mechanisms to enable rich environments to support user tasks.
This research is the focus of my PhD, and is being conducted primarily as part of the DiamondSpace project at MERL with Dr. Chia Shen, often in collaboration with Clifton Forlines and Professor Ravin Balakrishnan. The papers below represent my published contributions to this project.
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LivOlay: Interactive Ad-Hoc Registered Overlapping of Applications for Collaborative Visual Exploration
Jiang, H.,
Wigdor, D.,
Forlines, C.,
Borkin, M.,
Kauggmann, J.,
Shen, C. .
LivOlay: Interactive Ad-Hoc Registered Overlapping of Applications for Collaborative Visual Exploration. In Proceedings of CHI 2008, Florence, Italy, April 5-10, 2008, 4 pages.
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Wigdor, D., Shen, C., Forlines, C., Balakrishnan, R. (2007). Perception of Elementary Graphical Elements in Tabletop and Multi-Surface Environments. Proceedings of the 2007 SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI 2007), 473-482. (ACM DL). |
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Forlines, C., Shen, C., Wigdor, D., Balakrishnan, R. (2006). Exploring the effects of group size and display configuration on visual search. Proceedings of the 2006 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 11-20. (ACM DL). |
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Wigdor, D., Shen, C., Forlines, C., Balakrishnan, R. (2006). Effects of display position and control space orientation on user preference and performance. Proceedings of the 2006 CHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 309-318. (ACM DL). |
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Wigdor, D., Balakrishnan, R. (2005). Empirical investigation into the effect of orientation on text readability in tabletop displays. Proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, 205-224. |
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Forlines, C., Esenther, A., Shen, C., Wigdor, D., Ryall, K., (2006). Adapting a single-display, single-user geospatial application for a multi-device, multi-user environment. The 2006 ACM conference on User Interface Software and Technology, 273-276. Conference talk: download or stream. (ACM DL). |
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Wigdor, D., Shen, C., Forlines, C., Balakrishnan, R., (2006). Table-centric interactive spaces for real-time collaboration: solutions, evaluation, and application scenarios. Proceedings of CollabTech 2006, July 2006, 9-15. Video |
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Wigdor, D., Shen, C., Forlines, C., Balakrishnan, R. (2006). Table-centric interactive spaces for real-time collaboration. Proceedings of the 2006 International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, 103-107. Also presented as a poster. (ACM DL) |
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Table-Centric Interactive Spaces
for Real-Time Collaboration: a Video Demonstration
Wigdor, D., Shen, C., Forlines,
C., Balakrishnan, R.,
(2006). Table-Centric Interactive Spaces
for Real-Time Collaboration: a Video Demonstration.
Video Proceedings of the 2006 ACM conference on Computer Supported
Cooperative Work (video). |
Direct touch offers compelling opportunities for user interface designers. It has been demonstrated to aid with spatial memory, bimanual interaction, novice usability - and new and exciting uses are being discovered regularly. When direct-touch interfaces are enabled for multi-touch and multiple users, and laid flat as a tabletop surface, they offer a promising platform for group collaboration. In this body of work, I and my collaborators have explored fundamental principles of direct-touch, interface elements, and novel platforms which leverage its unique affordances. My contributions to this research area are below, done mostly as part of the DiamondSpace project at MERL with Dr. Chia Shen, often in collaboration with Clifton Forlines and Professor Ravin Balakrishnan. This work is in conjunction with that on table-centred interactive spaces, described above.
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Combining and Measuring the Benefits of Bimanual Pen and Direct-Touch Interaction on Horizontal Interfaces
Brandl, P.,
Forlines, C.
Wigdor, D.,
Shen, C.
Combining and Measuring the Benefits of Bimanual Pen and Direct-Touch Interaction on Horizontal Interfaces. AVI 2008, in press.
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 | Wigdor, D., Penn, G., Ryall, K., Esenther, A., Shen, C., (2007). Living with a Tabletop: Analysis and Observations of Long Term Office Use of a Multi-Touch Table. Proceedings of the Second IEEE International Workshop on Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems , 60-67. |
 | Grossman, T., Wigdor, D. Going Deeper: a Taxonomy of 3D on the Tabletop. To appear in Proceedings of the Second IEEE International Workshop on Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems , 137-144. |
 | Wigdor, D., Forlines, C., Baudisch, P., Barnwell, J., Shen, C., (2007). LucidTouch: A See-Through Mobile Device. Proceedings of the ACM's 20th Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, 269-278. Project pages: MERL, MSR. Video: Download or Stream. (ACM DL). |
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Forlines, C., Wigdor, D., Shen, C., Balakrishnan, R. (2007). Direct-Touch vs. Mouse Input for Tabletop Displays. Proceedings of the 2007 SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI 2007), 647-656. (ACM DL). |
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Wigdor, D., Leigh, D., Forlines, C., Shipman, S., Barnwell, J., Balakrishnan, R., Shen, C. (2006). Under the table interaction. Proceedings of the 2006 ACM conference on User Interface Software and Technology, 259-268. Video: download or stream, Conference talk: download or stream. (ACM DL). |
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Shen, C., Ryall, K., Forlines, C., Esenther, A., Vernier, F.D., Everitt, K., Wu, M., Wigdor, D., Ringel Morris, M., Hancock, M.S., Tse, E. (2006). IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 26(5) (Sept/Oct 2006), 36-46. (IEEE Xplore). |
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Hancock, M.S., Vernier, F.D., Wigdor, D., Carpendale, S., Shen, C. (2006). Rotation and translation mechanisms for tabletop interaction. Proceedings of the First IEEE International Workshop on Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems (TableTop2006), 79-86. (IEEE Xplore). |
Most mobile phones are equipped with a simple 12-button keypad, which is an inherently poor tool for generating phrases for a 26-letter alphabet. It is therefore surprising that nearly 500 billion text messages were estimated to have been sent worldwide from mobile phones in 2003. Given the persistent popularity of the traditional keypad, there is a need to invent techniques for efficiently entering text using this restricted set of keys. This pair of papers and my MSc thesis explore the use of chording input, both with buttons and tilt gestures, to make input to mobile phones on an existing keypad. The papers and thesis below, co-authored and supervised by Professor Ravin Balakrishnan, describe this project in detail.
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Wigdor, D., Balakrishnan, R. (2004). A comparison of consecutive and concurrent input text entry techniques for mobile phones. Proceedings of the 2004 SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, 81-88. (ACM DL). |
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Wigdor, D., Balakrishnan, R. (2003). TiltText: using tilt for text input to mobile phones. Proceedings of the 16th annual ACM symposium on User interface software an technology, 81-90. (ACM DL). |
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Chording and Tilting for Rapid,
Unambiguous Text Entry to Mobile Phones
Wigdor, D. (2004). A thesis submitted in conformity with the
requirements
of the degree of Masters of Science, Graduate Department of Computer Science,
University of Toronto. In HTML and PDF.
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Volumetric displays promise real 3D display output, providing opportunities for unencumbered, free-form single user interaction, as well as multi-user interaction. See PI Tovi Grossman's web page for an extensive list of publications.
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Grossman, T., Wigdor, D., Balakrishnan, R. (2007). Exploring and Reducing the Effects of Orientation on Text Readability in Volumetric Displays. Proceedings of the 2007 SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (CHI 2007), 483-492. (ACM DL). |
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Grossman, T., Wigdor, D., Balakrishnan, R. (2004). Multi-finger gestural interaction with 3D volumetric displays. Proceedings of the 17th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, 61-70. Video: download or stream. (Best Paper Award, UIST, 2004). (ACM DL). |
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Grossman, T., Wigdor, D., Balakrishnan, R. (2005). Multi-finger gestural interaction with 3D volumetric displays. Proceedings of the SIGGRAPH 2005 conference. (Invited session from UIST 2004), 931. |
Hunter gatherer is a tool that automates capture of selected web bits of pages into a new web page, grabbing info about the page so you don't have to: you can just focus on selecting the information you want. Then, when you want to, you can focus on that collection - editing, managing or sharing it. I was involved in this project in its very early stages. PI mc schraefel maintains a current webpage for Hunter Gatherer. Below you will find the publications from the project that I was involved with.
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schraefel, m.c., Zhu, Y., Modjeska, D., Wigdor, D., Zhao, S. (2002). Hunter Gatherer: interaction support for the creation and management of within-web page collections. Proceedings of the Eleventh International World Wide Web Conference, 172-181. (ACM DL). |
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schraefel, m.c., Wigdor, D., Zhu, Y., Modjeska, D. (2002). CHI '02 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, 826-827. (ACM DL). |
Explores the legacy and potential, the promise and power of design in improving the welfare of humanity. It originated as a collaboration between Bruce Mau Design and the Institute without Boundaries in which we researched the capacities and limitations of human efforts to change the world for the better.
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Massive Change
Helped devise a concept, and then developed a multi-media presentation application,
for the Markets Gallery
of the Massive Change project (commissioned
by the Vancouver Art Gallery and displayed at other galleries around the
world). |
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Hogan, B., Wigdor, D., Suhonos, M., Josephy, M., Baecker, R. (Eds) (2004). Published online. |
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Wigdor, D. (2002). Published online. (47 pages). |
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CSC181 (description): Fall 2003, Fall 2004. |
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ECE242 (description): Winter 2003. |
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CSC104 (description):
Winter 2001, Winter 2002, Summer 2002, Winter 2004, Summer
2004, Fall 2006. CSC108 (description): Winter 2004. CSC148 (description): Winter 2001, Summer 2001, Fall 2001, Summer 2002, Summer 2003, Summer 2004. CSC318 (description): Fall 2005, Building Usability Prototypes in VB, Flash, Dreamweaver. |
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CSC318 (description): Winter 2004. |
| Generally applicable resources for students in my undergraduate courses. |
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Research supervisor, fall of 2003.
Unimanual gestures for document navigation with a Nintendo Power Glove.
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Hao Jiang, Tsinghua
University
Project
advisor, summer and fall
2007. Work not yet published.
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Peter Brandl, Upper Austria University of
Applied Sciences
Project advisor, summer 2007.
Work not yet published.
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For family and friends: my photo gallery is also available.