I am an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Toronto. My general area of research is the leveraging of computing technology to enable users to live better lives. This work includes the development of user interface software, interaction methods, sensor hardware, new device form factors, development platforms, and operating system enhancements. Several projects are ongoing in my group; two major ones are focused on zero-latency, “high performance” user experiences, and on the enablement of a “symphony of devices”.

High Performance UX: the ultimate aim of ubiquitous computing is to seamlessly blend the physical and digital worlds. One of the primary barriers to achieving this is latency: the time between an input to the system, and its response to that input. Latency impairs performance, adds frustration, causes “cyber sickness”, and in general is a sign of low-quality. Our aim is to purge all systems of latency. We began by examining the psychophysics of latency perception and its impacts on human performance, which gave us a baseline target for our systems (2ms – 50 times faster than is typical today). To achieve this, we have developed software tools, re-architected OS input processing, built models of human movement to enable prediction, and have developed sensors capable of detecting input 3 orders of magnitude more quickly than current commercial devices. This project continues in several directions within the group here at U of T. It also has spun-out as a startup company, Tactual Labs, which is seeking to commercialize the work.

Symphony of Devices: The Internet of Things promises a future in which devices can be always connected, and tied-in to your personal cloud. The present manifestation of this is a series of technologies which allow people to switch between devices: watch a movie on your phone, and push a button to move it to the TV. This is a terrible waste. Why not enable user experiences to seamlessly expand to take advantage of all of the technologies in a space? Symphony of Devices is an examination of how user experiences of the future will exist between devices, rather than run on a particular platform or device. This project has spanned many years, and has included in-situ study of users, the development of unique user interface technologies, and the creation of a platform which enables applications to grow and shrink to any configuration of devices available to it. Recently, two of the papers from this project (Panelrama, which describes our platform, and Duet, which describes interaction methods) were chosen as People’s Choice Best Talks at CHI 2014, and Duet was chosen as a Best Paper.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

(see Research for a list of all publications).

High-rate, low-Latency multi-touch sensing with simultaneous orthogonal multiplexing

Darren Leigh, Clifton Forlines, Ricardo Jota, Steven Sanders, and Daniel Wigdor (2014). High rate, low-latency multi-touch sensing with simultaneous orthogonal multiplexing. In Proceedings of the 27th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology (UIST ’14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 355-364.

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Zero-latency tapping: using hover information to predict touch locations and eliminate touchdown latency

Haijun Xia, Ricardo Jota, Benjamin McCanny, Zhe Yu, Clifton Forlines, Karan Singh, and Daniel Wigdor. (2014). Zero-latency tapping: using hover information to predict touch locations and eliminate touchdown latency. In Proceedings of the 27th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology (UIST ’14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 205-214.

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Duet: Exploring joint interactions on a smart phone and a smart watch

Xiang ‘Anthony’ Chen, Tovi Grossman, Daniel Wigdor, and George Fitzmaurice. 2014. Duet: exploring joint interactions on a smart phone and a smart watch. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 159-168.

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Let’s kick it: how to stop wasting the bottom third of your large screen display

Ricardo Jota, Pedro Lopes, Daniel Wigdor, and Joaquim Jorge 2014. Let’s Kick It: How to Stop Wasting the Bottom Third of your Large Screen Display. Conditionally accepted to appear in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’14). ACM, New York, NY, USA.

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Dive In! Real-time interaction with always-ready, progressively-loaded interactive data visualizations

Michael Glueck, Azam Khan, and Daniel Wigdor. 2014. Dive in!: enabling progressive loading for real-time navigation of data visualizations. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 561-570.

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Conductor: Enabling and understanding cross-device interaction

Peter Hamilton and Daniel Wigdor. 2014. Conductor: enabling and understanding cross-device interaction. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2773-2782.

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Slide to X: Unlocking the potential of smartphone unlocking

Khai Truong, Thariq Shihipar, and Daniel Wigdor. 2014. Slide to X: unlocking the potential of smartphone unlocking. In Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI ’14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3635-3644.

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Panelrama: Enabling easy specification of cross-device web applications

Jishuo Yang and Daniel Wigdor. 2014. Panelrama: enabling easy specification of cross-device web applications. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2783-2792.

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A field study of multi-device workflows in distributed workspaces

Stephanie Santosa and Daniel Wigdor. 2013. A field study of multi-device workflows in distributed workspaces.  In Proceedings of the 2013 ACM international joint conference on Pervasive and ubiquitous computing (UbiComp ’13). ACM, New York, NY, USA,  63-72.

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A model of navigation for very large data views

Michael Glueck, Tovi Grossman & Daniel Wigdor. 2013. A Model of Navigation for Very Large Data Views. Graphics Interface (GI ’13). 8 pages.

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