Shengdong Zhao

Welcome to Shen's Home Page!

Dr. Shengdong Zhao
MIMS UC Berkeley, PhD University of Toronto

Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
School of Computing
National University of Singapore

Office: AS6-04-06
Phone: (+65) 6516-8413
Email: zhaosd (at) comp (dot) nus (dot) edu (dot) sg

Note: As of Jan 10, 2009, I will no longer actively update my web page at the University of Toronto. Please visit my web page at National University of Singapore http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~zhaosd/ for my latest activities.

My name is Shengdong Zhao [Shen], or in Chinese. I am an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore. I had my PhD in computer science from the University of Toronto, working with Professor Mark Chignell. My master degree is from School of Information Management & Systems, University of California, Berkeley.

I worked with Takeo Igarashi on programming interfaces for home robots in the second half of 2008. The research results will be published at ACM CHI2009 conference. During the summer of 2005 and 2006, I worked with Ken Hinckley and Maneesh Agrawala at Microsoft Research, Redmond on two gesture-based projects (Zone and Polygon Menus and InkSeine). The research results led to two full papers at the ACM CHI conference, and three US patent applications. The InkSeine application is now available for public download. InkSeine received a great review from GottaBeMobile.com. In addition to my Microsoft experience, I have worked as a research associate for Professor Monica Schraefel at University of Toronto (Monica is now a Professor at University of Southampton, U.K.), as a graduate student researcher for Professor Robert Wilensky on the Multivalent Document Browser project at University of California, Berkeley, and as a computer engineer at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Besides my research experience, I also briefly worked for two startup companies (SeeUthere.com, and Space Machine Inc).

My research field is HCI (Human Computer Interaction) , with an emphasis in mobile HCI and information visualization. My dissertation is on mobile eyes-free interfaces. I designed an eyes-free menu selection technique called earPod, and showed its effectiveness. earPod has received media coverage from MIT Technology Review, May 2007.

Graduate Thesis Proposals

For NUS graduate students, below are some ideas for thesis proposals. Please contact me if you are interested (other HCI related ideas are also welcome).

Project Title: Alternative Interactive Techniques for Mobile and Ubiquitous Environments
Project Description: This project aims to develop novel interaction techniques by leveraging alternative methods of interaction such as gesture, audio, haptics, eye-tracking, and tangible objects for the mobile and ubiquitous computing environment and systematically study how these new approaches can be seamlessly integrated with existing solutions across scenarios.

For alternative interaction techniques, one example will be to develop and study eyes-free interfaces (interfaces that can controlled without using vision, such as auditory and haptic interfaces). Due to the innate difficulty in designing auditory/haptic interfaces, previous attempts on developing effective eyes-free interfaces suffered from performance and scalability problems that prevented serious use. Additionally, unlike graphical user interfaces (GUIs), where general interaction models (e.g., WIMP) have been extensively studied and used, there is not yet a similar standard for eyes-free interfaces. Due to the significant differences between the operating modalities, a straightforward translation from visual interfaces often fails to leverage the full potential of eyes-free interfaces. In this project, we will overcome the challenges of designing alternative interaction technique and develop novel and useful interactive solutions for people on the move.

Project Title: Tangible Programming Interface for Home Robots
Project Description: Robotics technologies have been significantly advanced recently. Robots have already walked out of science fiction and factories, and started to enter our homes. For example, the vacuum robot, Roomba, has been on the market for seven years and reached millions of users worldwide. Other domestic-service robots including Scooba (mopping), Robomower (lawn mowing), Dirt Dog (garage cleaning), Dressman (ironing), and Paro (nursing) have also appeared in the market place.

Although the progress has been encouraging, especially regarding the positive user response generated while using Roomba, a great deal of interaction with robots is still required, especially for sophisticated robots that are capable of performing more complex tasks such as dish washing. The behaviour of these robots is programmed by experts and often can only be controlled by experts. On the other hand, our goal is to allow ordinary users, such as housewives, to program robot activities and control robots at ease.

In order to allow end users to give high-level directions and specify more sophisticated action (program) to robots, it is important to design and evaluate simple yet versatile interfaces for end users. One approach is to develop a simple programming interface to control robots using tangible objects such as paper cards. A vision based environment will be set up to guide the robots to perform the necessary tasks. We will investigate this approach as well as other ideas in this project.

Teaching

CSC3248 (Spring 2009): The Design of Interactive Computational Media
Lectures: Thursday, 16:00 - 18:00, COM1/204, School of Computing

Publications

Refereed (Full) Conference Papers:

		9.		new Shengdong Zhao, Koichi Nakamura, Kentaro Ishii, Takeo Igarashi (2009). Magic Cards : Using Paper Tags to Support Task-Centric Human Robot Interaction. To appear in the Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). 10 pages.
		8.		Ken Hinckley, Shengdong Zhao, Raman Sarin, Patrick Baudisch, Edward Cutrell, Michael Shilman, Desney Tan (2007). InkSeine: In Situ Search for Active Note Taking. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). pp. 251-260. Summary: Prototype that supports active note taking by coupling a pen-and-ink interface with an in situ search facility that flows directly from a user’s ink notes. movie (52 MB wma, 720x480, 29.970 fps, 3:45) PPT slides of my presentation at CHI 2007 (Joint presentation with Ed Cutrell) Chi Madness Slides InkSeine homepage
		7.		Shengdong Zhao, Pierre Dragicevic, Mark H. Chignell, Ravin Balakrishnan, Patrick Baudisch (2007). earPod: Eyes-free Menu Selection with Touch Input and Reactive Audio Feedback. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). pp. 1395-1404. [Selected Media Coverage: MIT Technology Review, May 2007] Summary: Presents the design and evaluation of earPod: an eyes-free menu technique using touch input and auditory feedback. Results indicate that earPod is a promising technique comparable in performance to visual menus. movie (4 MB wma, 720x480, 29.970 fps, 1:04) PPT slides of my presentation at CHI 2007 earPod homepage
		6.		Xiangshi Ren, Jinbin Ying, Shengdong Zhao, Yang Li (2007). The Adaptive Hybrid Cursor: A Pressure-based Target Selection Technique for Pen-based Interfaces. Proceedings of the Interact 2007 Conference (INTERACT). pp. 310-323. Summary: Presents the Adaptive Hybrid Cursor, a novel target acquisition technique that assists a user in a target selection task by automatically adapting the size of the cursor and/or its contexts (the target size and the selection background) based on pen pressure input.
		5.		Patrick Baudisch, Desney Tan, Maxime Collomb, Daniel Robbins, Ken Hinckley, Maneesh Agrawala, Shengdong Zhao, and Gonzalo Ramos (2006). Phosphor: Explaining Transitions in the User Interface Using Afterglow Effects. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST). pp. 169-178. Summary: Proposes to use Phosphor objects to instantly show the outcome of user interactions while explaining the change in retrospect. A framework of transition designs for widgets, icons, and objects in drawing programs has been proposed and evaluated.
		4.		Shengdong Zhao, Maneesh Agrawala, Ken Hinckley (2006). Zone and Polygon Menus: Using Relative Position to Increase the Breadth of Multi-stroke Marking Menus. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). pp. 1077-1086. [Acceptance rate: 118/506 or 23%] Summary: Zone and Polygon menus are two new variants of multi-stroke marking menus that consider both the relative position and orientation of strokes. Our menus are designed to increase menu breadth over the 8 item limit of status quo orientation-based marking menus. We also discuss hybrid techniques that may further increase menu breadth and performance. movie (22 MB wma, 720x480, 29.970 fps, 5:02) PPT slides of my presentation at CHI 2006. CHI Madness Faster, higher, stronger is the spirit that makes Olympic Games so exciting to watch, but I am not good at any of the sports, so I decided to become a coach. In this year's world Marking Menu competition, we lead our athletes: "Zone Menu" and "Polygon Menu", after intensive training, practicing, sweating, suffering, and crying, win the game by excellent speed, accuracy, and menu configuration. Behind every athlete, there is a story! To listen to the touching stories of Zone and Polygon Menus, please come to the live broadcast event at 9:30 am prime time on channel "Menus". See you there!
		3.		Shengdong Zhao, Michael J. McGuffin, Mark H. Chignell (2005). Elastic Hierarchies: Combining Treemaps and Node-link Diagrams. Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (InfoVis). pp. 57-64. [Acceptance rate: 31/114 or 27%] Summary: Considers hybrid graphical representations that combine node-link and treemap diagrams for the purposes of tree visualization. The concept of elastic representational space is introduced. A theoretical analysis yields a taxonomy of various potential hybrid combinations, and a prototype system is implemented to experiment with these. movie (28 MB avi, DivX 6.0 encoded, 720x480, 29.970 fps, 5:00) Although the prototype does support some animated transitions, performance problems during the capturing of the video resulted in these animations not being very apparent in the video. PPT slides of my talk at InfoVis 2005 PPT slides of my talk on an overview of Tree and Treemap visualizations (2003).
		2.		Shengdong Zhao, Ravin Balakrishnan. (2004). Simple vs. Compound Mark Hierarchical Marking Menus. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST). pp. 33-42. [Acceptance rate: 36/170 or 21%. Received 5,5,5,5 from all reviewers - the highest review score in UIST 2004.] Summary: Simple mark technique (multi-stroke marking menu) is a variant of hierarchical marking menus where items are selected using a series of straight lines, rather than the single "zig-zag" compound mark used in the traditional design. Study shows multi-stroke marking menu increase menu depth, and is faster and more accurate than the traditional compound mark technique while requiring less input space. PPT slides my presentation at UIST 2004
		1.		Monica C. Schraefel, Yuxiang Zhu, David Modjeska, Daniel Wigdor, Shengdong Zhao. (2002) Hunter Gatherer: Interaction Support for the Creation and Management of Within-web-page Collections. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW). pp. 172-181. Summary: Hunter Gatherer is an interface that lets Web users carry out three main tasks: (1) collect components from within Web pages; (2) represent those components in a collection; (3) edit those component collections. Our research shows that while the practice of making collections of content from within Web pages is common, it is not frequent, due in large part to poor interaction support in existing tools. We engaged with users in task analysis as well as iterative design reviews in order to understand the interaction issues that are part of within-Web-page collection making and to design an interaction that would support that process.

Short Papers, Workshop Papers, Posters:

	3.	Monica Schraefel, Maria Karam, Shengdong Zhao (2003) Listen to the Music: Audio Preview Cues for Exploration of Online Music. Interact 2003, Switzerland. (short paper).
	2.	Monica Schraefel, Maria Karam, Shengdong Zhao. Audio Preview Cues: Interaction Aides for Exploration of Online Music and Beyond. HCI International 2003. (poster)
	1.	Monica Schraefel, Maria Karam, Shengdong Zhao. Interaction design for user-determined, adaptable domain exploration in hypermedia AH2003: Workshop on Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web-Based Systems. (workshop paper)

Patents:

4.	United States Patent - Self-revelation Aids for Interfaces. filed 01/2008 (Pending)
3.	United States Patent - Serial No. 11/733,113 In Situ Search for Active Note Taking, filed 04/09/2007. (Pending)
2.	United States Patent - Application No. 20070168890 Position-based Multi-stroke Marking Menus, filed 01/13/2006. (Pending)
1.	WIPO International Patent - Publication No. (WO/2000/079361) Event Planning Systems, filed 28/12/2000. (Granted 1/2006)

Travel

April 4-9, 2009, Boston, USA. To attend CHI 2009 Conference.

Other Projects

	4.	OCT2 OCT2 is a new and improved version of the original OCT system (software to manage the conference paper submission and reviewing process) developed by David Gering. OCT2 was used for the CVPR 2003 paper submission and review process and was co-developed by Shengdong Zhao and Kyros Kutulakos. (application)
	3.	DInfoBuilder: (Dynamic Information Builder) DInfoBuilder builds the next generation information management software application. It enables efficient, simple development, maintenance, and transformation of information systems. DInfoBuilder allows non-technical personnel to quickly build a dynamic e-commerce application on the web and wireless platforms. The resulting applications will be platform independent, device independent, database independent. DInfoBuilder will greatly improve the ways information are organized, presented, interoperated, and interacted. (SIMS master project)
	2.	Multivalent Browser: I built the first version of PDF media adapter by porting xPDF's code to Java. This project has evolved to an open source software application. (code library)
	1.	DOE2000 Electronic Notebook: I worked as a computer system engineer in Lawrence Berkeley National Lab with Dr. Sonia Sachs on this project for one year. (application)

Miscellaneous

Place to find useful word templates (include templates for CV and thesis).

Visitor No.