Xiaojun Bi

Department of Computer Science
University of Toronto

40 St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5S 2E4
Phone: (416)805-9888
Email: xiaojun at dgp.toronto.edu

Brief Biography

I am a Post-Doc Researcher Scientist at Google Inc. (Mountain View). I have received my Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Prof. Ravin Balakrishnan. I earned a master degree from Department of Computer Science, Tsinghua University supervised by Prof. Shi Yuanchun in 2006, and a bachelor degree from Department of Automation at the same university in 2003. In 1999, I won the First Place in the National Math Competition (China) in the local province (top 1 among 250,000 students), recruited by Tsinghua University with National Entrance Examination waived.

In addition to carrying out research at the University of Toronto, I have collaborated with researchers at leading industrial laboratories. In summer 2010 (June 2010~September 2010), I interned with Dr. Ken Hinckley at Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group , Microsoft Research at Redmond. I was a research intern from Oct 2009 to April 2010, working with Dr.Tovi Grossman and Dr.George Fitzmaurice at User Interface Group, Autodesk Research. We explored enhancing current desktop computing environments with multi-touch surfaces. From October 2008 to January 2010, I was a part-time consulting researcher at ShapeWriter Inc. working with Dr. Shumin Zhai. In summer 2008 (June 2008~September 2008), I worked with Dr. Shumin Zhai and Dr. Barton Smith at IBM Research-Almaden, investigating issues relevant to soft keyboard layout optimization.

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Research

My research lies in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), with primary interests in human behavior understanding, performance modeling, and interactive system design. In particular, my current research focuses on improving user's experience in existing interactive systems (e.g., desktop, mobile computing, interactive tabletops, and pen-based tablets), and emerging computing environments (e.g., large high-resolution displays).

Recent Research Projects

	Multi-Touch in Desktop Computing I designed and implemented the Magic Desk, an interactive desktop prototype exploring the design space of multi-touch integrated computing paradigm. It included a set of novel interaction techniques that were designed based on the understanding of users' touch input abilities in desktop computing environments. Implementation Platform: C# on Microsoft Surface Publication: [CHI'2011] (Best Paper Nominee Award -- Top 5%) Video Demo: Video

	Large Display Interaction I systematically investigated how a large display affected users' performance and behaviors in desktop computing environments via a series of qualitative and quantitative studies. Based on the study results, I designed and implemented a large-display-oriented window management system prototype, called WallTop. It allowed a user to freely management multiple windows simultaneously, and included a set of novel interaction techniques to efficiently manage overflowing windows on a large display. Implementation Platform: C++ and OpenGL Publications: [CHI'2010], [CHI'2009], [HCI Journal](Submitted), [TOCHI](In Preparation) Video Demo: Video

	Pen Computing To enrich the interaction bandwidth of pen-based computing, I explored using pen rolling (i.e., the rotation around a pen's longitudinal axis) and pen tilt as additionally input modalities. I also researched combing pen and multi-touch inputs to improve daily computing experience. The pen writes, touch manipulates, the combination of pen+touch provides enriched experience for active reading on touch-screen devices. Implementation Platform: C# on Wacom Touch Screen FS5 (Pen+Touch E-Reader) Publications: [UIST'2008], [CHI'2011], [UIST'2011] (In Preparation) Video Demo: Video (Pen Rolling)

	Text Entry on Touch Screen Devices My research in this area includes optimizing soft keyboard layouts for multilingual input, and designing Quasi-Qwerty layouts to reduce layout learning effort. As a part-time Research Consultant at ShapeWriter Inc. from Oct 2008 to Jan 2010, I researched how to optimize keyboard layouts to improve input efficiency and gesture recognition accuracy for ShapeWriting technique. Publications: [CHI'2010], [MobileHCI'2010], [HCI Journal]

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Publications

Ken Hinckley, Xiaojun Bi , Michel Pahud, Bill Buxton. (2012) " Informal Information Gathering Techniques for Active Reading " , Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012), To Appear. [Acceptance Rate: 23%].

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Yizhong Xin, Xiaojun Bi, Xiangshi Ren. (2012) " Natural Use Profiles for the Pen: An Empirical Exploration of Pressure, Tilt, and Azimuth " , Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012), To Appear. [Acceptance Rate: 23%].

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Xiaojun Bi , Barton A. Smith, Shumin Zhai. (2011) " Multilingual Touchscreen Keyboard Design and Optimization." , Human-Computer Interaction (HCI Journal) , 34 pages. [Impact Factor: 6.190]. To appear.

Paper

Xiaojun Bi , Tovi Grossman, Justin Matejka, George Fitzmaurice. (2011) " Magic Desk: Bringing Multi-Touch Surfaces into Desktop Work" , Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2011), p2511~p2520. [Acceptance Rate: 26%]. (Best Paper Nominee Award -- Top 5%)

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Yizhong Xin, Xiaojun Bi , Xiangshi Ren. (2011) "Acquiring and Pointing: An Empirical Study of Pen Tilt-Based Interaction." , Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2011), p849~p858. [Acceptance Rate: 26%].

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Xiaojun Bi , Seok-Hyung Bae, Ravin Balakrishnan. (2010) "Effects of Interior Bezels of Tiled-Monitor Large Displays on Visual Search, Tunnel Steering, and Target Selection." , Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2010), p65~p74. [Acceptance Rate: 22%]

Paper

Xiaojun Bi, Barton A. Smith, Shumin Zhai. (2010) "Quasi-Qwerty Soft Keyboard Optimization." , Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2010), p283~p286. [Acceptance Rate: 22%]

Paper

James Scott, Shahram Izadi, Leila Sadat Rezai, Dominika Ruszkowski, Xiaojun Bi, Ravin Balakrishnan, (2010) "RearType: Text Entry Using Keys on the Back of a Device " , ACM MobileHCI 2010, p171~p180. [Acceptance Rate: 23%]

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Xiaojun Bi, Ravin Balakrishnan. (2009) "Comparing Usage of a Large High-Resolution Display to Single or Dual Desktop Displays for Daily Work". Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2009), p1005~p1014. [Acceptance Rate: 25%]

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Xiaojun Bi, Tomer Moscovich, Gonzalo Ramos, Ravin Balakrishnan, Ken Hinckley. (2008) "An Exploration of Pen Rolling for Pen-based Interaction". Proceedings of UIST 2008, Monterey, CA, October 19-22, 2008, p191~p200. [Acceptance Rate: 18%]

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Xiaojun Bi, Yuanchun Shi, Xiaojie Chen (2006) “uPen: A Smart Pen-liked Device for Facilitating Interaction on Large Displays”, Proceedings of IEEE TableTop Conference on Horizontal Interactive Human-Computer Systems 2006, Australia,January, p160~p168.

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Xiaojun Bi, Yuanchun Shi, Xiaojie Chen, (2005) “uPen: Laser-based, Personalized, Multi-User Interaction on Large Displays”, ACM MuliMedia'05, Singapore , November 2005. [Acceptance Rate: 16%]

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Xiaojun Bi, Yuanchun Shi, Xiaojie Chen, (2005) “Facilitating Interaction with Large Displays in Smart Spaces”, Soc-EUSAI'05, France , Grenoble . October, 2005. p105~p110