Research

We’re a human-computer interaction research lab contributing new methods and tools for interface engineering, ubiquitous computing, and crowdsourcing.

Initially, we have two primary research directions:

  • natural NUI design: we build and study natural user interfaces, exploring new methods and tools not only for users, but especially for designers, with the goal of allowing more users to become designers;
  • crowd-powered devices: we invent interactive technologies, augmented with human intelligence and capabilities, to enrich the interaction with both digital and non-digital devices such as paper, tables & walls.

Latest Research

Below are some first prototypes from our research in the Information Interaction Lab so far:

  • Surface Pad: a sketching and notetaking interface allowing designers to use new forms of input devices for content editing and easily blend digital and physical content
  • 3D Lab: an initial 3D model of our lab environment designed for crowd workers to participate remotely, as well as providing physical controls to end users physically present in the room

Previous Research

Previously, while at Carnegie Mellon University, the lab’s PI Michael Nebeling investigated ways of orchestrating multiple devices and crowds to enable complex information seeking, sensemaking and productivity tasks on small mobile and wearable devices. He also contributed to the Google IoT project led by CMU. This work led to three papers at ACM CHI 2016, which are quite representative of the new and ongoing research in our lab:

  • XDBrowser: a new cross-device web browser that I used to elicit 144 multi-device web page designs for five popular web interfaces leading to seven cross-device web page design patterns (CHI’16 paper, CHI’16 talk)
  • Snap-To-It: a mobile app allowing users to opportunistically interact with appliances in multi-device environments simply by taking a picture of them (CHI’16 paper)

Selected Publications

For the full list of publications, please check Google Scholar and DBLP.

  1. WearWrite: Crowd-Assisted Writing from Smartwatches CHI’16a
    M. Nebeling, A. To, A. Guo, A. de Freitas, J. Teevan, S.P. Dow, J.P. Bigham
  2. XDBrowser: User-Defined Cross-Device Web Page Designs CHI’16b
    M. Nebeling, A.K. Dey
  3. Snap-To-It: A User-Inspired Platform for Opportunistic Device Interactions CHI’16c
    A. de Freitas, M. Nebeling, X. Chen, J. Yang, A. Ranithangam, A.K. Dey
  4. Kinect Analysis: A System for Recording, Analysing and Sharing Multimodal Interaction Elicitation Studies EICS’15
    M. Nebeling, D. Ott, M.C. Norrie
  5. Web on the Wall Reloaded: Implementation, Replication and Refinement of User-Defined Interaction Sets ITS’14
    BEST PAPER HONORABLE MENTION AWARD
    M. Nebeling, A. Huber, D. Ott, M.C. Norrie
  6. XDKinect: Development Framework for Cross-Device Interaction using Kinect EICS’14
    BEST PAPER AWARD
    M. Nebeling, E. Teunissen, M. Husmann, M.C. Norrie
  7. Interactive Development of Cross-Device User Interfaces CHI’14
    M. Nebeling, T. Mintsi, M. Husmann, M.C. Norrie
  8. CrowdAdapt: Enabling Crowdsourced Web Page Adaptation for Individual Viewing Conditions and Preferences EICS’13a
    M. Nebeling, M. Speicher, M.C. Norrie
  9. CrowdStudy: General Toolkit for Crowdsourced Evaluation of Web Interfaces EICS’13b
    M. Nebeling, M. Speicher, M.C. Norrie
  10. W3Touch: Metrics-based Web Page Adaptation for Touch CHI’13
    M. Nebeling, M. Speicher, M.C. Norrie
  11. jQMultiTouch: Lightweight Toolkit and Development Framework for Multi-touch/Multi-device Web Interfaces EICS’12
    BEST PAPER AWARD
    M. Nebeling, M.C. Norrie
  12. Metrics for the Evaluation of News Site Content Layout in Large-Screen Contexts CHI’11
    BEST PAPER HONORABLE MENTION AWARD
    M. Nebeling, F. Matulic, M.C. Norrie