Computer Science
Areas of interest: Human-computer interaction · Programming · Reading.
My research group studies how computers can help us comprehend complex texts—like science papers, source code, clinical notes, and mechanized proofs. We develop new interaction mechanisms by which people can inquire about the meanings of these texts.
For example, could reading interfaces help people understand equations in math texts? In one project, we explore just this question. We characterized how authors already augment formulas to explain them, developed tools to help them do it more easily, and integrated these explanations into an interactive reading application.
We have a heavy systems-building focus—we build our ideas into usable systems in order to refine those ideas, and test out their effect on users. Our systems often incorporate empowering techniques from text processing and program analysis. We ground our ideas in careful formative observations and interviews with prospective users.
Projects in our group are led by Ph.D. students Alyssa Hwang, Litao Yan, Hita Kambhamettu, Jeff Tao, Harry Goldstein, and Jessica Shi.
Penn master's and bachelor's students: If you are interested in the work that our group does, I encourage you to take Penn's class in human-computer interaction—CIS 4120/5120—to learn the essential skills we bring to our research, and then to apply to do research with our group here.
📰 Our latest news
April 2024: Congratulations Hita Kambhamettu for receiving the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! We are so proud of you!
February 2024: Harry Goldstein's paper on Property-Based Testing in Practice receives a Distinguished Paper Award at ICSE '24. Congrats, Harry!
January 2024: We have had two papers accepted to CHI '24: Litao Yan's paper on AI-generated code explanations in the editor and Hita Kambhamettu's vision of intelligent, interactive medical notes.
September 2023: Our paper on Formula Formatting Language will be presented at UIST '23. Read it here. Also see Harry Goldstein's demo of an interactive property-based testing tool at the demo session.
July 2023: Alyssa Hwang presented a paper on designing audio instructions for tasks like following recipes at DIS '23. Read the paper here.
March 2023: I gave invited talks to MIT and Stanford' HCI groups on "Designing the Interactive Paper." Watch the Stanford talk here.
🧪 Publications
Projects in our develop novel interactions for programming (•), reading (•), and working with notation (•).
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2024
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2024
ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering, (ICSE), 2024
Best Paper Award
ACM User Interfaces Software and Technology Symposium (UIST), 2023
AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment, (AIIDE), 2023
ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), 2023
ACM Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI), 2023
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, (TOCHI), 2023
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2023
Best Paper Award
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2023
Nominated for Best Paper Award
International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, (VLDB), 2023
International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, (VLDB), 2021
ACM International Conference on Software Engineering, (ICSE), 2018
ACM Conference on Learning at Scale, (L@S), 2017
'*' denotes equal contribution.
The first three authors contributed equally to this work
International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, (ICTD), 2017
🧑🏫 Teaching
Fall 2024: CIS 7000: Interactive Reading (preliminary syllabus)
Spring 2024: CIS 4120/5120: Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction (syllabus)
Spring 2023: CIS 3990: Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction (syllabus)
Fall 2022: CIS 7000-001: Designing Programming Environments: Live and Literate Programming (syllabus)
Spring 2022: CIS 700-003: Human-Computer Interaction.
Summer 2019: CS160, User Interface Design and Development (co-taught with Sarah Sterman, @UC Berkeley)