This page is a list of the academic projects I have contributed to. I have also been involved in a number of non-academic projects - that list is maintained on my Commercial Projects page.

Visualizing Off-Screen Locations

University of Manitoba
Hasso Plattner Institute
Graduate Student Researcher. Sept. 2006 - Present.

Description

When a map is displayed on a PDA or smartphone, it is rarely possible to be zoomed in close enough to view detailed information and view all locations of interest (for example, nearby restaurants) around a certain area. We are investigating a class of visualization techniques that indicate the presence and location of targets that are close to the displayed area, while providing a mechanism to interact directly with the off-screen targets.

Contribution

Designed two new techniques to visualize off-screen points of interest, EdgeRadar and Wedge. These techniques address the problem of clutter that limits the effectiveness of traditional techniques and in the case of Wedge improves upon the user's ability to pinpoint the exact position of unseen objects.

Publications

Sean Gustafson. 2008. Visualizing Off-Screen Locations on Small Mobile Displays. Master's thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Manitoba.

full details / download

Sean Gustafson, Patrick Baudisch, Carl Gutwin and Pourang Irani. 2008. Wedge: Clutter-Free Visualization of Off-Screen Locations. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '08), 787-796.

full details / download

Sean Gustafson and Pourang Irani. 2007. Comparing Visualizations for Tracking Off-Screen Moving Targets. In Extended Abstracts of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '07), 2399-2404.

full details / download

Previous Projects

Alternative Input Methods

University of Manitoba
Graduate Student Researcher. June 2007 - April 2009.

Description

I am part of a research team investigating alternative methods of input for software systems. Specifically we have looked at pressure-based input hardware and accelerometer-based gesture and tilt interactions.

Contribution

Helped design and run experiments. I contributed background research, writing, editing, and video creation.

Publications

Mahfuz Rahman, Sean Gustafson, Pourang Irani and Sriram Subramanian. 2009. Tilt Techniques: Investigating the Dexterity of Wrist-based Input. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '09), 1943-1952. (Honorable Mention Award.)

full details / download

Kang Shi, Pourang Irani, Sean Gustafson and Sriram Subramanian. 2008. PressureFish: A Method to Improve Control of Discrete Pressure-based Input. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '08), 1295-1298.

full details / download

Tabletop Collaboration

University of Manitoba
Graduate Student Researcher. Sept. 2006 - Dec. 2007.

Description

Tabletop displays are becoming one of the next big areas in alternative computing. Microsoft has shown the possibilities of this platform with its Surface product. We are developing a C#-based library for producing experimental applications that run on our prototype tabletop display. The prototype tabletop consists of a ceiling-mounted projector pointed at a large white table. Users interact with the display each via a stylus tracked in three dimensions by the Polhemus motion tracking system. The goal of this research to experiment with collaboration techniques unique to the tabletop environment.

Contribution

Contributed the Polhemus calibration code and bug fixes throughout the rest of the software.