| 
|
|
|
- I do research in
human-computer
interaction (HCI), with a focus on visualization.
HCI is a field which, I feel,
combines the excitement of active and creative engagement with computers,
along with much potential for novel
and significant contributions from new practitioners.
I especially love the idea of using the computer as a
laboratory
for visual and interactive experiments.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Publications
- Refereed Journal Articles:
|
|
|
2.
|
|
- Nathalie Henry, Jean-Daniel Fekete, Michael J. McGuffin (2007).
NodeTrix: A Hybrid Visualization of Social Networks.
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG),
Vol. 13, No. 6, November/December 2007, pages 1302-1309 (8 pages).
[Journal article accepted after a 2-round review process,
and presented at
IEEE Information Visualization Conference (InfoVis) 2007.
Acceptance rate: 27/116 or 23%.
Impact factor of TVCG: 1.794 for 2006.]
- Summary:
Considers hybrid graphical representations that
combine node-link and adjacency matrix diagrams
for the purposes of graph visualization.
A prototype system is implemented to experiment with this idea.
Techniques for smoothly animating between node-link
and adjacency matrix representations are also considered.
- pdf
- Quote from Ben Shneiderman, who was in the audience during the paper presentation at InfoVis: "Incroyable [...] Bravo! [standing and applauding briefly at the end of the presentation]"
|
|
|
1.
|
|
- Michael J. McGuffin, Ravin Balakrishnan (2005).
Fitts' Law and Expanding Targets:
Experimental Studies and Designs for User Interfaces.
ACM Transactions
on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI),
Vol. 12, No. 4, December 2005, pages 388-422 (35 pages).
- Summary:
Builds on McGuffin's master's thesis,
differing in the following respects:
The article contains
(1) a broader and more up-to-date survey of related literature;
(2) a more systematically organized comparison
and discussion of techniques, including techniques
for facilitating target selection that don't use expansion;
(3) a more general analysis than that given in section 4.3.2 of
McGuffin's master's thesis, that derives a bound on the
performance benefit of expansion in tiled targets
(an extreme case where targets completely cover
the user's input space) in terms of the accuracy
of a target selection prediction algorithm;
and (4) experimental data suggesting that, unfortunately,
using cursor trajectory extrapolation for prediction,
it may be very difficult to achieve accuracy high enough
to yield a measurable performance benefit.
In other words, attempts to use expansion to reduce
acquisition time of tiled targets may be doomed
(although expansion has other benefits,
and does reduce acquisition time in other cases).
The article also omits material from McGuffin's master's thesis,
such as the thought experiments and
the "Integrated Index of Difficulty" (IID).
- pdf
- Official copy: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1121112.1121115
- BibTeX entry
|
|
|
|
|
|
- Refereed Full-Length Conference Papers:
|
|
|
7.
|
|
- 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) 2005,
pages 57-64 (8 pages).
[Acceptance rate: 31/114 or 27%]
- Summary:
Considers hybrid graphical representations that
combine node-link and treemap diagrams
for the purposes of tree visualization.
A theoretical analysis yields a taxonomy of various
potential hybrid combinations,
and a prototype system is implemented to experiment with these.
- pdf
and
follow-up notes (including errata)
- Official copy: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/INFOVIS.2005.12
- 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.
- BibTeX entry
|
|
|
6.
|
|
- Michael J. McGuffin, Ravin Balakrishnan (2005).
Interactive Visualization of Genealogical Graphs.
Proceedings of
IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (InfoVis) 2005,
pages 17-24 (8 pages).
[Acceptance rate: 31/114 or 27%]
- Summary:
A graph theoretic analysis of genealogical graphs
(or "family trees", as they're commonly called)
reveals why these graphs
are difficult to draw.
This motivates
some novel graphical representations,
including one based on a "dual-tree",
or combination of two trees.
Also described is
a novel interaction technique for
collapsing/expanding subtrees to any depth
with a single mouse drag.
- Quote from one reviewer:
"this paper [is] a nice
clean solution for a generally misunderstood problem. Yes - the
general usage of 'family tree' for this kind of graph is pervasive and
actively misleading, I'm delighted that this paper will be an
excellent citation to clear this point up.
The use of both layout and interaction to solve a graph drawing
problem makes this a central infovis topic."
- pdf
and
follow-up notes (including errata)
- Official copy: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/INFOVIS.2005.22
- movie
(43 MB zipped avi, decompresses to 126 MB;
cinepak encoded, 720x480, 10 fps, 4:59)
Animations in the prototype are smoother
than they appear in the movie,
due to the low frame rate of the movie.
- BibTeX entry
|
|
|
5.
|
|
- Michael J. McGuffin, Gord Davison, Ravin Balakrishnan (2004).
Expand-Ahead: A Space-Filling Strategy for Browsing Trees.
Proceedings of
IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (InfoVis) 2004,
pages 119-126 (8 pages).
[Acceptance rate: 27/89 or 30%]
- Summary:
Expand-ahead is a space-filling technique
by which some nodes of a tree are automatically expanded
to fill available screen space.
This reveals more of the tree to the user,
and allows the user to drill down the path to a leaf node
in fewer clicks,
by skipping over the levels that have been expanded for them.
- Quote from one reviewer:
"navigation is tightly coupled with visualization"
- pdf
and
follow-up notes (including errata)
- Official copy: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/INFOVIS.2004.21
- movie
(64 MB zipped avi, decompresses to 161 MB;
cinepak encoded, 700x480, 10 fps, 4:59)
Animations in the prototype are smoother
than they appear in the movie,
due to the low frame rate of the movie.
- demo
(windows executable)
While running the demo program,
use the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard
to change the font size interactively.
A README file is included with more details on
how to operate the demo.
- BibTeX entry
|
|
|
4.
|
|
- Michael J. McGuffin, m. c. schraefel (2004).
A Comparison of Hyperstructures:
Zzstructures, mSpaces, and Polyarchies.
Proceedings of
15th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia (HT) 2004,
pages 153-162 (10 pages).
[Acceptance rate: 24/104 or 23%.
Scored a unanimous, perfect 5/5 from all 5 reviewers.
Nominated for Best Paper award.
 Awarded "Special Research Distinction for
Excellent Presentation of Theoretical Concepts".
Quote from one reviewer:
"I never really comprehended ZigZag properly
until I read this paper"]
- Summary:
Builds on McGuffin's unpublished webpage
"A Graph-Theoretic Introduction to Ted Nelson's Zzstructures"
by considering, in addition to zzstructures,
a graph structure associated with schraefel's mSpace.
Readers may find section 3 to be a good first,
though necessarily incomplete, introduction to zzstructures.
- pdf
and
follow-up notes (including errata)
- Official copy: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1012807.1012852
- BibTeX entry
|
|
|
3.
|
|
- Michael J. McGuffin, Liviu Tancau, Ravin Balakrishnan (2003).
Using Deformations for Browsing Volumetric Data.
Proceedings of
IEEE Visualization (VIS) 2003,
pages 401-408 (8 pages).
[Acceptance rate: 63/192 or 33%.
Featured on back cover of proceedings.]
|
|
|
2.
|
|
- Michael McGuffin, Nicolas Burtnyk, Gordon Kurtenbach (2002).
FaST Sliders: Integrating Marking Menus and the Adjustment of
Continuous Values.
Proceedings of
Graphics Interface (GI) 2002,
pages 35-41 (7 pages).
[Acceptance rate: 25/96 or 26%.
Featured on front cover of proceedings.]
- Summary:
Describes a pop-up slider interaction technique, called
FaST Slider, for selecting and adjusting continuous values
in a fast, transient way.
Once a FaST Slider is invoked,
the user can either (1) drag length-wise
to adjust the slider's value, and then release to quickly dismiss
the slider, or (2) drag perpendicular to the slider to "post"
it (like a tear-off menu) allowing additional controls to be
accessed for fine tuning.
- pdf
- Official copy: http://www.graphicsinterface.org/proceedings/2002/
- demo (windows executable)
and associated readme file
- unpublished table comparing techniques (plain text)
- BibTeX entry
|
|
|
1.
|
|
- Michael McGuffin, Ravin Balakrishnan (2002).
Acquisition of Expanding Targets.
Proceedings of
ACM Conference
on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2002,
pages 57-64 (8 pages).
Also in
CHI Letters 4(1).
[Acceptance rate: 61/409 or 15%.]
|
|
|
|
|
|
- Conference Contests:
|
|
|
1.
|
|
- Michael J. McGuffin (2006).
Winning entry to the Contest of the
International Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD) 2006,
in the Theoretical Graph Competition category.
[Tied for First Place with another entry submitted by a team of four people.]
|
|
|
|
|
|
- Miscellaneous Publications:
|
|
|
2.
|
|
- Michael John McGuffin (2007).
An Investigation of Issues and Techniques in
Highly Interactive Computational Visualization.
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Thesis.
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
- Summary:
Builds on the three pieces of work
published by McGuffin and his co-authors
at VIS 2003, InfoVis 2004, and InfoVis 2005 respectively,
by presenting the three pieces of work as case studies
sharing a common set of high-level design goals,
by analyzing and comparing the issues encountered
in the case studies,
by developing a 6-dimensional taxonomy of parameters that
can be interactively manipulated in a visualization,
and by proposing a dozen design guidelines for future work.
- pdf
- BibTeX entry
|
|
|
1.
|
|
- Michael John McGuffin (2002).
Fitts' Law and Expanding Targets: An Experimental Study,
and Applications to User Interface Design.
Master of Science (M.Sc.) Thesis.
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
- Summary:
Builds on work published by McGuffin and Balakrishnan
at CHI 2002, paying more atttention to
design considerations for multiple expanding targets,
and introducing the notion of an
"Integrated Index of Difficulty" (IID).
Chapter 2 also contains some novel thought experiments designed
to deepen the reader's intuition for Fitts' law.
- pdf
and
follow-up notes (including errata)
- abstract, and summary in lay terms
- BibTeX entry
|
|
|
|
|
|
Related Material
- Expanding Targets:
- jextar
is a Java EXpanding TARget library initiated,
and under development, by Felix Dorner, as of 2004.
- Exscade
is a menu for Mozilla where menu items are expanded
in an attempt to facilitate selection.
Unpublished Projects / Ideas / Sketches
|
|
|
|
|
- an electromagnetic field simulator (2004)
- See also this Java applet for visualizing an electrostatic field
|
|
|
|
|
- a fluid simulator (2004)
- visualizing vector fields
|
|
|
|
|
- Genetic Programming Applied to Interactive Art (2004)
- Interactive Evolution of Reactive Graphics
|
|
|
|
|
- A Graph-Theoretic Introduction to Ted Nelson's Zzstructures (2004)
- regarding ZigZag
- BibTeX entry
|
|
|
|
|
- graphs in 3D (2003)
- an interactive simulation and visualization
|
|
|
|
|
- Properties of Sensory Channels (2002)
- a taxonomy
|
|
|
|
|
- Bibliography of Cursor Trajectory Prediction Techniques (2002)
- results of a literature search
|
|
|
|
|
- prototype face detector (2002)
- a computer vision course project
|
|
|
|
|
- Generalized Pixels (2001, 2002)
- painting behaviour on a canvas
|
|
|
|
|
- A Content-centric Model of Interaction (2002)
- regarding meta-interfaces
|
|
|
|
|
- cone trees (2001)
- an experiment in visualizing files
- references
|
|
|
|
|
- 3D modeller (2001)
- supporting 2-handed sculpting
|
|
|
|
|
- a file browser (2001)
- provides 2 simultaneous and alternate views of files
|
|
|
|
|
- 2-Handed Camera Navigation (2000)
- combines egocentric and object-centric metaphors
|
|
|
|
|
- sphere eversion (1998)
- turning a sphere inside-out
|
