Research
My research focuses on how people perceive and interact with visual information. I am currently developing tools to leverage group activity around visualizations in order to better support collaborative visual analytics. By increasing the transparency of analytic provenance in social environments, we can grow our understanding of insight processes and enable analysts to learn from the analytic activities of their peers.
I presented some of this work in the 2011 VisWeek Doctoral Colloquium in Providence, RI.
Visualizing hyperlingual Wikipedia
Wikipedia has been shown to exhibit considerable diversity in content and coverage across its many language editions. We are currently developing Omnipedia, a system that highlights the similarities and differences that exist among Wikipedia language editions, and makes salient information that is unique to each language as well as that which is shared more widely.
Bao, P., Hecht, B., Carton, S., Quaderi, M., Horn, M. and Gergle, D. (2012). Omnipedia: Bridging the Wikipedia Language Gap. To appear in Proceedings of CHI 2012. pdf
Smart phones for business
Despite the rapid innovation of smart phones in recent years, there remain many barriers to smart phone use in business environments. Focusing on both objective measures and subjective beliefs surrounding task performance on smart phones and traditional computers, we provide a snapshot of smart phone use that helps to elucidate these barriers. We also propose design considerations to overcoming these barriers.
Bao, P., Pierce, J., Whittaker, S., & Zhai, S. (2011). Smart phone use by non-mobile business users. Proceedings of MobileHCI 2011. pdf
Brainstorming and creativity support tools
Group brainstorming is a common practice in organizations that often suffers from a lack of focus and unreliable production of quality ideas. While many creativity support tools have been built to support events during a brainstorm, we introduce a tool to encourage small amounts of individual preparation just prior to a brainstorm. The results of this preparation are then revealed and visualized to the entire group. We are currently refining the tool and will be presenting preliminary findings at CHI 2010.
Bao, P., Gerber, E., Gergle, D., & Hoffman, D. (2010). Momentum: Getting and staying on topic before the brainstorm. Proceedings of CHI 2010. pdf
Large displays and language use
Understanding the relationship between visual context and language use is critical for developing multimodal interfaces that support natural forms of interaction. In these studies, we isolate one component of visual context - the physical size of the visual display - and examine its influence on spoken linguistic expressions. Results suggest that even subtle differences in technological factors, such as display size, can affect how people perceive and interact with visual information. I hope to use the findings of this work to inform the design of interfaces across multiple devices.
Bao, P. & Gergle, D. (2009). What’s “this” you say? The use of local references on distant displays. Proceedings of CHI 2009. pdf
