PhD Seminar • Human-Computer Interaction • Generating Novel Document Representations Informed by Theory

Please note: This PhD seminar will take place online.

Damien Masson, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

Supervisors: Professors Daniel Vogel, Géry Casiez, Sylvain Malacria

Representations used in documents do not leverage our knowledge of cognitive science and how humans read, understand, and learn. There are many reasons for this, most have been made irrelevant thanks to recent technological progress. In this seminar, I highlight how well-known theories can help inform and generate better representations in documents. Specifically, I propose a design space and demonstrate its generative power through four projects.

The four projects help readers by transforming existing representations: text is turned into visual and interactive representations; statistics are converted into values familiar to readers; charts are reverse-engineered to recover data and support reuse; and static figures are made interactive. Results from user studies and simulations show the benefits of these novel representations to enhance the reading experience.

To attend this PhD seminar on Zoom, please go to https://uwaterloo.zoom.us/j/92576073250.