Orit Shaer
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Wellesley College




oshaer (at) wellesley.edu
SCI E108
Wellesley College
Wellesley, MA

Bio

Publications

Teaching

Useful Links

Photos


 




Bio

Orit Shaer is the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Wellesley College. She also serves as a co-director of the Media Arts and Sciences program. Her research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), focuses on developing interaction techniques and software tools for next generation user interfaces. Orit received her PhD and MSc in Computer Science from Tufts University, where she worked with Professor Robert Jacob. She has been a visiting researcher in the Design Machine Group at the University of Washington and in the University College London Interaction Center. Previously, she served as a system engineer at Orbotech Ltd, where she led an interdisciplinary development team.

Orit is a member of ACM, IEEE Computer Society and ACM SIGCHI. She served as a Program Co-Chair of TEI 2010, the international conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction. She was a guest editor of a special issue of TOCHI on User Interface Description Languages for Next Generation User Interfaces. Orit was also a co-organizer of the CHI 2008 workshop on User Interface Description Language for Next Generation User Interfaces.

News

September 2010, our research proposal on "Enhancing Genomic Exploration through Reality-Based Interaction" has been awarded funding from the NSF IIS division.

August 2010, the WCHCI Lab summer research students shared their results with the community at a poster session celebrating the end of the Wellesley College Summer Research program.Click here to read about summer research topics at Wellesley.

August 2010, our research on increasing engagement in museums through social mobile applications is featured in the Boston Globe. Click here to read the article.

May 2010, CS220 HCI students presented their projects - iPhone applications for the Wellesley community. Click here to see the projects.

March 2010, a survey paper about Tangible User Interfaces: Past, Present, and Future Directions that I co-authored with Eva Hornecker was accepted for publication in the journal of Foundations and Trends of Human-Computer Interaction.

February 2010, Our paper on Leveraging Gesture and Voice Data to Improve Group Brainstorming for accepted as a Work in Progress paper to the ACM CHI 2010 conference.

January 2010, Our paper on G-nome Surfer: a Tabletop Interface for Collaborative Exploration of Genomic Data was accepted to the ACM CHI 2010 conference.

December 2009, CS349 TUI students presented their projects on the Microsoft Surface and LilyPad Arduino. Click here to see the projects.

July 2009, Our paper on a Specification Paradigm for the Design and Implementation of Tangible User Interfaces was accepted for publication in the ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI).

March 2009, Honda R&D sponsors a User Interface Design Competetion for Wellesley Students enrolled in CS249: Human-Computer Interaction.

January 2009, I serve as a Program Co-Chair for TEI 2010,the international conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction.

August 2008, I am co-editting an ACM TOCHI special issue on User Interface Description Languages for Next Generation User Interfaces, with Rob Jacob, Mark Green, and Kris Luyten. Submissions are due November 7th 2008.

July 2008, Our paper on Teaching Tangible Interaction in Practice will appear in AIEDAM Special Issue on Tangible Interaction for Design , Spring 2009.

Teaching

CS320: Tangible User Interfaces (Fall 2009, Fall 2010)

CS 111: Computer Programming and Problem Solving (Spring 2010, Fall 2010)

CS220: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)(Spring 2010, Spring 2011)

 

Useful Links

For Students
Applying to CS Graduate Programs
How to Be a Good Graduate Student
The Art of Doing a PhD
PhD Comics

Human Computer Interaction
BostonCHI Labs
SIGCHI
HCI resources
HCI network
Boston CHI

Tangible User Interfaces
Tangible Interfaces
Tangible Interfaces Wiki
Tangible Media Group
International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction

Women in Computer Science
CRA-W
Anita Borg Institute
Grace Hopper Celebration
Women in Computer Science, NY Times, April 2007


Research

Emerging interaction styles such as tangible computing, gesture-based interfaces and virtual reality, extend beyond the desktop paradigm and offer a more natural, intuitive and accessible form of interaction. With a broad range of application-domains, including scientific visualization, energy management and education, these interfaces show a potential to significantly enhance the way people interact and leverage digital information.

Through my research I seek to contribute to next generation human-computer interaction by developing frameworks, software tools and specification techniques that aid their design, implementation and evaluation. In addition I am investigating the strengths and limitations of next generation interfaces by building interactive systems that leverage users' spatial, social, and kinesthetic skills.

Check out the Wellesley College HCI Lab to learn about current research projects.

Selected Publications

G-nome Surfer: a Tabletop Interface for Collaborative Exploration of Genomic Data



Shaer, O. , Kol, G., Strait, M., Fan, C., Grevet, C., and Elfenbein, S., ACM CHI 2010.

A Specification Paradigm for the Design and Implementation of Tangible User Interfaes

TUIML

Shaer, O. Jacob, R.J.K., ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Vol. 16, No. 4, November 2009.


Tangible User Interface Laboratory: Teaching Tangible Interaction Design in Practice

Shaer, O., Horn, M.S., Jacob, R.J.K., AIEDAM Special Issue on Tangible Interaction for Design , Spring 2009, Vol. 23, No. 2.


Reality Based Interaction: A Framework for Post-WIMP Interfaces


Jacob, R.J.K., Girouard, A., Hirshfield, L.M., Horn, M.S. Shaer, O., Solovey, E.T., and Zigelbaum J., ACM CHI 2008.


The Tangible Video Editor: Collaborative Video Editting with Active Tokens

Zigelbaum, J., Horn, M.S., Shaer, O., Jacob, R.J.K., TEI 2007.

Full Publication List

 

  Last updated on September 2, 2010.