My HCI work focuses on interaction design, including incorporating novel interaction devices, eye-tracking, pen+touch, and virtual/augmented reality into interactive scenarios to make systems more responsive to user needs and environmental context. I envision a future where underspecified interactions are resolved by machine learning and sensor systems that can accurately ‘guess’ a user’s intent and resolve these ambiguities through observing implicit interaction signals.

My information visualization research program as Canada Research Chair in Linguistic Information Visualization bridges the areas of Computational Linguistics and Information Visualization, with a particular focus on document content visualization, using information visualization to reveal uncertainty within linguistic data, and understanding relationships among linguistic datasets. I also create novel interaction techniques and guidance for information visualization, and I am investigating visual ways to explain the outcomes of machine learning and to communicate about uncertainty within AI systems. My publications, including the DocuBurst document content visualization system, have helped to open a new and thriving area of research in “Linguistic Visualization”. My work has been published in many venues, including IEEE VIS, ACM CHI, ACM ITS, EuroVis, and IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, as well as being featured in popular media such as the Toronto Star, CBS Sunday Morning, the New York Times Magazine, and CBC Radio.