I work as a Research Fellow at
Monash University in Melbourne,
Australia.
I am a member of the
Adaptive Diagrams and Documents Group, which is in turn part of the
Center
for Research into Intelligent Systems (CRIS).
My research interests include geometric layout constraints, software usability, graphical user interfaces, text and diagram layout, connector routing, and information visualisation.
I am the primary author of the constraint-based diagram editor Dunnart, and an author and maintainer of the Adaptagrams constraint-based layout libraries.
Unfortunately, placement and layout tools in most existing diagram editors have only a one-off effect. Diagram authors are forced to use these tools repeatedly to manually maintain placement and layout relationships to suit the desired drawing style. These relationships (or constraints) might be things like an alignment or distribution relationship or connectors between objects, each of which need to be maintained as the user modifies and interacts with the diagram. Using constraint-solving techniques it is now possible to provide tools for automatically maintaining such geometric constraints during editing. My interest and research focus lies with the usability of such tools and techniques within interactive diagram editors. I'm interested in the metaphor that should be used to describe them to the user, the interface they should be given, and the behaviour that these tools should have during interaction.
Part of my research has been examining the usefulness of placement tools (such as alignment or distribution) in existing diagram editors (once-off, one-way constraints). I has evaluated the usability of these and compared them with new versions based on multi-way constraints, written to address some of the usability issues found with existing tools.
I have looked techniques for doing fast incremental object-avoiding connector routing for use in interactive editors. We do this by dynamically maintaining a visibility graph and using using a penalty function to generate routes that with desired aesthetic properties.
My current research involves integrating constraint-based graph layout with interactive diagram editors. We have designed a continuous network layout model where the diagram editor constantly improves the layout while it is being edited. It maintains constraints placed on the layout by the user, and preserves the topology of the layout—preventing shapes from crossing other shapes or connectors. The user is able to manually alter the topology by holding down the ALT key, to pause the automatic layout.
All of my research is implented in Dunnart, a prototype constraint-based diagram editor. Dunnart was written as a testbed for both prototyping new tools and well as conducting usability testing and benchmarking.
I am also a member of the Casual Robotics Group. We build and program LEGO robots in our spare time, and we are currently looking at acquiring and working with a swarm of small autonomous robots.
Journal Articles:
Refereed Conference Papers:
Dissertations:
Software:
Dr. Michael Wybrow
Clayton School of Information
Technology
Monash University
Victoria 3800
Australia
Office: Room 133A, Building 63, Clayton Campus
Phone: +61 3 9905 2479