Michael Wybrow
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.
Research interests
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.
Other interests
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.
Publications
Journal Articles:
-
Falk Schreiber, Tim Dwyer, Kim Marriott and Michael Wybrow.
A generic algorithm for layout of biological networks.
In BMC Bioinformatics 10(1): 375, BioMed Central, 2009 DOI - Tim Dwyer, Kim Marriott, Falk Schreiber, Peter J. Stuckey,
Michael Woodward, and Michael Wybrow.
Exploration of networks using overview+detail with constraint-based cooperative layout.
In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 14(6): 1293–1300, IEEE, 2008. DOI [PDF] - Michael Wybrow, Kim Marriott, Linda McIver, and Peter J. Stuckey.
Comparing Usability of One-Way and Multi-Way Constraints for Diagram Editing.
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 14(4): 19:1–38, ACM Press, 2008. DOI [PDF]
Refereed Conference Papers:
- Michael Wybrow, Kim Marriott and Peter J. Stuckey
Orthogonal connector routing
In Proceedings of 17th International Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD'09), to appear 2010. [PDF] - Mario Albrecht, Andreas Kerren, Karsten Klein, Oliver Kohlbacher,
Petra Mutzel, Wolfgang Paul, Falk Schreiber and Michael Wybrow
On open problems in biological network visualization
In Proceedings of 17th International Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD'09), to appear 2010. - Cameron Braganza, Kim Marriott, Peter Moulder, Michael Wybrow
and Tim Dwyer.
Scrolling behaviour with single- and multi-column layout.
In WWW '09: Proceedings of the 18th international conference on World Wide Web, pages 831–840. ACM Press, 2009. DOI [PDF] - Tim Dwyer, Kim Marriott, and Michael Wybrow.
Topology preserving constrained graph layout.
In Proceedings of 16th International Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD'08), LNCS 5417, pages 230–241. Springer-Verlag, 2009. DOI [PDF] - Tim Dwyer, Kim Marriott, and Michael Wybrow.
Dunnart: A constraint-based network diagram authoring tool.
In Proceedings of 16th International Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD'08), LNCS 5417, pages 420–431. Springer-Verlag, 2009. DOI [PDF] - Tim Dwyer, Kim Marriott, and Michael Wybrow.
Integrating Edge Routing into Force-Directed Layout.
In Proceedings of 14th International Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD'06), LNCS 4372, pages 8–19. Springer-Verlag, 2007. DOI [PDF] - Michael Wybrow, Kim Marriott, and Peter J. Stuckey.
Incremental Connector Routing.
In Proceedings of 13th International Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD'05), LNCS 3843, pages 446–457. Springer-Verlag, 2006. DOI [PDF] -
Michael Wybrow, Kim Marriott, Linda McIver, and Peter J. Stuckey.
The usefulness of constraints for diagram editing.
In Stephen Viller and Peta Wyeth, editors, OZCHI Proceedings, pages 192–201, Information Environments Program, University of Queensland, 2003. [PDF]
Dissertations:
- Michael Wybrow. Using semi-automatic layout to improve the usability of diagramming software. PhD thesis, Monash University, 2008. [PDF]
Software:
- libavoid - Fast, object-avoiding connector routing library.
- Dunnart - Prototype constraint-based diagram editor.
Contact details
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
