Michael Wybrow
I am working 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 PhD thesis was accepted in April 2008.
My PhD supervisors were
Kim Marriott,
Peter Stuckey,
Linda McIver, and
Tim Dwyer.
My research interests are User Interface usability, and constraint-based
authoring and exploration of diagrams and graphs.
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.
Research interests
I'm specifically interested in the usability of tools for working with constraint-based layout within interactive diagram editors. Constrained diagrams are diagrams in which there are constraints on the diagram which we wish to preserve while working with the diagram. These 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. Existing diagram editors do offer some layout tools and connectors. Often these are quite basic. Certainly a lot more is possible. My interest is in the usability of these tools. I'm interested in how they should be described to the user (i.e. the metaphor), the interface they should be given to interact with them, 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.
Publications
Journal Articles:
- 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, to appear 2008. - 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:
- Tim Dwyer, Kim Marriott, and Michael Wybrow.
Topology Preserving constrained graph layout.
In Proceedings of 16th International Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD'08), to appear 2008. - 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), to appear 2008. - 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
Michael Wybrow
Clayton School of Information
Technology
Monash University
Victoria 3800
Australia
Office: Room 133A, Building 63, Clayton Campus
Phone: +61 3 9905 2479
