MICHAEL NEBELING
I'm an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, where I created the Information Interaction Lab. We study the next generation of user interfaces, as well as the methods and tools to create them. Our current focus is on virtual, augmented, and mixed reality applications.
At U-M, I'm the XR Faculty Innovator-in-Residence advising the U-M wide XR Initiative, closely work with the Center for Academic Innovation on a new AR/VR MOOC specialization (my Teach-Out was just a first example), am faculty adviser for the student-led AR/VR initiative called ARI, am active in our HCI speaker seminar series called MISC, teach introductory and advanced AR/VR courses, and lead or contribute to several U-M and externally funded research projects.
My research contributes new techniques, tools, and technologies to make AR/VR interface development easier and faster. My vision is that anyone without 3D modeling, animation, or programming background can be an active participant in AR/VR design. I want AR/VR to become useful and effective interaction modes that bring real benefits to users taking into account their context, task, and preference. My earlier research established principles, methods, and tools for the design, development, and evaluation of multi-device and cross-device user interfaces. In a second thread of research, I demonstrated how to use crowdsourcing to create responsive web designs, to write a paper from a smartwatch, or to design gesture recognizers. My research has received eleven (11 :P) Best Paper Awards and Honorable Mentions at the premier HCI conferences. I regularly serve on the program committees of the ACM CHI and UIST conferences. I received a Disney Research Faculty Award and a Mozilla Research Award. I started my role as the XR Faculty Innovator-in-Residence with Academic Innovation's XR Initiative in 2019. I joined Michigan in 2016 after completing a postdoc in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and a PhD in the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich.
Watch Prof Neb Live: PhD in technical HCI on Twitch
I'm always interested in talking to students about doing a PhD in technical HCI. Below is a video of my Twitch stream in 2019 to go over a list of crowdsourced questions that
I received from prospective PhD students. I met a lot of great students this way, so I really enjoyed this. I will do it again in Fall 2020!
Research at the University of Michigan (2016-today)
Since starting the Michigan Information Interaction Lab in September 2016, I have taken my research on cross-device interfaces further and developed a new focus on AR/VR interfaces. Most notably, this work led to three papers at CHI 2018, two papers at CHI 2019, and three papers at CHI 2020. I am a key contributor to the XR Initiative (what started as AVMR Initiative), created an MR Teach-Out, developed two new courses focused on AR/VR design and development, and am working on a new XR MOOC specialization slated for launch in May 2020.
Selected AR/VR Research
- 360proto (CHI'19 paper): a 360 paper prototyping tool to rapidly create AR/VR prototypes from paper and bring them to life on AR/VR devices based on a set of emerging paper prototyping templates specifically for AR/VR immersive environments, AR marker overlays and face masks, VR controller models and menus, and 2D screens and HUDs
- ProtoAR (CHI'18 paper): a rapid physical-digital prototyping tool for mobile augmented reality apps that enables rapid transition from physical prototyping using paper wireframes and Play-doh models to digital prototyping based on multi-layer cross-device authoring and interactive capture tools
- XD-AR (EICS'18 paper): an augmented reality platform that we are developing for multi-user multi-device augmented reality experiences that allow users to "edit" the physical world in realtime
- 360Anywhere (EICS'18 paper): a platform enabling multi-user collaboration scenarios using augmented reality projections of 360 video streams
Please find out more on the Information Interaction Lab web site.
Research at Carnegie Mellon University (2015-2016)
Using my Swiss NSF mobility grant at CMU, I investigated ways of orchestrating multiple devices and crowds to enable complex information seeking, sensemaking and productivity tasks on small mobile and wearable devices. I also contributed to the Google IoT project led by CMU. This work led to three papers at ACM CHI 2016:
- WearWrite (CHI'16 paper, CHI'16 talk, UIST'15 demo, tech report on arXiv): a wearable interface enabling smartwatch users to orchestrate crowd workers on more powerful devices to complete writing tasks on their behalf
- XDBrowser (CHI'16 paper, CHI'16 talk, CHI'17 paper, CHI'17 talk): a new cross-device web browser that I used to elicit 144 multi-device web page designs for five popular web interfaces leading to seven cross-device web page design patterns
- Snap-To-It (CHI'16 paper): a mobile app allowing users to opportunistically interact with appliances in multi-device environments simply by taking a picture of them
Research at ETH Zurich (2009-2015)
Beyond Responsive Design
- XCML (WWW journal article): a domain-specific language that tightly integrates context-aware concepts and multi-dimensional adaptivity mechanisms using context matching expressions based on a formally-defined context algebra
- jQMetrics (CHI'11 paper, jQMetrics on GitHub): an evaluation tool for web developers and designers to analyze web page layout and perform measurements along a set of empirically derived metrics
Adaptation to Touch and Multi-touch
- jQMultiTouch (EICS'12 paper, jQMultiTouch on GitHub): jQuery-like toolkit and rapid prototyping framework for multi-device/multi-touch web interfaces providing a unified method for the specification of gesture-based multi-touch interactions
- W3Touch (CHI'13 paper): an evaluation tool for web designers to assess the usability of web interfaces on touch devices as well as a toolkit for automating the adaptation process to different touch device contexts based on simple usability metrics
Crowdsourcing Design and Evaluation
- CrowdAdapt (EICS'13 paper): a web site plugin for crowdsourcing adaptations for additional viewing conditions not considered in the original design
- CrowdStudy (EICS'13 paper): a toolkit and general framework for recruiting crowds as test users and guiding them through asynchronous remote web site usability evaluations
User-Defined Multimodal Interactions
- Kinect Browser (ITS'14 paper): a new multimodal web browsing system designed based on a replication of Morris's Web on the Wall guessability study
- Kinect Analysis (EICS'15 paper): both a method and a tool for recording, managing, visualizing, analyzing and sharing user-defined multimodal interaction sets based on Kinect
Cross-Device Interfaces
- MultiMasher (WISE'14 paper): a rapid prototyping tool for cross-device applications supporting mashing up multiple web applications and devices and integrating them into a new cross-device user experience
- XDStudio (CHI'14 paper): an authoring environment for cross-device user interfaces supporting interactive development on multiple devices based on a combination of simulated authoring and on-device authoring
- XDKinect (EICS'14 paper): a toolkit for developing cross-device user interfaces and interactions using Kinect to mediate interactions between multiple devices and users
Personal Information Management and Cloud Storage
- PIM Light (AVI'14 paper): a study on Adobe Photoshop Lightroom developing the process of engineering personal information management tools by example
- MUBox (CHI'15 paper): a system introducing multi-user aware extensions for working in teams on top of personal cloud storage solutions such as Dropbox
Selected Publications
For the full list of publications, please check Google Scholar and DBLP.
Contact
You can reach me by email via nebeling@umich.edu.
If you are interested in my work, please feel free to follow me on Twitter @michinebeling.
News and Events
CHI 2020 Co-organized our workshop on ethics of mixed reality. Also published pages on our MRAT and XRDirector projects.
April Attended XR Midwest and joined a talk with Jeremy Nelson on teaching and learning with XR at scale. Thanks to the organizers from ARI!
March MRAT and a study on key barriers to entry for novice AR/VR creators I co-authored with friends from Canada both won a Best Paper Award at CHI. Now you're cooking!
February Interviewed many great prospective PhD students. Made two offers. Can't wait to start working with them!
January Started producing my XR MOOC slated for launch in May 2020. I'm very excited to share my experience from my four years of research and teaching in AR/VR at U-M.
2019
December
• Three papers conditionally accepted to CHI 2020:
XRDirector (a role-based collaborative immersive authoring tool),
MRAT (mixed reality analytics toolkit),
and an interview study with 21 participants on key barriers for AR/VR creators. Aloha!
• Selected as a finalist for MTRAC funding, Michigan's translational research grant, to take some of my AR/VR innovations and create an AR/VR design platform.
November
• Twitch Office Hours: Doing a PhD in technical HCI (ask
your questions here)
• MIT HCI Seminar talk: "Prototyping Mixed Reality experiences."
• MUM conference keynote: "Making Mixed Reality a thing that designers do and users want."
October
• Won't make it to UIST :-(
• Participating as one of only eight selected teams for U-M's Celebrate Invention
event, showcasing 360proto (will be released soon!) and other technologies created in my lab.
• Won Best Paper Award at CHI Play for our iGYM project with Roland Graf.
September Aloha, CHI 2020! Apart from a few paper submissions, I also community-sourced two Spotify playlists: one for authors, and one for reviewers. Check them out, they are really great!
August Went kayaking with the lab! :-)
July
• Attending SIGGRAPH 2019, my first! Happy to receive the Disney Research|Studios Award.
Thanks to Markus Gross and Bob Sumner for the nice little ceremony!
• Had a great time at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit! Thanks to Jaime Teevan for inviting me.
• Gave a talk at Adobe Research on Mixed Reality Prototyping. Got very useful feedback! Thanks to my host, Wilmot Li.
June
• iGYM paper accepted to CHI PLAY 2019, wohoo team!
• Invited to give the opening keynote at MUM 2019.
• Attended the UIST 2019 PC. That was a lot of fun! All my papers got rejected :P
May
• Had a great trip to Seattle visiting friends at UW CSE, iSchool, and HCDE! Gave a DUB
seminar on Prototyping Mixed Reality Experiences.
• Also met UW Reality Lab folks.
• Attended CHI 2019 in Glasgow! Held my CHI 2019 AR/VR prototyping course.
April UIST submissions! Finished first time teaching my more technical AR/VR course. Had a lot of fun with A-Frame and Unity!
January Got a Disney Research Faculty Award. This award will enable me to implement and test my XR workbench concept. I'm excited!
2018
December Two papers conditionally accepted to CHI 2019: one on my 360proto tool for making AR/VR interfaces from paper and the other is a conceptual framework for classifying mixed reality experiences developed based on expert interviews and a literature survey, led by my former postdoc, Max Speicher. Also, my CHI 2019 AR/VR prototyping course was accepted.
November Got a Mozilla Research Grant for a next-generation AR/VR browser. This award will support several new students joining my lab next semester! Joined UIST 2019 PC. Looking forward to visiting Stanford next summer and to your submissions!
October Attending parts of UIST, AWE, and ISMAR in Germany! Walter Lasecki is going to present our paper on Arboretum at UIST and I'll present The Trouble with AR/VR Authoring Tools at ISMAR.
September New semester starting. Teaching interaction design and my new AR/VR course! Joined the CHI 2019 PC on the Engineering Interactive Systems & Technologies subcommittee.
August Workshop paper The Trouble with AR/VR Authoring Tools accepted at ISMAR 2018.
July Became EICS 2019 Technical Chair. Max Speicher completed his postdoc in my lab. Good luck for the future!
June Visiting ETH Zurich and giving a talk on our AR research. Attending UIST 2018 PC meeting. Learned a lot, and had some fun. XDBrowser related paper for improving web accessibility got in. Brian presenting XD-AR and 360Anywhere at EICS 2018.
May Visiting Disney Studios! Also visiting Disney Research LA and giving a talk on our AR research. 360Anywhere accepted at EICS 2018.
April Wrapping up UIST 2018 submissions. Attending CHI 2018. XD-AR accepted at EICS 2018.
March Giving an Ignite UX talk on ProtoAR. Launching my AR Teach-Out. Giving a mini lecture on AR/VR to our incoming MSI students. Rob and Josh will join me as PhD students! Welcome to U-M!
February Visiting Oculus Research (now Facebook Reality Labs) and giving a talk on our AR research. Also, excited to join the UIST 2018 PC!
January Two AR/VR course proposals accepted! Going to start teaching the AR/VR intro course in Fall 2018. Also, started filming our AR Teach-Out. Going to launch in March.
2017
December Three papers accepted at CHI 2018! New grants from Ford and Masco around AR/VR projects.
November Started developing two new courses on Augmented/Virtual/Mixed Reality. There was also a first article about it in the Michigan Record.
October My proposal for an AR Teach-Out accepted. Looking forward to producing it over the next few months! I was also on the PhD thesis committee of Maria Husmann at ETH Zurich. Excellent cross-device research!
September In a great team effort, my lab submitted six papers to CHI 2018. Thanks everyone! Here's a showreel of our summer research. I'm very proud of this work with my students.
August Became a Co-PI in a Lenovo sponsored project around AR interfaces.
June Getting ready for my four summer interns. And, back on the CHI Engineering PC for 2018. Looking forward to your submissions!
May CHI 2017 in Denver with Max, Brian, and former CMU colleague, Nikola Banovic. LOL! Presented XDBrowser 2.0 and my #HCI.Tools position paper on Playing the Tricky Game of Toolkits Research.
March/April Max Speicher joining my lab as Research Fellow, Brian Hall as PhD Student, and Erin McAweeney as REMS Fellow. Exciting! Also won an ESSI grant!
February Invited to the #HCI.Tools workshop at CHI for my position paper Playing the Tricky Game of Toolkits Research.
January Teaching SI 582 Intro to Interaction Design this spring.
2016
December XDBrowser 2.0 accepted at CHI 2017.
November Giving XDUI tutorial and attending RoomAlive toolkit tutorial at ISS'16. Meeting my former ETH Zurich colleagues Fabrice Matulic and Maria Husmann. A lot of fun!
September Starting as Assistant Professor at UMSI. Setting up the Information Interaction Lab. Teaching SI 482 Interaction Design Studio. A first!
August Wrapping up my Swiss NSF Advanced.Postdoc Mobility fellowship at CMU. Had a great time. Many new friends for life. Thanks for the support!
June Organizing the EICS'16 XDUI workshop (proposal). XDUI tutorial accepted at ISS'16.
May Accepted Assistant Professor position at UMSI. Attended CHI'16 in San Jose, CA. Participated in microproductivity and cross-surface workshops. Led Systems@CHI lunch. Chaired end-user programming session. Presented WearWrite (video) and XDBrowser (video).
January-May Invited talks at TU Munich, Yale, Virginia Tech, Indiana-Purdue, UMSI, UW CSE (video), Adobe Research, and Google.
April Joined HCOMP'16 PC.
March Bluewave accepted at EICS'16.
January Accepted at CHI'16 microproductivity and cross-surface workshops.
2015
December Attended CHI'16 PC meeting in San Jose, CA. Three papers accepted: WearWrite, XDBrowser, Snap-To-It. Also received a new Swiss NSF research grant.
November Attended UIST'15 in Charlotte, NC. Presented WearWrite demo.
October Joined EICS'16 PC.
September CHI'16!!!
August WearWrite demo accepted at UIST'15. Joined IUI'16 and AVI'16 PCs.
July Published WearWrite tech report.
June Co-chaired EICS'15 and co-organized XDUI workshop. Joined CHI'16 PC.
May Attended CHI'15. Received Honorable Mention for MUBox. Participated in mobile collocated interactions workshop and presented my SNSF project. Chaired session on multi-device interaction.
March Kinect Analysis and XDSession accepted at EICS'15.
February Started working at CMU HCII.
Acknowledgments
My work at Michigan is supported by the School of Information, the Office of Academic Innovation, and the Exercise & Sport Science Initiative. It is also externally sponsored by Microsoft, Google, Lenovo, Disney, Ford, and Masco.