Associate Professor in Physical Computing at the University College London. I am part of the Faculty of Engineering, Department of Computer Science and the Faculty of Brain Sciences. At the UCL Interaction Centre I work on projects in the research areas of ubiquitous computing, cross-device interaction, interactive surfaces, sensor-based systems, prototyping toolkits and physical user interfaces. I am co-author of the Sketching User Experiences Workbook (Morgan Kaufmann 2011) and Proxemic Interactions textbook (Morgan & Claypool 2015).

I received my PhD from the University of Calgary (Canada) working with Saul Greenberg at the Interactions Lab and GroupLab. Previously I worked with Abigail Sellen, Richard Banks, Alex Taylor, and Ken Hinckley at Microsoft Research in Cambridge and Redmond. Our research is funded by Microsoft, Intel, BBC and EPSRC.

News and updates

November 2018 | Paper at ISS '18 conference in Tokyo

We will present out work on the EagleView visualisation tool at the ACM ISS conference in Tokyo, Japan, between November 25-28. The project is about a video analysis tool for visualising and querying spatial interactions of people and devices.

October 2018 | TOCHI article about Technological Support for Physical Rehabilitation

Our article about "How Can Affect Be Detected and Represented in Technological Support for Physical Rehabilitation?" was accepted at ACM TOCHI (about work of my co-advised PhD student Temitayo Olugbade). The article will appear in the journal later this year.

February 2018 | Papers at CHI '18 in Montreal

Five of our recent projects have been accepted to the program at the CHI conference in Montreal, Canada. We will present the following projects: "SurfaceConstellations: A Modular Hardware Platform for Ad-Hoc Reconfigurable Cross-Device Workspaces", "Inclusive Computing in Special Needs Classrooms: Designing for All", "Deep Thermal Imaging: Proximate Material Type Recognition in the Wild through Deep Learning of Spatial Surface Temperature Patterns", "Investigating Practices When Using an Overview Device in Collaborative Multi-Surface Trip-Planning" and "Evaluation Strategies for HCI Toolkit Research".

April 2017 | Publication at CHI '17 in Denver

Our work on the EagleSense platform was accepted at ACM CHI, and we'll present our work at the conference in Denver, CO. I'm also giving the course on Sketching User Experiences at the conference.

January 2016 | Full paper, workshops and demo at CHI '16 in San Jose

The research on "PhysiKit: Data Engagement Through Physical Ambient Visualizations in the Home" was just accepted as full paper at CHI, and will be presented in May at the conference in San Jose. I'm also involved in co-organising three workshops (1) Cross-Surface: Challenges and Opportunities for 'bring your own device' in the wild, (2) Advances in DIY Health and Wellbeing, and (3) Proxemic Mobile Collocated Interactions. We also have a demo about CodeMe and a SIG with the title "Mind the Gap: A SIG on bridging the gap in research on body sensing, body perception and multisensory feedback".

July 2015 | Papers at MobileHCI, ACII and INTERACT '15

David's work on Proxemic Controls was just accepted to MobileHCI, presented in Copenhagen. Our group will also present work at this year's INTERACT conference: the ProxemicFlow paper is work done in collaboration with Jo Vermeulen from Birmingham, and the 'Excite' paper describes techniques for group collaboration analysis done with Tony Tang in Calgary. Temi's work on 'Pain Level Recognition using Kinematics and Muscle Activity for Physical Rehabilitation in Chronic Pain' was also just accepted at the ACII conference.

April 2015 | New book: Proxemic Interaction - From Theory to Practice

I'm happy to announce that the Proxemic Interactions book written together with Saul Greenberg was just published through Morgan & Claypool publishers. In case your university has a subscription for the Synthesis Series from Morgan & Claypool then you can easily download the PDF version of the book from this link.

January 2015 | New MSR PhD Student and Research Associate

Frederik Brudy is joining our group in January to begin his PhD studies co-funded by Microsoft Research Cambridge and UCL. Also in January, Steven Houben is starting as a Research Associate at Intel ICRI Cities to work with us. Welcome to London and UCL!

December 2014 | Two papers and one course at CHI 2015

Two of our research publications are conditionally accepted at CHI '15 in Seoul/South-Korea. The first paper is about WatchConnect, a toolkit for cross-device smartwatch applications and is work done in collaboration with Steven Houben from ITU Copenhagen. The second submission is called "As Light as your Footsteps", and is investigating altering walking sounds to change perceived body weight, emotional state and gait, research conducted by Ana Tajadura-Jim�nez and collaborators at UCL. You can find out more about this project in the New Scientist article. Our Sketching User Experiences course is also accepted to the CHI program, which I will co-organize together with Saul Greenberg.

November 2014 | Spatially-aware Displays Research at ITS 2014

At the ITS conference in Dresden, Roman Raedle presented our work on HuddleLamp - spatially-aware displays facilitating ad-hoc federations of devices. We also won the Best Demo award at the conference. Find out all about the project at huddlelamp.org.

June 2014 | Slow-Motion Feedback paper at DIS 2014

Jo Vermeulen will present our collaborative work on the design of Slow-Motion Feedback at the ACM DIS '14 conference in Vancouver. At the conference, we'll also participate in the Social NUI workshop.

September 2013 | Lecturer in Physical Computing at UCL

On September 1st I started my new faculty position as Lecturer in Physical Computing at the University College London. I look forward to work on exciting ubicomp projects with my new colleagues at the UCL Interaction Centre and Computer Science.

July 2013 | PhD defence

On July 2nd I successfully defended my PhD research about Proxemic Interactions! Thank you to my advisor Saul Greenberg and all members of the Interactions Lab: I had an amazing time in the past five years here in Calgary.

June 2013 | Two tutorials accepted at ITS 2013

Our tutorials about Proxemic Interactions and Sketching the User Experience are accepted at the ACM ITS conference 2013 in St. Andrews. This conference will be co-located with ACM UIST, where I help organizing the Student Innovation Contest (this year with exciting new technology from Microsoft - we'll update more information on the UIST website soon).

May 2013 | Co-authored publications at GRAND and MobileHCI

Two papers of our co-supervised intern Martin Weigel at the iLab got accepted at ACM MobileHCI (projector toolkit, PDF) and GRAND (focus + context interactions, PDF). Martin explored the application of proxemic interaction concepts to people's use of small mobile projectors.

April 2013 | Committee member for UIST, MobileHCI, TEI

I will help with the organization of a few upcoming conferences as part of the following committees: UIST '13 Associate Chair and Student Innovation Contest co-chair, MobileHCI '13 Publication co-chair, and TEI '14 Studio co-chair. I hope to meet you at these events.

September 2012 | Paper and tutorial accepted at ITS 2012

Our publication about the Gradual Engagement Design Pattern got accepted at the ACM ITS conference 2012 in Boston. At this conference I will also present the Sketching User Experiences tutorial (find material for this tutorial on our sketching user experiences website).

June 2012 | Paper accepted at UIST 2012

The GroupTogether paper (exploring cross-device interaction via micro-mobility and F-formations) that I co-authored with Ken Hinckley and Saul Greenberg about my research project at Microsoft Research just got accepted at UIST 2012. It will be an exciting conference in Boston later this year.

May 2012 | Two research papers at MobileHCI 2012

Two of our research papers have been accepted at MobileHCI and will be presented September 2012 in San Francisco: Extending a Mobile Device's Interaction Space through Body-Centric Interaction. (PDF) and The Fat Thumb: Using the Thumb's Contact Size for Single-Handed Mobile Interaction. (PDF)

January 2012 | Sample chapter from Sketching Workbook

A sample chapter of our "Sketching User Experiences Workbook" appeared in the ACM interactions magazine: The Narrative Storyboard: telling a story about use and context over time (PDF).

December 2011 | Sketching User Experiences: The Workbook

The book "Sketching User Experiences: The Workbook" (Morgan-Kaufmann) that I co-authored with Saul Greenberg, Sheelagh Carpendale, and Bill Buxton, just became available on Amazon and Elsevier.

October 2011 | Proximity Toolkit at UIST 2011

Our paper about the Proximity Toolkit (prototyping proxemic interactions) has been conditionally accepted to UIST 2011. The conference is in Santa Barbara, California - and right after fly to Seattle to work at Microsoft Research. It's an exciting year!

September 2011 | Paper accepted at INTERACT 2011

At INTERACT 2011 in Portugal we will present our work about the Continuous Interaction Space - interaction techniques above and around interactive surfaces.