Dhruv Jain
PhD Student, CS
University of Washington
I am a third year PhD student in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. I work at the intersection of accessibility and AI, particularly to enhance sound awareness for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. My research work is published at top HCI venues such as CHI, ASSETS, and UIST and has received a best paper award and an honorable mention. I am advised by Prof. Jon Froehlich and Prof. Leah Findlater. Before starting my PhD, I completed by masters from MIT Media Lab, bachelors from IIT Delhi, and took a gap year to backpack 21 countries. Through publishing a critical reflection of my travel experiences as a hard of hearing individual, I introduced the unique method of auto-ethnography to the field of accessible computing. My biggest pride is the indoor navigation system for visually impaired users which was installed in Indian National Science Museum for two years. Besides professional life, I am a scuba instructor and I conduct DIY workshops—so far, 11 one-week workshops in six low-income countries, total 200+ students. Atleast two teams from these workshops have continued their projects and turned them into multinational companies.
Recent News
We're proud to announce that UW PhD Student and Makeability Lab Member Dhruv Jain's poster titled "Exploring Augmented Reality Approaches to Real-Time Captioning: An Autoethnographic Study" won the people's choice award in UW Allen School Annual Research Day yesterday! This is part of our larger research agenda on AR Captions Dhruv shares this award with HCDE student Bonnie Chinh, HCDE professor Leah Findlater, Gallaudet University Professor Raja Kushalnagar and CSE professor Jon Froehlich. Read the GeekWire new story here.
Oct 29, 2018 | Dhruv
We had a strong representation at ASSETS 2018 in Galway, Ireland- we presented three posters and two full papers. In pictures, see Dhruv Jain presenting his paper on Augmented Reality Captioning in Mobile Context, Lee Stearns presenting "Design of an Augmented Reality Magnification Aid for Low Vision Users" and Jon Froehlich with his poster "How does Urban Accessibility Change over Time"
Jul 13, 2018 | Dhruv
We’re going to Galway, Ireland! The Makeability Lab has two full papers and three posters at ASSETS’18. UMD PhD student Lee Stearns led a project entitled Design of an Augmented Reality Magnification Aid for Low Vision Users and explores augmented reality solutions for magnifying text for low-vision users. Lee also had a poster paper accepted entitled Applying Transfer Learning to Recognize Clothing Patterns Using a Finger-Mounted Camera. Both projects are in collaboration with UW HCDE professor Leah Findlater. UW CSE PhD student Dhruv Jain led a project entitled Towards Accessible Conversations in a Mobile Context for People Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing and examines real-time captioning solutions for people who are DHH and on-the-move. This work is a collaboration among UW CSE (Dhruv Jain, Jon Froehlich), UW HCDE (Rachel Franz, Leah Findlater) and Gallaudet University in DC (Raja Kushalnagar). The Project Sidewalk team also got two posters in: A Feasibility Study of Using Google Street View and Computer Vision to Track the Evolution of Urban Accessibility , which was based on Ladan Najafizdeh's MS thesis work and Interactively Modeling and Visualizing Neighborhood Accessibility at Scale: An Initial Study of Washington DC , which was led by undergrad extraordinaire Anthony Li along with Manaswi Saha).
Jun 26, 2018 | Dhruv
Makeability lab member Dhruv Jain receives travel award from UW Paul G Allen School of Computer Science to attend Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing in September 2018. The Tapia conference is the premier venue to acknowledge, promote and celebrate diversity in computing. Congratulations Dhruv!
Jun 09, 2018 | Dhruv
Our CSE PhD Student Dhruv Jain presented a poster at ACM DIS 2018 in Hong Kong! The poster is entitled Exploring Augmented Reality Approaches to Real-Time Captioning: A Preliminary Autoethnographic Study and examines Dhruv’s experiences with using real-time captioning on HoloLens in lectures and group meetings. This work is a collaboration among UW CSE (Dhruv Jain, Jon Froehlich), UW HCDE (Bonnie Chinh, Leah Findlater) and Gallaudet University (Raja Kushalnagar).
Projects
Publications
SoundWatch: Exploring Smartwatch-based Deep Learning Approaches to Support Sound Awareness for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users
Proceedings of ASSETS 2020
PDF | Citation • SoundWatch
Field Study of a Tactile Sound Awareness Device for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users
Proceedings of ISWC 2020
PDF | doi | Citation • SoundWatch
Evaluating Smartwatch-based Sound Feedback for Deaf and Hard-of-hearing Users Across Contexts
Proceedings of CHI 2020 | Acceptance Rate: 24.3% (760 / 3126)
PDF | doi | Citation • SoundWatch
Autoethnography of a Hard of Hearing Traveler
Proceedings of ASSETS 2019
|
Acceptance Rate: 25.9%
(41 / 158)
|
Best Paper Nominee
Social Tensions with Head-Mounted Displays for Accessibility
Extended Abstract CHI201919 Workshop Proceedings of SHMD
PDF | Citation • AR Captioning
Towards Accessible Conversations in a Mobile Context for People who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Proceedings of ASSETS 2018 | Acceptance Rate: 25.9% (28 / 108)
PDF | doi | Citation | Talk • AR Captioning
Exploring Augmented Reality Approaches to Real-Time Captioning: A Preliminary Autoethnographic Study
Extended Abstract Proceedings of DIS2018
PDF | doi | Citation • AR Captioning
Talks
Dec. 11, 2020 | UW General exam
Virtual
Oct. 28, 2020 | ASSETS 2020
Virtual
PDF | PPTX | SoundWatch
Nov. 13, 2019 | UW Qualifying exams
University of Washington
May 10, 2019 | CHI 2019
Glasgow, UK
May 10, 2019 | CHI 2019
Glasgow, UK
Oct. 22, 2018 | ASSETS 2018
Galway, Ireland
PDF | PPTX | SlideShare | Paper | AR Captioning
April 20, 2015 | CHI 2015
Seoul, Korea
