Thanks to this amazing group of UW students for helping package  ASSETS t-shirts for sending to our student volunteers and organizing committee members who cannot travel to Athens. And thanks again to Liang He for the awesome ASSETS'22 logo and t-shirt design. From left-to-right in the photo below, Judy Kong, Kelly Mack, Jon E. Froehlich, Zhuohao (Jerry) Zhang, Chu Li, Xia Su, and Jaewook Lee.

We started off the 2022-2023 academic year with a kickoff BBQ at my house. Thanks Chu, Jae, Xia, and Daniel for coming. (Mikey, we missed you!). If you look closely, you can see the special sign that one of my children made for the festivities.

Congratulations to Maryam Hosseini on their successful PhD defense on semi-automatic sidewalk assessments. Wonderful work. Terrific presentation. Beautiful slides. Our work together played but a small role in this incredibly impactful research: Hosseini, M., Saugstad, M., Miranda, F., Sevtsuk, A., Silva, C. T., Froehlich, J. E. (2022). Towards Global-Scale Crowd+AI Techniques to Map and Assess Sidewalks for People with Disabilities. CVPR2020 Workshop: Accessibility, Vision, and Autonomy (AVA). DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2206.13677 Congratulations Maryam!

Dhruv Jain just announced that he has accepted an Assistant Professorship in CSE at the University of Michigan (Twitter link).  Congratulations Professor Jain! To celebrate the announcement and the completion of his dissertation, I was honored to go on a celebratory walk + tea with Dhruv. Wishing you all the best in Ann Arbor!

Congratulations to Dhruv Jain who was selected for the prestigious Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant for his work on “Sound Sensing and Feedback Techniques for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users.” The MSR Dissertationg Grant aims to "increase the pipeline of diverse talent receiving advanced degrees in computing-related fields by providing a research funding opportunity for doctoral students who are underrepresented in the field of computing."

Read more on the Allen School news page.

It's my pleasure to announce that Dhruv Jain passed his General Exam entitled Sound Sensing & Feedback Techniques for d/Deaf & Hard of Hearing Users: A Dissertation Proposal. His dissertation work was thoughtfully presented, well rehearsed, and even included two live demos (of HomeSound and of SoundWatch). Congrats DJ!

Thanks also to the wonderful committee, including co-chair Professor Findlater and fellow committee members Professors Mankoff, Ladner, Wobbrock, and Bigham—literally an all-star cast of HCI+accessibility experts.

You can download the slides here or watch the whole thing on YouTube!

A few screenshots of the talk (all but the presenter + interpreters had video off):

The Makeability Lab had four papers accepted to CHI this year. The acceptance rate was 24% (760 accepts of 3126 submissions). Congrats to the lead PhD students: Steven Goodman (HCDE), Dhruv Jain (CSE), Seokbin Kang (CS), Wendy Roldan (HCDE), and all our wonderful collaborators.

• Goodman, S., Kirchner, S., Guttman, R., Jain, D., Froehlich, J., Findlater, L. Evaluating Smartwatch-based Sound Feedback for Deaf and Hard-of-hearing Users Across Contexts, CHI2020
• Jain D., Mack., K., Amrous, A., Wright, M., Goodman, S., Findlater, L., Froehlich, J. HomeSound: An Iterative Field Deployment of an In-Home Sound Awareness System for Deaf or Hard of Hearing Users, CHI2020
• Kang, S., Shokeen, E., Byrne, V., Norooz, L., Bonsignore, E., Williams-Pierce, C., Froehlich, J. ARMath: Augmenting Everyday Life with Math Learning, CHI2020
• Roldan, W., Gao, X., Marie, A., Hishikawa, T, Li, Z., Zhang, E., Froehlich, J., Yip, J. Opportunities and Challenges in Involving Users in Project-Based HCI Education, CHI2020

We plan to post the camera-ready versions of the papers and some videos in January!

HomeSound won the People's Choice Award and the Madrona Prize Runner-Up at the Allen School Annual Research Showcase. GeekWire has a nice write-up about the event and awards. Congrats team!

Congratulations to Dhruv Jain who was selected for the prestigious Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant for his work on “Sound Sensing and Feedback Techniques for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users.” The MSR Dissertationg Grant aims to "increase the pipeline of diverse talent receiving advanced degrees in computing-related fields by providing a research funding opportunity for doctoral students who are underrepresented in the field of computing."

Read more on the Allen School news page.

Dhruv Jain's Deaf Travel Autoethnography was covered by the UW Daily. Read the article here.

Both of our ASSETS'19 papers were nominated for 'Best Paper' at ASSETS'19:

1. Weld, G., Jang, E., Li, A., Zeng, A., Heimerl, K., Froehlich, J. E. (2019). Deep Learning for Automatically Detecting Sidewalk Accessibility Problems Using Streetscape Imagery. Proceedings of ASSETS 2019.
2. Jain, D., Desjardins, A., Findlater, L., Froehlich, J. E. (2019). Autoethnography of a Hard of Hearing Traveler. Proceedings of ASSETS 2019.

We were honored that both of our papers submitted to ASSETS'19 were accepted for publication:

• Autoethnography of a Hard of Hearing Traveler led by UW CSE PhD student, Dhruv Jain, and co-authored by Jain, Audrey Desjardins (School of Art + Art History + Design), Leah Findlater (HCDE), and Jon Froehlich
• Deep Learning for Automatically Detecting Sidewalk Accessibility Problems Using Streetscape Imagery led by UW CSE PhD students, Galen Weld and Esther Jang, and co-authored by Weld, Jang, Anthony Li (UMD ugrad), Aileen Zeng (UW CSE ugrad), Kurtis Heimerl (UW CSE prof), and Jon Froehlich.

Congratulations to Dhruv Jain who was selected for the prestigious Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant for his work on “Sound Sensing and Feedback Techniques for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users.” The MSR Dissertationg Grant aims to "increase the pipeline of diverse talent receiving advanced degrees in computing-related fields by providing a research funding opportunity for doctoral students who are underrepresented in the field of computing."

Read more on the Allen School news page.

It's my pleasure to announce that Dhruv Jain passed his General Exam entitled Sound Sensing & Feedback Techniques for d/Deaf & Hard of Hearing Users: A Dissertation Proposal. His dissertation work was thoughtfully presented, well rehearsed, and even included two live demos (of HomeSound and of SoundWatch). Congrats DJ!

Thanks also to the wonderful committee, including co-chair Professor Findlater and fellow committee members Professors Mankoff, Ladner, Wobbrock, and Bigham—literally an all-star cast of HCI+accessibility experts.

You can download the slides here or watch the whole thing on YouTube!

A few screenshots of the talk (all but the presenter + interpreters had video off):

Members of the newly launched UW CREATE accessibility center won all three top awards at ASSETS2020—the top publication venue in accessibility research—including Best Artifact for our SoundWatch work, Best Paper awarded to Professor Leah Findlater and her PhD student Lotus Zhang, Best Student Paper awarded to PhD student Megan Hofmann and colleagues (including her advisor and CREATE co-director Jennifer Mankoff). Congrats all!

Relatedly, Sarah McQuate wrote a lovely article on our SoundWatch work—check it out!

We just received news that two of Dhruv Jain's first-authored submissions were accepted to ASSETS'20—an amazing accomplishment. Importantly, the work itself is impactful and diverse. Congrats DJ and all collaborators! The papers are linked below:

• Jain, D., Potluri, V., Sharif, A. (2020). Navigating Graduate School with a Disability: A Trio-Ethnography. Proceedings of ASSETS 2020. 17 pages. To Appear.
• Jain, D., Ngo, H., Patel, P., Goodman, S., Findlater, L., Froehlich, J. E. (2020). SoundWatch: Exploring Smartwatch-based Deep Learning Approaches to Support Sound Awareness for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users. Proceedings of ASSETS 2020. 16 pages. To Appear.

Congratulations to Dhruv Jain who was selected for the prestigious Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant for his work on “Sound Sensing and Feedback Techniques for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users.” The MSR Dissertationg Grant aims to "increase the pipeline of diverse talent receiving advanced degrees in computing-related fields by providing a research funding opportunity for doctoral students who are underrepresented in the field of computing."

Read more on the Allen School news page.

It's my pleasure to announce that Dhruv Jain passed his General Exam entitled Sound Sensing & Feedback Techniques for d/Deaf & Hard of Hearing Users: A Dissertation Proposal. His dissertation work was thoughtfully presented, well rehearsed, and even included two live demos (of HomeSound and of SoundWatch). Congrats DJ!

Thanks also to the wonderful committee, including co-chair Professor Findlater and fellow committee members Professors Mankoff, Ladner, Wobbrock, and Bigham—literally an all-star cast of HCI+accessibility experts.

You can download the slides here or watch the whole thing on YouTube!

A few screenshots of the talk (all but the presenter + interpreters had video off):

Congratulations to Dhruv Jain who was selected for the prestigious Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant for his work on “Sound Sensing and Feedback Techniques for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users.” The MSR Dissertationg Grant aims to "increase the pipeline of diverse talent receiving advanced degrees in computing-related fields by providing a research funding opportunity for doctoral students who are underrepresented in the field of computing."

Read more on the Allen School news page.