Jacob Biehl

Jacob Biehl

HCI and systems researcher; Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Computing and Information

Posts by Collection

portfolio

publications

ARIS: An Interface for Application Relocation in an Interactive Space

Published in Graphics Interface (GI), 2004

Presents ARIS, an interface for managing application relocation tasks in interactive workspaces.

Recommended citation: Biehl, J.T., & Bailey, B.P.. 2004. "ARIS: An Interface for Application Relocation in an Interactive Space." In Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2004 (GI '04). Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society, School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. pp. 107-116.

A Toolset for Creating Iconic Interfaces for Interactive Workspaces

Published in INTERACT Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 2005

Presents a toolset rapidly constructing iconic representations of workspaces. The tool provide support to an interactive workspace infrastructure, allowing it to be portable to other environments.

Recommended citation: Biehl J.T. & Bailey B.P. 2005. "A Toolset for Creating Iconic Interfaces for Interactive Workspaces." In: Costabile M.F., Paternò F. (eds) IFIP TC.13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT 2005). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3585. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Improving Interfaces for Collaborative Work in Multiple-Device Environments

Published in Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI), 2006

Reports on the results of a user study comparing three different interface designs for managing content across displays in a multi-device environment. Provides design recommendations for improving interfaces for these environments.

Recommended citation: Biehl, J.T. and Bailey, B.P. 2006. "Improving Interfaces for Collaborative Work in Multiple-Device Environments." In Proceedings of the Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI '06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 35-42.

Achieving Accurate Room-Level Indoor Location Estimation with Emerging IoT Networks

Published in Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI), 2006

Iconic interfaces offer a promising interaction metaphor for effectively managing applications in multi-device environments. However, current implementations scale poorly for even a modest number of applications and do not allow users to maintain adequate awareness of the workspace. To overcome these limitations, we have designed new interaction techniques and prototyped them within a new iconic interface. Our interface uses zooming and animation-based interactions to improve scalability and uses application icons and portal views with real-time updates to enhance awareness. Results from a user study confirm the efficacy of these techniques. These techniques can be used to improve the broader class of iconic and portal-based interfaces.

Recommended citation: Biehl, J.T. and Bailey, B.P. 2006. "Improving Scalability and Awareness in Iconic Interfaces for Multiple-Device Environments." In Proceedings of the Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI '06). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 91-94.

Comparing an Iconic Interface to a Text-based and Virtual Paths Interface for Effective Interaction in an Interactive Workspace

Published in Proceedings of EdMedia + Innovate Learning (EdMedia), 2006

Presents the results of a study that compares different techniques and visual metaphors for managing information in multi-display interactive workspaces.

Recommended citation: Biehl, J. & Bailey, B. 2006. "Comparing an Iconic Interface to a Text-based and Virtual Paths Interface for Effective Interaction in an Interactive Workspace." In E. Pearson & P. Bohman (Eds.), In Proceedings of EdMedia + Innovate Learning (EdMedia'06). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), Waynesville, NC pp. 581-586.

Adapting Paper Prototyping for Designing User Interfaces for Multiple Display Environments

Published in Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2007

Explores adapting traditional HCI paper prototyping techniques for use in designing interfaces and interactions for multiple design environments.

Recommended citation: Bailey, B.P., Biehl, J.T., Cook, D.J., & Metcalf, H.E. "Adapting Paper Prototyping for Designing User Interfaces for Multiple Display Environments;. Pers Ubiquit Comput (2008) 12: 269.

FASTDash: A Visual Dashboard for Fostering Awareness in Software Teams

Published in ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2007

Presents an interactive visualization for helping software teams maintain awareness of individual activities in a shared software repository. Reports also on the results of a filed deployment of the tool and how its use impacted developer behavior.

Recommended citation: Biehl, J.T., M. Czerwinski, G. Smith & Robertson, G.G. "FASTDash: A Visual Dashboard for Fostering Awareness in Software Teams." In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '07). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 1313-1322.

IMPROMPTU: A New Interaction Framework for Supporting Collaboration in Multiple Display Environments and Its Field Evaluation for Co-located Software Development

Published in ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2008

Presents an new interaction framework for collaboration in MDEs and reports on results of the framework’s use to support teams of software developers.

Recommended citation: Biehl, J.T., W.T. Baker, B.P. Bailey, D.S. Tan, K. Inkpen & Czerwinski, M. 2008. "IMPROMPTU: A New Interaction Framework for Supporting Collaboration in Multiple Display Environments and Its Field Evaluation for Co-located Software Development." In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '08). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 939-948.

Understanding the Benefits of Gaze Enhanced Visual Search

Published in Symposium on Eye-Tracking Research & Applications (ETRA), 2010

Presents a study comparing techniques for two-phase, eye-tracking enhanced visual search. Results from novel techniques proposed show an increase in true positives and decrease in false negatives in visual search tasks.

Recommended citation: Qvarfordt, P., Biehl, J.T., Golovchinsky, G., & Dunningan, T. 2010. "Understanding the Benefits of Gaze Enhanced Visual Search." In Proceedings of the 2010 Symposium on Eye-Tracking Research & Applications (ETRA '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 283-290.

Let’s Go From The Whiteboard: Supporting Transitions in Work Through Whiteboard Capture and Reuse

Published in ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2010

Presents a system for whiteboard capture, content reuse, and sharing. A seven week field study found the tool enabled new workflows, and increase the value of whiteboard content for collaboration.

Recommended citation: Branham, S., Golovchinsky, G., Carter, S. Biehl, J.T. 2010. "Let's Go From The Whiteboard: Supporting Transitions in Work Through Whiteboard Capture and Reuse." In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 75-84.

Exploring the Workplace Communication Ecology

Published in ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2010

Presents a longitudinal study of communication behavior shifts in an organization. Results show behaviors for new tool adoption are significantly influenced by past tool selection and use.

Recommended citation: Turner, T., Qvarfordt, P., Biehl, J.T., Golovchinsky, G., & Back, M.B. 2010. "Exploring the Workplace Communication Ecology." In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 841-850.

Secured Histories for Presence Systems

Published in International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS), 2011

Presents new mechanisms for storing workplace-sensitive sensor data that can be computed upon, but not leveraged for moment-by-moment disclosure.

Recommended citation: Rieffel, E. Biehl, J.T. van Melle, W., & Lee, A. J. "Secured Histories for Presence Systems." In Proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS), Philadelphia, PA, 2011, pp. 446-456.

Beyond ‘Yesterday’s Tomorrow’: Towards the Design of Awareness Technologies for the Contemporary Worker

Published in Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI), 2011

Presents a workplace awareness system, called myUnity, that combines information from a variety of sensors to calculate and easy to understand and disseminate status of presence. An evaluation of the system deployed in a workplace show important changes in workplace communication behavior.

Recommended citation: Wiese, J., Biehl, J.T., Turner, T., van Melle, W., Girgensohn, A. 2011. "Beyond 'Yesterday's Tomorrow': Towards the Design of Awareness Technologies for the Contemporary Worker." In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 455-464.

When Privacy and Utility are in Harmony: Towards Better Design of Presence Technologies

Published in Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2012

This work describes the results of a survey of user preferences regarding comfort with and utility of sharing presence data in the workplace; the effects of sampling frequency, fidelity, and aggregation; and design implications of these results. We present new results that extend some past findings and challenge others. We contribute new insights that inform the design of workplace presence technologies to increase both the utility and adoption of these systems.

Recommended citation: Biehl, J.T., Lee, A.J. & Filby, G. "When Privacy and Utility are in Harmony: Towards Better Design of Presence Technologies". Pers Ubiquit Comput (2013) 17: 503.

Learning How to Feel Again: Towards Affective Workplace Presence and Communication Technologies

Published in ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2012

Reports on a system that attempts to learn affective state to inform co-workers of colleagues’ affective state. Results from an evaluation of the technology’s deployment show it to be more effective than a baseline of colleague assessment.

Recommended citation: Xu, A., Biehl, J.T. Rieffel, E., Turner, T., & van Melle, W. 2012. "Learning How to Feel Again: Towards Affective Workplace Presence and Communication Technologies." In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 839-848.

Understanding Screen Contents for Building a High Performance, Real Time Screen Sharing System

Published in ACM International Conference on Multimedia (MM), 2012

Presents new techniques for capturing, transmitting, and storing screen content in collaboration systems.

Recommended citation: Chandra, S., Biehl, J.T., Boreczky, J., Carter, S., & Rowe, L.A. 2012. "Understanding Screen Contents for Building a High Performance, Real Time Screen Sharing System." In Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Multimedia (MM '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 389-398.

Private Aggregation for Presence Streams

Published in Future Generation Computing Systems, 2013

Presents a technic that allows for sensor data to be collected and stored but only retrievable in aggregate forms for specific access levels.

Recommended citation: Rieffel, E.G., Biehl, J.T., Lee, A.J. & van Melle, W. "Private Aggregation for Presence Streams". Future Generation Computing Systems (2014). pp. 169-181.

LoCo: A Ready-to-Deploy Framework for Efficient Room Localization Using Wi-Fi

Published in ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing(UbiComp), 2014

Presents a classification technique and supporting evaluation exploring an efficient Wi-Fi-based localization approach using boosting.

Recommended citation: Biehl, J.T., Cooper, M., Filby, G., & Kratz, S. 2014. "LoCo: A Ready-to-Deploy Framework for Efficient Room Localization Using Wi-Fi." In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 183-187.

Not Really There: Understanding Embodied Communication Affordances in Team Perception and Participation

Published in ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW), 2015

Presents a telepresence system and supporting user study showing the impact of agency and embodiment on remote collaboration behaviors and interactions.

Recommended citation: Biehl, J.T., Avrahami, D., & Dunnigan, A. 2015. "Not Really There: Understanding Embodied Communication Affordances in Team Perception and Participation." In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 1567-1575.

You’re Where? Prove It!: Towards Trusted Indoor Location Estimation of Mobile Devices.

Published in ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp), 2015

Presents a system and supporting protocols for trusted location estimation using standard BLE beacon technologies and mobile frameworks.

Recommended citation: Biehl, J.T., Lee, A.J., Filby, G., & Cooper, M. 2015. "You're Where? Prove It!: Towards Trusted Indoor Location Estimation of Mobile Devices." In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 909-919.

LoCo: Boosting for Indoor Location Classification Combining Wi-Fi and BLE

Published in Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2016

A classification approach for room-level localization that leverages signals from BLE and WiFi for more robust classification.

Recommended citation: Cooper, M., Biehl, J.T. , Filby, G., Kratz, S. "LoCo: Boosting for Indoor Location Classification Combining Wi-Fi and BLE". Pers Ubiquit Comput (2016) 20: 83.

Taking 5: Work-Breaks, Productivity, and Opportunities for Personal Informatics for Knowledge Workers

Published in ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2016

Reports on three studies investigating workplace break behavior and possible roles for technology interventions.

Recommended citation: Epstein, D.A., Avrahami, D., & Biehl, J.T. 2016. "Taking 5: Work-Breaks, Productivity, and Opportunities for Personal Informatics for Knowledge Workers." In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 673-684.

Optimizing Placement and Number of RF Beacons to Achieve Better Indoor Localization

Published in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2018

Explores solutions for optimizing where beacons are placed in BLE-based indoor location framework to maximize accuracy while reducing total number of beacons.

Recommended citation: R. Falque, R., Patel, M., & Biehl, J. "Optimizing Placement and Number of RF Beacons to Achieve Better Indoor Localization." 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Brisbane, QLD, 2018, pp. 2304-2311.

Sensing or Watching?: Balancing Utility and Privacy in Sensing Systems via Collection and Enforcement Mechanisms

Published in ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies (SACMAT), 2018

Explores how privacy concerns vary across different scenarios and types of content being sensed. Makes recommendations for the selection of sensors in the design of smart spaces.

Recommended citation: Lee, A.J., Biehl, J.T. & Curry, C. 2018. "Sensing or Watching?: Balancing Utility and Privacy in Sensing Systems via Collection and Enforcement Mechanisms." In Proceedings of the 23nd ACM on Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies (SACMAT '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 105-116.

Fusing Map Information with a Probabilistic Sensor Model for Indoor Localization Using RF Beacons

Published in International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN), 2018

Novel sensor fusion models for location classification that counter traditional approaches of mapping RSSI to distance. Further contributes new techniques for extending particle filter approach to leverage map information.

Recommended citation: Patel, M., Girgensohn, A. & and Biehl, J.T. "Fusing Map Information with a Probabilistic Sensor Model for Indoor Localization Using RF Beacons," International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN '18), Nantes, 2018, pp. 1-8.

A Radio-Inertial Localization and Tracking System with BLE Beacons Prior Maps

Published in International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN), 2018

A low-cost indoor localization and tracking soluion using radio signal strength indicator, Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), and magnetometer sensors.

Recommended citation: Jadidi, M. G., Patel, M., Miro, J. V., Dissanayake, G., Biehl, J.T. & Girgensohn, A. "A Radio-Inertial Localization and Tracking System with BLE Beacons Prior Maps," International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN '18), Nantes, 2018, pp. 206-212.

Anchor of Trust: Towards Collusion-Resistant Trusted Indoor Location for Enterprise and Industrial Use

Published in Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2019

The design of a system that supports multiple forms of secure location estimation. Has multiple applications of use; including secure, location-based documents, secure location check-ins, and secure location monitoring.

Recommended citation: Biehl, J.T., Lee, A.J. & Filby, G. "Anchor of Trust: Towards Collusion-Resistant Trusted Indoor Location for Enterprise and Industrial Use". Pers Ubiquit Comput (2019).

Achieving Accurate Room-Level Indoor Location Estimation with Emerging IoT Networks

Published in Conference on the Internet of Things (IOT), 2019

Presents techniques for achieving highly accurate room-level location estimation using existing, IoT networks. Presents a comparison of widely used BLE-based techniques and emerging Wi-Fi RTT techniques.

Recommended citation: Biehl, J.T., Girgensohn, A. & Patel, M. "Achieving Accurate Room-Level Indoor Location Estimation with Emerging IoT Networks," In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on the Internet of Things (IOT '19), Bilbao, 2019.

talks

teaching

CS 3570 Advanced Topics in User Interface Design

Graduate course, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Computer Science, 2019

This course will explore emerging topics at the intersection of the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI), systems, and data. The course intends to introduce graduate researchers to important human interaction and interface design considerations in a variety of emerging areas; including IoT, AI and data driven interfaces, voice and conversational interfaces, sensor-driven interactions, mobile and multi-device user experiences, and applications to health, wellbeing, and safety. Students will gain an understanding of foundational HCI and interface design concepts, such as iterative design, experimentation, and evaluation within the context of the course topics, assignments, and projects.