Jessica Quinn Dawson
I am a MSc student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia. I am a member of the Infovis Group and the IMAGER Lab for Graphics, Visualization and Human Computer Interaction, under the co-supervision of Dr. Joanna McGrenere and Dr. Tamara Munzner. My current research interests are in human computer interaction and information visualization, focusing on user evaluations of network graphs reading behaviour. I also have a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science, with a minor in Visual Art from UBC.
A lot of my spare time is dedicated to activities revolving around food. I maintain a food blog, which I irregularly update with seasonal recipes, and I occasionally contribute recipe articles to the Ubyssey campus newspaper. I love spending time outdoors year round in Vancouver, especially when it involves growing food and gardening. So when I just need to get away from my computer on campus I often head to the UBC Farm, where I am a regular volunteer with the Landed Learning and Urban Farming programs.
publications
Dawson, J.Q., Schneider, O.S, Ferstay, J., Toker, D., Link, J., Haddad, S, MacLean, K. (2013). It's Alive! Exploring the Design Space of a Gesturing Phone. To Appear Proc. Graphics Interface (GI 2013). [pdf] [demo]
Dawson, J.Q., McGrenere, J., Munzner, T., Moffat, K., and Findlater, L. (2011). Ephemeral Paths: Gradual Fade-In as a Visual Cue for Subgraph Highlighting. Technical Report TR-2011-10, UBC Dept. of Computer Science, Vancouver, 2011. [pdf] [ubc cs]
Findlater, L., Moffatt, K., McGrenere, J., and Dawson, J.Q. (2009). Ephemeral adaptation: The use of gradual onset to improve menu selection performance. Proc. SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2009), 1655-1664. (Best Paper) [pdf] [acm]
Shoemaker, G., Findlater, L., Dawson, J.Q., and Booth, K.S. (2009). Mid-air text input techniques for very large wall displays. Proc. Graphics Interface (GI 2009), 231-238. [pdf] [acm]
recent projects
(2013) StickIt.
UBC Digital*U Competition - Submission
Jessica Dawson, Juliette Link, Thea Van Rossum.
We submitted StickIt to UBC Digitial*U, a competition to design a mobile app to greatly enhance the UBC experience. For this submission we updated and further iterated on an idea for a GPS-enable app for location based notes that we we first developed as a course project for CPSC 444. (Finalists - Top 5) [promotional video][proposal][user scenarios]
(2012) Collaborative Information-Sharing in a Shared-Care Family Practice LIBR 553: Understanding Information Users in Diverse Environments - Course Project
I conducted an exploratory investigation of the collaborative information- behavior of two family physicians in a shared-care practice. In my findings I describe a model of the information flow of a shared-care practice that characterizes the recording, retrieving and sharing activities of the physicians. I also identify a number of ways in which electronic medical records (EMRs) interfere with the ideal information flow, which resulted in acts of direct information- sharing that added considerably to the workload of the physicians. [paper]
(2011) NUT: Nutritional Understanding Tool CPSC 543: Information Visualization - Course Project
NUT is a tool for understanding the nutritional content of what we eat. The project consists of a rapid prototyping and analysis phase, as well as a design study documenting the development of the NUT prototype. The goal of NUT is to support users in making healthy choices about what to eat by visualizing nutritional information in the context of the whole food. [prototype] [paper]
(2010) StickIt.
CPSC 444: Advanced Methods in HCI - Course Project
Jessica Dawson, Juliette Link, Thea Van Rossum.
We designed, prototyped and evaluated StickIt, a mobile application supporting ubiquitous post-it notes on UBC campus. Our project video describes the application and the findings from our evaluation. [video]
teaching assistant
(Fall 2012) Grad TA, CPSC 344 - Introduction to HCI methods (Karon MacLean).
(Winter 2011) Grad TA, CPSC 444 - Advanced Methods in HCI (Joanna McGrenere).
(Winter 2010) Undergrad TA, CPSC 260 - Object Oriented Program Design (Kellog Booth).
un-distinguished lectures
The Un-Distinguished Lecture Series (UDLS) is a series of free, casual lectures on a variety of topics by students, staff and faculty in the department.
Homemade Liqueur and Infusions: The Basics. 1 March 2013.
Urban Gardening 101: Grad Students Edition. 26 June 2012.