Jessica Quinn Dawson
Jessica is an MSc student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia. She is under the co-supervision of Dr. Joanna McGrenere and Dr. Tamara Munzner. Her current research is in human computer interaction and information visualization, focusing on user-centred evaluations of visualization applications. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science, with a minor in Visual Art from UBC.
In her spare time Jessica loves making all kinds of things, food being at the top of that list. She also really enjoys curling up with a good book and is learning to become a better Vancouverite by taking part in more outdoor sports like hiking and biking.
publications
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
(2012) Collaborative Information-Sharing in a Shared-Care Family Practice LIBR 553: Understanding Information Users in Diverse Environments - Course Project
For this 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. This interference often results in acts of direct information- sharing that add considerably to the workload of the physicians. Although the design of the EMRs were the cause of the majority of the problems the physicians in the study encountered, both were adamant that EMRs represented a substantial improvement over traditional paper records, and overall made sharing their practice easier. [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.
For this project we designed, prototyped and evaluated StickIt, a mobile application supporting ubiquitous post-it notes on UBC campus. [video]
teaching
(Winter 2011) Grad TA, CPSC 444 - Advanced Methods in HCI (Joanna McGrenere).
(Winter 2010) Undergrad TA, CPSC 260 - Object Oriented Program Design (Kellog Booth).