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Barrett Ens

Barrett Ens

Alumni

bens@cs.umanitoba.ca

Advisor: Pourang Irani

Research Areas: augmented reality, wearable technology, collaborative and social computing, information visualization and visual analytics, and design of novel interaction techniques

About

Besides his bachelor degree in music theory from the University of Calgary, Barrett Ens also holds a BSc in computer science from the University of Manitoba where he founded the hUManitech student group for exposing new students to HCI. Barrett is currently researching spatial interfaces for head-worn displays. His research draws from diverse areas including augmented reality, wearable technology, collaborative and social computing, information visualization and visual analytics, and design of novel interaction techniques. By bringing together knowledge from these areas, Barrett aims to better understand the relevant human factors for developing future computing interfaces that blend naturally into both our physical and social environments.

Projects

Publications

Counterpoint: Exploring Mixed-Scale Gesture Interaction for AR Applications

Barrett Ens, Aaron Quigley, Hui-Shyong Yeo, Pourang Irani, Thammathip Piumsomboon, and Mark Billinghurst. 2018. Counterpoint: Exploring Mixed-Scale Gesture Interaction for AR Applications. In Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Paper LBW120, 6 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3188513

Multi-scale gestural interaction for augmented reality

Barrett Ens, Aaron Quigley, Hui-Shyong Yeo, Pourang Irani, and Mark Billinghurst. 2017. Multi-scale gestural interaction for augmented reality. In SIGGRAPH Asia 2017 Mobile Graphics & Interactive Applications (SA '17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 11, 1–2. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3132787.3132808

Ivy: Exploring Spatially Situated Visual Programming for Authoring and Understanding Intelligent Env

Barrett Ens, Fraser Anderson, Tovi Grossman, Michelle Annett, Pourang Irani and George FitzMaurice. 2017. Ivy: Exploring Spatially Situated Visual Programming for Authoring and Understanding Intelligent Environments. In Proceedings of Graphice Interface (GI '17), Edmonton, Alberta. CHCCS, to appear.

Won by a Head: A Platform Comparison of Smart Object Linking in Virtual Environments

Barrett Ens, Fraser Anderson, Tovi Grossman, Michelle Annett, Pourang Irani, George W. Fitzmaurice. Won by a Head: A Platform Comparison of Smart Object Linking in Virtual Environments. ICAT-EGVE 2017: 17-20

Spatial Analytic Interfaces (PhD Thesis)

Barrett Ens. 2016, Spatial Analytic Interfaces. PhD Thesis, University of Manitoba.

Shared Façades: Surface-Embedded Layout Management for Ad-Hoc Collaboration using Head-Worn Displays

Barrett Ens, Eyal Ofek, Neil Bruce, and Pourang Irani. 2016. Shared Façades: Surface-embedded layout management for ad-hoc collaboration using head-worn displays. Collaboration Meets Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (CMISS) – Theory and Practice. Craig Anslow, Pedro Campos, Joaquim Jorge, (Eds). Springer, in press.

Combining Ring Input with Hand Tracking for Precise, Natural Interaction with SAIs

Barrett Ens, Ahmad Byagowi, Teng Han, Juan David Hincapié-Ramos, Pourang Irani. 2016. Combining Ring Input with Hand Tracking for Precise, Natural Interaction with SAIs. In Proceedings of the 4th symposium on Spatial User Interactions (SUI '16), Tokyo, Japan. ACM, to appear.

Moving Ahead with Peephole Pointing: Modelling Object Selection with Head-Worn Display Field of View

Barrett Ens, David Ahlström, Pourang Irani. 2016. Moving Ahead with Peephole Pointing: Modelling Object Selection with Head-Worn Display Field of View. In Proceedings of the 4th symposium on Spatial User Interactions (SUI '16), Tokyo, Japan. ACM, to appear.

Spatial Analytic Interfaces: Spatial User Interfaces for In-Situ Visual Analytics

Barrett Ens, Pourang Irani. 2016. Spatial Analytic Interfaces: Spatial User Interfaces for In-Situ Visual Analytics. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications , vol.37, issue 2, pp.66-79. DOI: 10.1109/MCG.2016.38

Candid Interaction: Revealing Hidden Mobile and Wearable Computing Activities

Barrett Ens, Tovi Grossman, Fraser Anderson, Justin Matejka and George Fitzmaurice. 2015. Candid Interaction: Revealing Hidden Mobile and Wearable Computing Activities. In Proceedings of the 28th User Interface Software and Technology Symposium (UIST '15). Charlotte, NC, USA, 467-476.

Desktop-Gluey: Augmenting Desktop Environments with Wearable Devices.

Marcos Serrano, Barrett Ens, Xing-Dong Yang and Pourang Irani. (2015). Desktop-Gluey: Augmenting Desktop Environments with Wearable Devices. Workshop on Mobile Collocated Interactions with Wearables, MobileHCI '15. Copenhagen, Denmark, ACM.

Spatial Constancy of Surface-Embedded Layouts across Multiple Environments

Barrett Ens, Eyal Ofek, Neil Bruce and Pourang Irani. 2015. Spatial Constancy of Surface-Embedded Layouts across Multiple Environments. In Proceedings of the 3rd symposium on Spatial User Interactions (SUI '15). Los Angeles, USA. ACM, 65-68.

Gluey: Developing a Head-Worn Display Interface to Unify the Interaction Experience

Marcos Serrano, Barrett Ens, Xing-Dong Yang and Pourang Irani. 2015. Gluey: Developing a Head-Worn Display Interface to Unify the Interaction Experience in Distributed Display Environments. In Proceedings of MobileHCI'15, August 24, Copenhagen, Denmark. ACM, 161-171.

Smartwatches + Head-Worn Displays: the ‘New’ Smartphone

Marcos Serrano, Khalad Hasan, Barrett Ens, Xing-Dong Yang and Pourang Irani. (2015). Smartwatches + Head-Worn Displays: the ‘New’ Smartphone. Workshop on Mobile Collocated Interactions: From Smartphones to Wearables, CHI 2015. Seoul, Korea. ACM.

Ethereal Planes: A Design Framework for 2D Information Spaces in 3D Mixed Reality Environments

Barrett Ens, Juan David Hincapié-Ramos and Pourang Irani. 2014. Ethereal Planes: A Design Framework for 2D Information Spaces in 3D Mixed Reality Environments. In Proceedings of the 2nd symposium on Spatial user interactions (SUI '14). Honolulu, USA, 2-12.

Personal Command and Control

Barrett Ens and Pourang Irani. 2014. Personal Command and Control: A Spatial Interface for Head-Worn Displays as a Platform for Everyday Visual Analytics. In Workshop on Personal Visual Analytics (DIS '14), Vancouver, Canada. 4 Pages.

ChronoTwigger: A Visual Analytics Tool for Understanding Source and Test Co-Evolution

Barrett Ens, Daniel Rea, Roiy Shpaner, Hadi Hemmati, James E. Young, Pourang Irani. 2014. ChronoTwigger: A Visual Analytics Tool for Understanding Source and Test Co-Evolution. In Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT 2014). Victoria, Canada. IEEE, 117-126.

Exploring the Use of Hand-To-Face Input for Interacting with Head-Worn Displays

Marcos Serrano, Barrett Ens and Pourang Irani. 2014. Exploring the Use of Hand-To-Face Input for Interacting with Head-Worn Displays. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems (CHI '14). Toronto, Canada. ACM, 3181-3190.

The Personal Cockpit: A Spatial Interface for Effective Task Switching on Head-Worn Displays

Barrett Ens, Rory Finnegan and Pourang Irani. 2014. The Personal Cockpit: A Spatial Interface for Effective Task Switching on Head-Worn Displays. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems (CHI '14). Toronto, Canada. ACM, 3171-3180.

See Me, See You: A Lightweight Method for Discriminating User Touches on Tabletop Displays

Hong Zhang, Xing-Dong Yang, Barrett Ens, Hai-Ning Liang, Pierre Boulanger and Pourang Irani. 2012. See Me, See You: A Lightweight Method for Discriminating User Touches on Tabletop Displays. In Proceedings of the 30th international conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI 2012). Austin, Texas. ACM, 2327-2336.

Guidelines for Designing Awareness-Augmented Mobile DUIs

Barrett Ens, Rasit Eskicioglu, Pourang Irani. 2012. Guidelines for Designing Awareness-Augmented Mobile DUIs. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, Taylor & Francis, Vol. 28, 730-736.

Visually Augmented Interfaces for Co-located Mobile Collaboration

Barrett Ens, Rasit Eskicioglu and Pourang Irani. 2011. Visually Augmented Interfaces for Co-located Mobile Collaboration. In Distributed User Interfaces: Designing Interfaces for the Distributed Ecosystem. Springer, 169-176.

Characterizing User Performance with Assisted Direct Off-Screen Pointing

Barrett Ens, David Ahlström, Andy Cockburn and Pourang Irani. 2011. Characterizing User Performance with Assisted Direct Off-Screen Pointing. In Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Human computer interaction with mobile devices and services (MobileHCI '11). Stockholm, Sweden. ACM, 485-494.