Damien Masson The recipient of the 2023 award for the outstanding doctoral dissertation completed at a Canadian university in the field of Human-Computer Interaction is Dr. Damien Masson.
The central thesis of Dr. Masson’s dissertation, Transforming the Reading Experience of Scientific Documents with Polymorphism, was that existing documents can be transformed and enhanced with interactive, visual, and textual representations that help readers understand information. To test this hypothesis, Dr. Masson proposed novel representations that draw upon cognitive psychology theories and that can be generated from existing documents without involving authors. His thesis presents four interactive systems that contribute by accomplishing novel functionalities: Charagraph allows annotating documents with charts and turning data-rich paragraphs of text into visualizations; Statslator lets readers translate statistical reports to make them more familiar by offering alternative values and visualizations; ChartDetective enables the recovery of accurate data underlying static charts; Chameleon allows incorporating interactive content within documents, including documents using static file formats, or already disseminated.
The many projects and studies presented in the dissertation are highly innovative, providing original and exciting novel solutions to long-standing problems in the field while employing a range of well-designed and executed methodologies. Masson’s interactive systems are fully implemented, validated through simulations and user studies, and publicly available for download and use. Indeed, the PDF version of Masson’s dissertation can itself be transformed into a polymorphic document using the systems described in the dissertation. The dissertation is further exemplary in its presentation, combining stunning visual design with clear organization and highly structured writing. The dissertation is a pleasure to read. Overall, it constitutes a significant contribution to human-computer interaction and the development of interactive digital scientific documents. We expect this work, including the multiple tools that Dr. Mason provided free for download, is likely to have a long-lasting impact and spur ongoing research in the area.
Dr. Masson is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Toronto’s Dynamic Graphics Project (DGP) lab with Dr. Fanny Chevalier. He received his PhD from the University of Waterloo in 2023 under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Vogel, Dr. Edward Lank, Dr. Géry Casiez, and Dr. Sylvain Malacria. He has published 11 peer-reviewed papers, with many of them appearing at top venues, such as ACM CHI and ACM UIST. Dr. Masson’s ChartDetective paper was recognized with a Best Paper Award at CHI’23 and his Chameleon system was recognized with a People’s Choice Best Demo Award at CHI’20. Dr. Masson has also been actively reviewing and participating in program committees of conferences such as CHI, UIST, ISS, and IHM and has received special reviewer recognition multiple times. Dr. Masson received his BSc and MSc in Computer Science from the University of Lille, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France.
Funding from an anonymous donor established this award in 2011 in honour of Bill Buxton, a Canadian researcher, designer, and musician who has done much to promote excellence in the field of Human-Computer Interaction, both within Canada and internationally. Bill challenges how academics and practitioners think, and he inspires them to do things differently. He is a true advocate for HCI.
The award is determined through a juried process by a selection committee consisting of accomplished researchers in Human-Computer Interaction, and this process was organized by Dr. Celine Latulipe (University of Manitoba). The recipient of this award was determined through a juried process by a selection committee consisting of accomplished researchers in Human-Computer Interaction. This year, the jury included Dr. James Young (University of Manitoba), Dr. Parmit Chilana (Simon Fraser University), and Dr. Ali Mazalek (Toronto Metropolitan University).