Courier / Mailing Address

Department of Computer Science
40 St. George St. STE 4283
Toronto, ON, M5S 2E4
t. +1 (416) 978-6025 (for couriers)

t. +1 (416) 978-7777
daniel@dgp.toronto.edu

Daniel Wigdor is an entrepreneur, investor, and professor in the field of computer science. He specializes in the invention of technologies which are tailored to enable people to live better/happier/more productive lives. His innovations have included novel sensing technologies, operating system architectures, AI systems, manufacturing methods, haptic feedback devices, and software systems, all based on his teams’ deep study of human capabilities and needs, employing methods from fields such as psychophysics, sociology, and anthropology. He has founded several companies which have combined to employ hundreds of people across the US and Canada, raising over $100M in revenue and funding. In 2020, he sold Chatham Labs to Facebook, and became the founding director of Meta’s Reality Labs in Toronto. Daniel’s technologies may be found in more than a billion devices worldwide. He holds over 50 patents, has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, has written books which have been translated into multiple languages and used as standard texts around the world, and has testified as an expert witness in courts in the US and UK, helping to resolve disputes regarding more than $10B.

Daniel has won many awards for his research, including the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Research Fellowship, the Ontario Early Researcher Award, and more than a dozen ‘best paper’ awards at top venues in computer science. He is currently a professor and is the associate chair for industrial partnerships at the University of Toronto. He has previously held positions at Cornell, the University of Washington, Harvard University, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, Microsoft Research, and Reality Labs Research. Further information, including publications, patents, and videos demonstrating his work, may be found at danielwigdor.com Talks about his work in may be found online: haptics & high performance UX, post-WIMP user interfaces, and the symphony of devices.

 

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

(see Research for a list of all publications).

[130]

VibraForge: A Scalable Prototyping Toolkit For Creating Spatialized Vibrotactile Feedback Systems

Bingjian Huang, Siyi Ren, Yuewen Luo, Qilong Cheng, Hanfeng Cai, Yeqi Sang, Mauricio Sousa, Paul H. Dietz, Daniel Wigdor. 2024. VibraForge: A Scalable Prototyping Toolkit For Creating Spatialized Vibrotactile Feedback Systems. CoRR. abs/2409.17420,
[129]

AeroHaptix: A Wearable Vibrotactile Feedback System for Enhancing Collision Avoidance in UAV Teleoperation

Bingjian Huang, Zhecheng Wang, Qilong Cheng, Siyi Ren, Hanfeng Cai, Antonio Alvarez Valdivia, Karthik Mahadevan, Daniel Wigdor. 2024. AeroHaptix: A Wearable Vibrotactile Feedback System for Enhancing Collision Avoidance in UAV Teleoperation. CoRR. abs/2407.12105,
[128]

Demonstrating VibraForge: An Open-source Vibrotactile Prototyping Toolkit with Scalable Modular Design

Bingjian Huang, Hanfeng Cai, Siyi Ren, Yeqi Sang, Qilong Cheng, Paul H. Dietz, Daniel Wigdor. 2024. Demonstrating VibraForge: An Open-source Vibrotactile Prototyping Toolkit with Scalable Modular Design. UIST (Adjunct Volume). 43:1-43:5.
[127]

TactileNet: Bringing Touch Closer in the Digital World

Yuewen Luo, Siyi Ren, Zhaodong Jiang, Bingjian Huang, Daniel Wigdor. 2024. TactileNet: Bringing Touch Closer in the Digital World. UIST (Adjunct Volume). 1:1-1:3.
[126]

Fidgets: Building Blocks for a Predictive UI Toolkit

Joannes Chan, Chris De Paoli, Michelle Li, Tovi Grossman, Stephanie Santosa, Daniel Wigdor, Michael Glueck. 2024. Fidgets: Building Blocks for a Predictive UI Toolkit. Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.
[125]

Investigating the Effects of Intensity and Frequency on Vibrotactile Spatial Acuity

Bingjian Huang, Paul H. Dietz, Daniel Wigdor. 2024. Investigating the Effects of Intensity and Frequency on Vibrotactile Spatial Acuity. IEEE Trans. Haptics. 17, 3, 405-416.
[124]

XR Input Error Mediation for Hand-Based Input: Task and Context Influences a User's Preference

Tica Lin, Ben Lafreniere, Yan Xu, Tovi Grossman, Daniel Wigdor, Michael Glueck. 2023. XR Input Error Mediation for Hand-Based Input: Task and Context Influences a User's Preference. CoRR. abs/2309.10899,
[123]

CrossCode: Multi-level Visualization of Program Execution

Devamardeep Hayatpur, Haijun Xia, Daniel Wigdor. 2023. CrossCode: Multi-level Visualization of Program Execution. CoRR. abs/2304.03445,
[122]

CrossCode: Multi-level Visualization of Program Execution

Devamardeep Hayatpur, Daniel Wigdor, Haijun Xia. 2023. CrossCode: Multi-level Visualization of Program Execution. CHI. 593:1-593:13.
[121]

Creepy Assistant: Development and Validation of a Scale to Measure the Perceived Creepiness of Voice Assistants

Rachel Phinnemore, Mohi Reza, Blaine Lewis, Karthik Mahadevan, Bryan Wang, Michelle Annett, Daniel Wigdor. 2023. Creepy Assistant: Development and Validation of a Scale to Measure the Perceived Creepiness of Voice Assistants. CHI. 117:1-117:18.

Departure from Meta

I have completed my tenure as Director, Research Science of Meta’s Reality Labs Research Toronto as of last week. I am excited to have only one ... more

Campus change to downtown St George

Since I first joined U of T in 2011, I have split my time between the downtown Toronto campus (for graduate teaching and my research lab in the dgp) ... more

Promoted to “full” professor

I was pleased to learn that U of T has asked me to take-on the role of Professor beginning July 1. This is a wonderful celebration of the very hard ... more

A few thoughts for prospective students

I was happy to sit down with Blaine Lewis at our recent Grad Visit Day and share some musings on grad school and U of T.

Zhicong Lu: Our Newest PhD Grad!

Congratulations to Zhicong Lu, who yesterday successfully defended his thesis Understanding and Supporting Live Streaming in Non-Gaming Contexts ... more

 

NEWS

Departure from Meta

I have completed my tenure as Director, Research Science of Meta’s Reality Labs Research Toronto as of last week. I am excited to have only one research group to focus on, for the first time since the founding of Tactual Labs in 2013. I also look forward to resuming my much-missed hobby of assisting the courts as an expert witness in user-facing information technologies.

Campus change to downtown St George

Since I first joined U of T in 2011, I have split my time between the downtown Toronto campus (for graduate teaching and my research lab in the dgp) and the Mississauga campus (for undergraduate teaching). I have now fully relocated to the downtown, St George campus. I myself am an alumnus of the downtown Department of Computer Science, and am very much looking forward to being more wholly a part of it. Many thanks to the folks at Mississauga for your help and support over the last decade. I will miss my wonderful interactions with you all.

Promoted to “full” professor

I was pleased to learn that U of T has asked me to take-on the role of Professor beginning July 1. This is a wonderful celebration of the very hard work of hundreds of students and collaborators over the last few years – thank you to you all for the great fun!

Zhicong Lu: Our Newest PhD Grad!

Congratulations to Zhicong Lu, who yesterday successfully defended his thesis Understanding and Supporting Live Streaming in Non-Gaming Contexts before an examination committee which included Dr. Kori Inkpen of MSR. Zhicong will be joining City University of Hong Kong as an assistant professor in the new year.

Joining FRL-R as Director, Research Science

I am pleased to share that I will be joining Facebook Reality Labs Research as its Director, Research Science in the newly formed FRL-R Toronto. I will also remain at U of T as an associate professor. Keep your eyes peeled for exciting growth in this new research centre!

My SUI Keynote is online

Some musings on how the research community can better influence commercial platforms in areas of innovation in HCI – tales of failure from those of us doing multitouch before the iPhone.

Haijun Xia headed to UCSD

I’m excited to share the news that Haijun Xia will be joining the University of California, San Diego this fall as an assistant professor. He will be missed!

Jacob Ritchie, Seongkook Heo headed out

I’m pleased to say that Jacob Ritchie has completed his M.Sc., and is headed to Stanford University this fall to begin his Ph.D. studies. I’m also very happy to say that Dr. Seongkook Heo has completed his postdoctoral fellowship, and will be joining the University of Virginia as an assistant professor later this summer. Congratulations to you both!

Chatham Labs Launched!

Chatham Labs is a new company spun out of the group. Chatham does contract research and product envisionment for companies on the leading edge of HCI. The group is looking to immediately hire large numbers of researchers  and post docs.

CSC2604 Fall 2018 Materials

Welcome back to Fall 2018. Students in my graduate class, please see the CSC2604 Information Sheet for details. Recall that Zhen has volunteered to present our papers in our first session in two weeks. Please bring your reaction reports as a printout to class.

Returning to U of T for the fall term

I have spent a year on sabbatical visiting Cornell Tech in New York City. I look forward to returning to U of T in the fall, where I will be teaching CSC318 at UTM, and a graduate class on distributed user interface tools. See you in class!

Two Nominations at CHI

I am very proud to say that two students from the group, Nicole Sultanum, and Haijun Xia, were recognized for their work with CHI 2018 Honorable Mention awards. Congratulations to them and to all of their co-authors!

Visiting Cornell Tech

I will be conducting my sabbatical visiting the fabulous team at Cornell Tech in New York City for a year beginning in July. I look forward to connecting with all the great HCI in NYC!

Promotion to Associate Professor

As of July 1, I will be a tenured associate professor at U of T.

CHI Papers Chair

I have volunteered to serve as co-Program Chair for ACM CHI 2017. Ready your submissions!

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship 2015

I was honored to learn that I was selected for a 2015 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship. This is a wonderful endorsement of the work my team of incredible students, staff, and post docs have been building along with our collaborators for the last several years.

EICS Keynote

i have been asked to give the keynote address at the 7th ACM Symposium on Engineering Interactive Systems (EICS 2015) on June 24 in Duisburg, Germany. Hope to see you there.

Invited talk at GI 2015

I have been asked to give an Invited Talk at GI 2015 in Halifax, NS, June 3-5, 2015. Hope to see you there.

Speaking at Yahoo! Research

I will be giving an invited talk at Yahoo! Research in Sunnyvale on August 8 entitled “Vertical Software Design & Cross-Device Software Tools”.

Capstone Course Petitions

Students interested in taking my capstone design course (CSC490): between August 1 and August 31, send me an email with the subject line “capstone petition”, with the following additional details:

  • Your transcript
  • Your program of study
  • A 1-paragraph description of why you would like to take the course, including how it fits-in to your career goals
  • A 1-paragraph description of a position you have held in which you have demonstrated an ability to work effectively without direct supervision

Speaking at Microsoft Research

I will be speaking at Microsoft Research in Redmond on June 10, entitled “Enabling a Symphony of Devices”.

CHI People’s Choice Best Talk Awards

2014 saw the introduction to CHI of the People’s Choice Best Talk Awards. The top 8 talks among hundreds were chosen by the audience. I’m proud to say 2 of those selected were given by students on my projects: Xiang Anthony Chen for Duet, and Jishuo Yang for Panelrama. Congratulations to them both!

Early Researcher Award

I was honoured to have been selected as a recipient for an Ontario Early Researcher Award. As always, this would not have been possible without the great work of my students and post docs, as well as the wonderful support of the department here at U of T.

CHI Papers Talks Schedule

The CHI advance program has been posted online. My collaborators will be presenting 6 papers at the conference:

  • Monday: Mike Glueck presents Splash! at 4pm in 701A
  • Monday: Anthony Chen presents Duet at 11:00am in Exhibit Hall G
  • Tuesday: Ricardo Jota presents Let’s Kick It at 11am in Exhibit Hall G
  • Wednesday: Peter Hamilton presents Conductor at 2pm in 714AB
  • Wednesday: Jishuo Yang presents Panelrama at 2pm in 714AB
  • Thursday: Thariq Shihipar presents Slide to X at 11am in 701B

CHI 2014 Best Paper Award

The team behind Duet: Exploring joint interactions on a smart phone and a smart watch was pleased to learn the project has been named one of CHI2014’s best papers. We look forward to sharing the work with the conference.

People’s Choice Best Talk Award

The CHI People’s Choice Best Talk Award has been officially announced. If you’re coming to CHI, get ready to pick your favourites for special recognition!

UIST Papers Deadline Set

We are pleased to announce that UIST 2014 papers will be due on April 16 through PCS. The official call will appear on the ACM website shortly.

San Francisco Talks Schedule

I will be in the Bay Area the week of November 17th. My talks schedule is as follows:

Tuesday, November 19 @ UC Berkeley; Wednesday, November 20 @ Google Research; Thursday, November 21 @ Adobe Research; Friday, November 22 @ Stanford.

ACM UIST 2014 PC co-Chair

I have volunteered to co-chair the PC for UIST next year with Mira Dontcheva. Ready your submissions!

Brave NUI World Translated into Korean

Our book, Brave NUI World | Designing Natural User Interfaces for Touch and Gesture, is now available in Korean.

U of T Inventors of the Year

Dr. Ricardo Jota and I were named recipients of U of T’s Inventors of the Year award for 2013. This recognises work built upon our 2012 UIST paper, Designing for Low Latency Direct-Touch Input. The project was co-invented with Steven Sanders and Clifton Forlines of Tactual Labs, where the tech has been spun out, and with the generous support of Microsoft.

CHI 2014: People’s Choice Talk Awards Chair

In the spirit of “no good suggestion goes unpunished”, I have volunteered as CHI’s first chair of “People’s Choice Talk Awards” (for 2014). Our goal is to reward high-quality talks by allowing conference attendees to vote for their favourites. The People’s Choice Awards will be presented at the end of the conference. So, CHI 2014 presenters, be on notice: a good talk can lead to fame and fortune!

Connaught New Researcher Award

I was pleased to learn this week that the Connaught Fund will be sponsoring my lab with a New Researcher Award at the top level of funding. Thank you to U of T for their continued support.

Mike Glueck to receive Best Student Paper award at GI

We learned this morning that Mike Glueck‘s paper, A Model of Navigation for Very Large Data Views, has been selected for the Michael A.J. Sweeney Award for best student paper at GI 2013. Congratulations to Mike, and to our co-author, Tovi Grossman of Autodesk.

Brave NUI World Translated into Chinese

Our book, Brave NUI World | Designing Natural User Interfaces for Touch and Gesture, has been translated into Chinese.

Presenting at GI 2013

Mike Glueck will be presenting our paper, A Model of Navigation for Very Large Data Views, at GI 2013. This work is done in collaboration with Tovi Grossman at Autodesk Research.

Presenting at ACM CHI 2013

My collaborators and I will be presenting 3 papers at ACM CHI 2013, April 29-May 2 in Paris.

Tactual Labs Launched

Tactual Labs is a start-up deciated to the development of technologies related to high-performance interactive systems, building on work done in the lab.

Presenting at ACM UIST 2012

My collaborators and I will be presenting 3 papers at ACM UIST 2012, October 7-10 in Cambridge, MA.

Speaking at SXSW Interactive

I and Kay Hofmeester of the Microsoft Windows team (and my former colleague at Microsoft Surface) will be speaking at SXSW Interactive, March 9-13, in Austin, TX.

STUDENTS

I mentor graduate and undergraduate students, as well as postdoctoral fellows, who are passionate about inventing the future of human-computer interaction. Undergraduates are typically engineering students conducting thesis work, CS students enrolled in project courses, or USRA or UTRECS scholarship recipients conducting summer research. My graduate students come from diverse backgrounds, but share a record of academic excellence and demonstrated passion for invention. If you are looking for research opportunities: first, review my team’s research. If it piques your interest, contact me to set-up a time to discuss your interests.

Current Students & Post Docs

Dashiel Carrera (Ph.D.)
Jessi Stark (Ph.D.)
Bingjian Huang (Ph.D.)
Sarah Kushner (Ph.D.)

U of T Alumni

Seongkook Heo (PDF, 2019) (Assistant Professor, University of Virginia)
Bruno De Araujo (PDF, 2018) (Tactual Labs)
Michelle Annett (PDF, 2017) (MishMashMakers founder)
Ricardo Jota (PDF, 2015) (Tactual Labs founder)

Zhen Li (Ph.D., 2022) (Researcher, Huawei)
Varun Perumal (Ph.D., 2022)
Zhicong Lu (Ph.D., 2021) (Assistant Professor, City University of Hong Kong)
Haijun Xia (Ph.D., 2020) (Assistant Professor, University of California, San Diego)
Michael Glueck (Ph.D., 2017) (Researcher, Autodesk Research) – with Prof. Fanny Chevalier

Ming Hou (M.Sc., 2022) (Fortinet)
Rachel Phinnemore (M.Sc., 2022) (Google)
Seyong Ha (M.Sc., 2019)
Jacob Ritchie (M.Sc., 2019) – with Prof. Fanny Chevalier (Stanford University PhD)
Zhen Li (M.Sc., 2018) (U of T PhD)
Zhicong Lu (M.Sc., 2018) (U of T PhD)
Anuruddha Hettiarachchi (M.Sc., 2016) (Index Exchange)
Yupeng Zhang (M.Sc., 2016) – with Prof. Karan Singh (Autodesk)
Rabia Aslam (M.Sc., 2015) (Sphero)
Haijun Xia (M.Sc., 2015) (U of T PhD)
Peter Hamilton (M.Sc., 2014)
Jishuo Yang (M.Sc., 2014) (IBM)
Michael Glueck (M.Sc., 2013) (U of T PhD; Autodesk Research)

Mallika Singh (M.A.Sc., 2022)
Alaa Abdulaal (M.Sc.A.C., 2016) – with Prof. Eyal de Lara
Jacqueline Bermudez (M.Sc.A.C., 2016)
Rebecca Dreezer (M.Sc.A.C., 2013) (Uken Games)
David Hoon (M.Sc.A.C., 2013)
Ben Chan (M.Sc.A.C., 2012) (MDA) – with Dr. Piotr Jasiobedzki

Sky Hou (U.G., 2023) – with Varun Perumal
Nirmal Pol (U.G., 2023) – with Varun Perumal
Harishguna Satgunaraj (U.G., 2023) – with Varun Perumal
Hanya Wahdan (U.G., 2022) – With Prof. Paul Dietz
Devamardeep Hayatpur (U.G., 2021) – with Prof. Haijun Xia (UCSD)
Elise Chenxinran Shen (U.G., 2021) – with Prof. Zhicong Lu (UBC)
Yining Liu (U.G., 2021) – with Varun Perumal
Cheryl Lao (U.G., 2020) (University of Waterloo)
Sally (Ji Yeon) Lee (U.G., 2020) (Amazon)
Devamardeep Hayatpur (U.G., 2019) – with Haijun Xia
Devamardeep Hayatpur (U.G., 2018) – with Dr. Seongkook Heo
Christine Murad (U.G., 2017) – with Nicole Sultanum (University of Toronto)
Chritina Chung (U.G., 2017) – with Dr. Bruno De Araujo
Lin Han (U.G., 2016) – with Nicole Sultanum
Parastoo Abtahi (UG, 2016) (Stanford University)
Victoria Bilbily (UG, 2016) – with Nicole Sultanum (University of Toronto)
Alina Gvozdik (UG, 2016) (PhenoTips) with Michael Glueck
Sang-Ah Han (UG, 2016) – with Michael Glueck
Mathew Lakier (UG, 2016) – with Dr. Michelle Annett
Steven Lee (UG, 2016) – with Dr. Bruno De Araujo and Dr. Ricardo Jota
Dhairya Patel (UG, 2016) – with Dr. Ricardo Jota
Pok Man “Brian” To (UG, 2016) (Microsoft)
Michael Wang (UG, 2016)
Rahil Hirani (UG, 2015) – with Dr. Ricardo Jota
Adam Hueniken (UG, 2015)
Odhita Kamayana (UG, 2015) – with Dr. Ricardo Jota
Matthew Lakier (UG, 2015) – with Dr. Michelle Annett
Mingzhe Li (UG, 2015) – with Dr. Michelle Annett
Evan Rocha (UG, 2015) – with Dr. Ricardo Jota
Andrew Pelegris (UG, 2014) – with Michael Glueck
Benjamin McCanny (UG, 2014) (Google)
Eleni Triantafillou (UG, 2014) (University of Toronto)
Eric J.X. Yao (UG, 2013) (University of California Berkeley) – with Dr. Ricardo Jota
Ankith Giliyar Shanthiraj (UG, 2013) (University of Texas Austin)
Thariq Shihipar (UG, 2013) (MIT Media Lab)
Yan Sun (UG, 2013) – with Michael Glueck
Jay (Zhe) Yu (UG, 2013) – with Dr. Ricardo Jota (CMU)
Michael Andreae (UG, 2012) – with Dr. Ricardo Jota
Stephanie Daoust (Knapp) (UG, 2012)
Faizan Haque (UG, 2012)
Osman Haque (UG, 2012) – with Dr. Ricardo Jota
Rajavi Shah (UG, 2012)

Alex Mahedy (HS, 2012, 2013) (Colgate University)

Former Microsoft Interns

Roland Aigner, Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences
Shaun Kane, University of Washington
Tao Ni, Virginia Tech
Dustin Freeman, University of Toronto

Former MERL Interns

Hao Jiang, Tsinghua University
Peter Brandl, Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences