Human-Computer Interaction researcher, Ph.D. (Computer Science)
Jun Kato
Research area
I am interested in broad area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and have been especially focused on designing user interfaces and integrated environments for creativity support. Improving Programming Experience (PX) is an important subgoal to support the creativity of people with diverse technical backgrounds.
Bio
Jun Kato is a HCI senior researcher at AIST, Japan, and also serves as a technical advisor at Arch Inc. He worked for Microsoft and Adobe and received a Ph.D. from The University of Tokyo in 2014. He has focused on PX research, founded SIGPX, and regularly gained academic recognition such as ACM CHI 2013/2015 Best Paper Honorable Mention.
Recent updates
3/2/2019
Attended the Shonan meeting on exploratory and live programming and organized the Sixth Workshop of SIGPX at a venue of The University of Tokyo. The slides at SIGPX are available.
10/25/2018
Presented Songle Sync in the "Experience" session at ACM Multimedia 2018. Slides are available for download in the project page.
10/7/2018
Presented DeployGround in the "APIs and Use of Programming Languages" session at IEEE VL/HCC 2018. Slides are available for download in the project page.
8/20/2018
First-authored projects Songle Sync (ACM Multimedia 2018) and TextAlive (ACM CHI 2015) will both be used at Hatsune Miku "Magical Mirai" 2018. Celebrate her birthday with Songle Sync or enjoy the live performance along with kinetic typography videos created with TextAlive!
7/9/2018
Started a new part-time technical advisor position at Arch Inc., a Japanese animation production company. Please contact me if you want to pursue research on "Japanimation!"
Research topics
While I am interested in broad area of HCI and have a high-level goal of supporting people's creativity, I have been especially focused on the following topics. For the list of concrete projects, see Projects.
User Interfaces for Live Programming
Live programming eliminates the gulf between code and execution. User interface design plays the key role in providing live programming experience.
With appropriate user interface design, live programming can potentially benefit end-users, be used for applications whose computation takes a long time, and mean much more than merely providing real-time information of the running program.
Programming with Examples
The programming-with-examples (PwE) workflow lets developers create interactive applications with the help of example data. It takes a general programming environment and adds dedicated user interfaces for visualizing and managing the data.
This is particularly useful in developing data-intensive applications such as physical computing, image processing, video authoring, machine learning, and others that require intensive parameter tuning.
Projects
Below is the list of research projects, followed by the list of design and/or engineering projects. See Design for the design-oriented list of my projects.
Recent research projects
Songle SyncThe Songle Sync platform allows controlling numerous devices in synchrony with the songs with its SDK.
2017-2019MM '18
f3.jsA parametric design tool for physical computing devices for both interaction designers and end-users.
2015-2019DIS '17
TextAliveAn integrated design environment for kinetic typography; desktop app revamped as a web service in 2015.
2014-2019CHI '15
Other research projects
DeployGround
DeployGround is a framework for developing web-based tutorials that seamlessly connects the API playground and deployment target for kick-starting the application development.
2018-2019VL/HCC '18
MetascienceThe goal of this ongoing project is to develop human-friendly computer-aided technologies that help researchers to conduct scientific research.
2018-2019(Work in progress)
ReactileReactile is an exploratory research project that investigates and proposes a new approach to programming Swarm UI by leveraging direct physical manipulation.
2017-2018CHI '18Co-authored
User-Generated VariablesUGVs are variables generated by the end-users' requests and implemented (or discarded) by the programmers. The use of UGV helps both sending feature requests and their actual implementation.
2017PX '17
Live TuningLive Tuning is the subset of Live Programming interaction that only involves changes in constant values through parameter tuning interfaces. It expands Live Programming benefits to non-programmers.
2016LIVE '16
CrossSong
A logic puzzle for "musical thinking," deepening your understanding on music while enjoying the puzzle.
2015-2017SMC '15Co-authored
Sharedo
A to-do list interface for sharing tasks between human and agents including robots and software personal assistants.
2011-2014HAI '14
VisionSketch
An IDE for example-centric programming of image processing applications, enabling fluid transition between abstract text-based coding and concrete direct manipulation.
2013-2014GI '14
CapStudio
An IDE for visual applications that shows interactive screencasts for replaying program executions and editing visual parameters.
2012-2014CHI EA '14Co-authored
It's Alive! (TouchDevelop)
The TouchDevelop IDE enables live programming for user interface programming by cleanly separating the rendering and non-rendering aspects of a UI program, allowing the display to be refreshed on a code change without restarting the program.
2012-2013PLDI '13
Picode
An IDE that shows inline photos representing posture data in source code. It manages the data binding between the photos and posture data and show photos to aid source code comprehension and editing.
2011-2013CHI '13
OpenPool
An open-source project that augments a standard billiard table with the cutting-edge computing technologies to provide the "super-billiard" experience.
2012-2013IEEE GCCE '13
DejaVu
An IDE that eases the iterative development of interactive camera-based programs with support for monitoring, recording, reviewing, and reprocess temporal data
2012UIST '12
Phybots
A toolkit that allows researchers and interaction designers to rapidly prototype applications with locomotive robotic things.
2009-2012DIS '12
Surfboard
A technique to detect simple gestures of "surfing" (moving a hand horizontally) on a standard keyboard by analyzing recorded sounds in real-time with a microphone attached close to the keyboard.
2010UIST '10 Adjunct
Pressing
A "pressure-sensitive" programming environment with visual feedbacks of the built-in 2D physical simulator.
2009インタラクション2010デモ
CRISTAL
A table-top interface that provides a streaming video view of the living room, so users can walk up to it, see the layout of the room and interact with the TV, lighting, cleaning robot, and so on.
2009SIGGRAPH '09 E-TechCo-authored
Multi-touch Interface for Controlling Multiple Mobile Robots
A multi-touch interface with a top-down view from a ceiling-mounted camera for simultaneously controlling multiple mobile robots.
2008-2009CHI EA '09
Design and/or engineering projects
Magical Mirai 2018 live lyrics animationOnce again, authored lyrics animation for a live performance by Hatsune Miku!
2018
SNOW MIKU LIVE! 2018 lyrics animationAuthored lyrics animation for a live performance by a renowned virtual idol singer - Hatsune Miku!
2018
"junkato.jp" WebsiteThis portfolio website is built with various OSS and itself is open-sourced on GitHub.
2018-2019
Tenju Works web design
OngaCREST service flyer and poster designDesigned flyers and posters of the four web services developed by the OngaCREST project.
2016
IntelliViewer
A user interface for helping navigation of source code in IDEs. For each row of the keyboard, available namespaces, classes, member variables and methods are shown on the keytops.
2010
CD jacket designDesigned multiple CD jackets.
2007-2008
ChippieAn extendible PHP framework for content management of news website.
2006-2008
arX MusicPlayer
Yet another music player for Windows with a built-in interpreter of a domain-specific language to change "skins."
2002-2007
arX Launcher
Yet another program launcher for Windows written with <300 physical loc.
2004
Contact
Please reach me via email or social networking services rather than telephone and facsimile when possible. I rarely check these conventional machines.
Central 2, 1-1-1 Umezono, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8568, Japan
Interested in collaborations?
Collaborations
I am actively looking for collaborators in both academia and industry. Click to show more details.