Brad Myers
Professor, Human Computer Interaction, Computer Science
www

My research interests are currently focused on how to improve programming using human-computer interaction (HCI) techniques. By studying how people conceive, reverse-engineer, design, program, and debug programs, we can better understand what the real problems and opportunities are. Our project is called the Natural Programming Project, because the goal is to make programming more "natural" -- by which we mean, closer to the way people think. We study all types of programmers, from novice to professional, and also end-user programmers (EUP), who are people who write programs, but not as their primary job function. EUP includes programming in spreadsheets, games, and creating web pages and mashups. Using the knowledge from our studies, we then create novel programming languages, tools, and interactive development environments (IDEs). I am particularly interested in creating tools that encourage creativity while developing interactive behaviors. We are also looking at how to allow end users to create effective software.

I have also worked in many other areas on the computer science side of HCI. Pebbles is a large-scale project looking at how handheld devices such as mobile phones and PDAs can be used to augment regular computers and appliances, rather than replacing them. I have an on-going effort on how handhelds can be used to help people with disabilities, as part of the Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center (QoLT).

I am also working on the Radar project, investigating how to create intelligent user interfaces for sophisticated systems that learn. My research is focusing on visualizations and interaction techniques to better understand and control management of tasks and meeting scheduling.

Other previous research includes various toolkits for making the design and implementation of user interfaces easier, novel interaction techniques, visual programming, programming by example, and window managers.

Home Page: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam
Natural Programming Project: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~natprog
Pebbles Project: http://www.pebbles.hcii.cmu.edu/
QoLT: http://www.qolt.org/
Radar: http://www.radar.cs.cmu.edu/enable conceptual integration, in addition to temporal and geospatial integration of information.