Benjamin Lafreniere
Ph.D. Candidate
Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Lab
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, ON, Canada
email bjlafren {at} cs {dot} uwaterloo {dot} ca
office DC3591
phone 519-888-4567 x38318
Research Interests
Users of feature-rich software applications (Word, Photoshop, GIMP, etc) typically only use a small fraction of the functionality provided by the application, and even less in a single session of use. All of this unused functionality takes its toll, making interfaces difficult to navigate and hurting usability.
I am interested in how we can enable users to easily customize their interfaces to remove excess interface complexity and meet the needs of their current task. To this end, I am exploring the integration of social customization features into end-user applications.
The main focus of my current research efforts is AdaptableGIMP, a modified version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program that allows users to easily to create and share task-based interface customizations.
Academic History
University of Waterloo
- Ph.D. candidate (current)
- M.Math in Computer Science (2008)
University of Windsor
- B.Sc. Honours Computer Science (Software Engineering Specialization) (2005)
- Minors in Philosophy and Mathematics
Media Coverage
- Nathan Willis. LGM: Usability and AdaptableGIMP. Linux Weekly News, May 18, 2012 [URL]
- Dave Johnson Make the Free GIMP Photo Editor Easier to Use. PC World Digital Focus Blog, Oct 31, 2011 [URL]
- ginger coons. AdaptableGIMP: User Interfaces for Users. Libre Graphics Magazine, Issue 1.2 [PDF]
Publications
- Ben Lafreniere, Andrea Bunt, Matthew Lount, and Michael Terry. () “Looks cool, I'll try this later!”: Understanding the Faces and Uses of Online Tutorials. Tech Report CS-2012-01 [PDF]
- Ben Lafreniere, Andrea Bunt, Matthew Lount, Filip Krynicki, and Michael Terry. () AdaptableGIMP: Designing a Socially-Adaptable Interface. Proceedings of UIST 2011 (Poster) [PDF] [Poster PNG]
- Benjamin Lafreniere, Andrea Bunt, John Whissell, Charles Clarke, and Michael Terry. () Characterizing Large-Scale Use of a Direct Manipulation Application in the Wild. Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2010 (GI 2010) [PDF]
- Michael Terry, Matthew Kay, and Ben Lafreniere. () Perceptions and Practices of Usability in the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) Community. Proceedings of CHI 2010 [PDF]
- Peter Brass, Ferran Hurtado, Benjamin Lafreniere, and Anna Lubiw () A Lower Bound on the Area of a 3-Coloured Disk Packing. () International Journal of Computational Geometry and Applications (IJCGA), v.20(3), pp.341-360
- Benjamin Lafreniere () Packing Unit Disks. Master's Thesis, University of Waterloo, Waterloo ON, Canada, http://hdl.handle.net/10012/3907
- Peter Brass, Ferran Hurtado, Benjamin Lafreniere, and Anna Lubiw () A Lower Bound on the Area of a 3-Coloured Disc Packing. Proceedings of the 19th Canadian Conference on Computational Geometry, August 2007, pp.101--104
- Angela C. Sodan, Garima Gupta, Lin Han, Lun Liu, and Benjamin Lafreniere () Time and Space Adaptation for Computational Grids with the ATOP-Grid Middleware. Journal of Future Generation Computer Systems, v.28(6), pp.561--581
- Asish Mukhopadhyay, Samidh Chatterjee, and Benjamin Lafreniere (2006) On the All-Farthest-Segments problem for a planar set of points. () Information Processing Letters, v.100, pp.120--123
- Benjamin J. Lafreniere and Angela C. Sodan () ScoPred -- Scalable User-Directed Performance Prediction Using Complexity Modeling and Historical Data. Proceedings of the 11th Workshop on Job Scheduling Strategies for Parallel Processing. Lecture Notes in Computer Science LNCS 3834, pp.62--90
For more information on my publications and those of my coauthors, see my DBLP entry.