John C. Tang's CV

SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS:

  • Working with users and developers to specify and iteratively refine design concepts, develop working prototypes, and transfer knowledge to product groups.
  • Designing and conducting studies of user interaction combining qualitative (interviews, ethnographic studies, video-based observation) and quantitative (instrumented prototypes, usage logs) methods.
  • Expressing design concepts using screenshots in Photoshop, mockups in Macromedia Director (including basic Lingo scripting), and recording and editing video demos using Camtasia Studio.
  • Communicating through presentations, videos, and active participation in the research community through research conference (CHI and CSCW) and journal papers and university collaborations and relationships.
  • Developing and teaching a college-level course on Human-Computer Interaction.
  • Building relationships among disparate groups in research and product organizations.

WORK EXPERIENCE:

IBM Research, Almaden Research Center

San Jose, California
3/2004 – present
Member of Research Staff, USER Group
  • Designed and conducted empirical studies of Web 2.0-based email program that explored novel combinations of threading, tagging, foldering, and social networking features.
  • Developed design for prototype (Recent Shortcuts) that provided easy access to recently used computer objects (people, groups, received attachments, files) to re-open or drag and drop into the user’s current activity. Design was based on empirical study of how people integrate across desktop applications and coordinate with others to accomplish their activities.
  • Led research project, Consolidarity, which explored what files members within a work context share in common to discover meaningful patterns to encourage social networking and information sharing.

University of California, Berkeley,

Berkeley, California 8/2007 – 12/2007 Visiting professor, Computer Science Division, EECS
  • Led teaching team for CS160 undergraduate course on User Interface Design, Prototyping, and Evaluation. Coordinated team of four lecturers and teaching assistants to guide students in designing, implementing, and evaluating social networking team projects based on the facebook platform.

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Mountain View, California
12/1990 – 1/2004
Sr. Staff Engineer, Sun Labs
  • Co-founded Network Communities research group to study distributed collaboration. Led West Coast team to design and deploy proof of concept prototypes.
  • Designed an awareness and IM prototype (Awarenex) that provided awareness information to help remote collaborators find opportune times to contact each other and negotiate making contact. Designed clients for both desktop and PDA devices.
  • Analyzed usage logs of Awarenex to identify meaningful patterns in users' activity. Explored how activity rhythms varied according to individual, day of week, location, job role, etc. Discovered ways these rhythms could help group coordination, especially for members separated by time zones.
  • Collected customer requirements (visits, phone interviews) for collaboration technologies to identify new directions for research and product teams.
  • Designed prototypes that use audio-video connections to support collaborative work and studied their use in real work settings. Designed novel interfaces for maintaining awareness (Piazza) and integrating informal video connections with other communication tools (Montage).

Xerox Palo Alto Research Center

Palo Alto, California
6/1986 - 12/1990
Research Associate, System Sciences Laboratory
  • Applied doctoral research to design and implement a series of prototype, video- based, collaborative drawing tools (VideoDraw, VideoWhiteboard) and study their use in realistic work activity.
  • Consulted on design of large screen, stylus input prototype to support collaboration (Liveboard).

EDUCATION:

Stanford University, Stanford, California

1989 Ph.D., Design Division, Mechanical Engineering

Research and course work in design research, observational methodologies, human factors, and human-machine interface design. Dissertation studied small group, conceptual design activity, resulting in a descriptive analysis with implications for computer tools to support it. Applied a methodology for analyzing videotapes of collaborative work to organize and represent data from empirical studies.

Stanford University, Stanford, California

1983 M.S., Mechanical Engineering

Stanford University, Stanford, California

1982 B.S., Mechanical Engineering

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

  • Tang, John C., James Lin, Jeffrey S. Pierce, Steve Whittaker, and Clemens Drews, “Recent Shortcuts: Using Recent Interactions to Support Shared Activities”, Conference on Computer Human Interaction (CHI) 2007, San Jose, CA, May 2007, pp. 1263-1272.
  • Tang, John C., Clemens Drews, Mark Smith, Fei Wu, Alison Sue, and Tessa Lau, “Exploring Patterns of Social Commonality Among File Directories at Work”, Conference on Computer Human Interaction (CHI) 2007, San Jose, CA, May 2007, pp. 951-960.
  • Tang, John C., “Approaching and Leave-Taking: Negotiating Contact in Computer- Mediated Communication”, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Vol. 14, No. 1, May 2007, Article 5.
  • Tang, John C., Sophia B. Liu, Michael Muller, James Lin, and Clemens Drews, “Unobtrusive But Invasive: Using Screen Recording to Collect Field Data on Computer -Mediated Interaction”, Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 2006, Banff, Canada, November 2006, pp. 479-482.
  • Tang, John C. and James "Bo" Begole, "Beyond Instant Messaging", ACM Queue, Vol. 1, No. 8, November 2003, pp. 28-37.
  • Begole, James "Bo", John C. Tang, and Rosco Hill, "Rhythm Modeling, Visualizations and Applications", User Interface Software and Technology Symposium (UIST) 2003, Vancouver, November 2003, pp. 11-20.
  • Tyler, Joshua R. and John C. Tang, "When Can I Expect an Email Response? A Study of Rhythms in Email Usage", Eighth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW) 2003, Helsinki, September 2003, pp. 239-258.
  • Begole, James "Bo", John C. Tang, Randall B. Smith, and Nicole Yankelovich, "Work Rhythms: Analyzing Visualizations of Awareness Histories of Distributed Groups", Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 2002, New Orleans, November 2002, pp. 334-343.
  • Tang, John C., Nicole Yankelovich, James "Bo" Begole, Max Van Kleek, Francis Li, and Janak Bhalodia, "ConNexus to Awarenex: Extending awareness to mobile users", Conference on Computer Human Interaction (CHI) 2001, Seattle, WA, April 2001, pp. 221-228.
  • Tang, John C., "Eliminating a Hardware Switch: Weighing Economics and Values in a Design Decision", in Human Values and the Design of Computer Technology, Batya Friedman (Ed.), Stanford: CSLI Publications, 1997, pp. 259-269.
  • Isaacs, Ellen A. and John C. Tang, "Studying Video-Based Collaboration in Context: From Small Workgroups to Large Organizations", in Video-Mediated Communication, K. Finn, A. Sellen, & S. Wilbur (Eds.), Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1997, pp. 173-197.
  • Isaacs, Ellen A., John C. Tang, and Trevor Morris, "Piazza: A desktop environment supporting impromptu and planned interactions", Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) `96, Boston, November 1996, pp. 315- 324.
  • Isaacs, Ellen A. and John C. Tang, "Technology Transfer: So much research, so few good products", Communications of the ACM, Vol. 39, No. 9, September 1996, pp. 23-25.
  • Tang, John C., Ellen A. Isaacs, and Monica Rua, "Supporting Distributed Groups with a Montage of Lightweight Interactions", Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) `94, Chapel Hill, NC, October 1994, pp. 23-34.
  • Tang, John C. and Monica Rua, "Montage: Providing Teleproximity for Distributed Groups", Conference on Computer Human Interaction (CHI) `94, Boston, MA, April 1994, pp. 37-43.
  • Tang, John C. and Ellen A. Isaacs, "Why Do Users Like Video? Studies of Multimedia-Supported Collaboration", Computer Supported Cooperative Work: An International Journal, Vol. 1, Issue 3, 1993, pp. 163-196.
  • Tang, John, "Involving Social Scientists in the Design of New Technology", in Taking Software Design Seriously: Practical Techniques for Human-Computer Interaction Design, John Karat (Ed.), Boston: Academic Press, 1991, pp. 115-126.
  • Tang, John C. and Scott L. Minneman, "VideoWhiteboard: Video Shadows to Support Remote Collaboration", Conference on Computer Human Interaction (CHI) '91, New Orleans, LA, April/May 1991, pp. 315-322.
  • Tang, John C. and Scott L. Minneman, "VideoDraw: A Video Interface for Collaborative Drawing", ACM Transactions on Information Systems, Vol. 9, No. 2, April 1991, pp. 170-184.
  • Tang, John C. and Larry J. Leifer, "An Observational Methodology for Studying Group Design Activity", Research in Engineering Design, 1991, Vol. 2, No. 4., pp. 209-219.
  • Tang, John C., "Findings from Observational Studies of Collaborative Work", International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, February 1991, pp. 143-160.
  • Tang, John C., Listing, Drawing, and Gesturing in Design: A Study of the Use of Shared Workspaces by Design Teams, Xerox PARC Technical Report SSL-89-3 (Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University), April 1989.

PATENTS:

  • Tang, John C. et al., “Method and apparatus for accessing related computer objects”, U.S. Patent 7,159,207, January 2, 2007.
  • Begole, James M., Nicholas E. Matsakis, & John C. Tang, “Method and system for determining whether a person is potentially unavailable for communication”, U.S. Patent 7,129,818, October 31, 2006.
  • Tang , John C. et al., “System and method for connecting pending and preset telephone calls to facilitate transitioning to a phone call”, U.S. Patent 7,106,851, September 12, 2006.
  • Tang, John C., Chris Ryan, Trevor Morris, & Ellen Isaacs, “Animated indicators that reflect function activity or state of objects, data, or processes”, U.S. patent 6,988,248, January 17, 2006.
  • Tang, John C., Nicole Y. Mordecai, & James M. A. Begole, “Method and apparatus for providing multi-level access control in a shared computer window”, U.S. patent 6,934,737, August 23, 2005.
  • Tang, John C., et al., “System and method for providing spatially distributed device interaction”, U.S. patent 6,791,583, September 14, 2004.
  • Tang, John C., et al., “Mechanism for reciprocal awareness of intent to initiate and end interaction among remote users”, U.S. patent 6,731,308, May 4, 2004.
  • Tang, John C., et al., “Lightweight indicator of divergence of views for collaboratively shared user interface elements”, U.S. Patent 6,686,933, February 3, 2004.
  • Tang, John C. & Randall B. Smith, "Method and apparatus for generating an audio signature for a data item", U.S. Patent 6,532,477, March 11, 2003.
  • Tang, John C., Ellen Isaacs, Trevor Morris, Thomas Rodriguez, Alan Ruberg, & Rick Levenson, "System and method enabling awareness of others working on similar tasks in a computer work environment", U.S. Patent 5,960,173, September 28. 1999.
  • Tang, John C., Ellen Isaacs, Trevor Morris, Thomas Rodriguez, Alan Ruberg, & Rick Levenson, "System and method providing a computer user interface enabling access to distributed workgroup members", U.S. Patent 5,793,365, August 11, 1998.
  • Tang, John C., Randall B. Smith, & D. Austin Henderson, Jr., "Multi-control point tool for computer drawing programs", U.S. patent 5,325,110, June 28, 1994.
  • Tang, John C., Scott L. Minneman, Sara A. Bly, & Steve R. Harrison, "Video computational shared drawing space", U.S. patent 5,239,373, August 24, 1993.
  • Tang, John C. & Scott L. Minneman, "Apparatus allowing interactive use of a plurality of writing surfaces", U.S. patent 5,025,314, June 18, 1991.

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