UNIVERSITY of  WASHINGTON Information School Computer Science & Engineering
Jacob O. Wobbrock Professor, The Information School
Adjunct Professor, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
  Jacob O. Wobbrock, Ph.D.
The Information School
University of Washington
Box 352840
Seattle, WA 98195-2840   USA

 
 

Welcome!

I am a Professor of Information and, by courtesy, Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington (UW). My field is human-computer interaction (HCI) with a focus on mobile and accessible computing. I am a founding member of the DUB Group and the MHCI+D degree. I also direct the ACE Lab and am an Associate Director and founding Co-Director Emeritus of the CREATE research center. My Ph.D. students come from information science and computer science.

My research seeks to scientifically understand people's interactions with and experiences of computers and information, and to improve them by inventing and evaluating new interactive technologies, especially for people with disabilities. My specific research topics include input and interaction techniques, human performance measurement and modeling, HCI research and design methods, mobile computing, and accessible computing.

Some of my notable projects are the ability-based design approach to accessible technology design, the $-family gesture recognizers, the end-user elicitation design method, the Slide Rule design for accessible touchscreen gestures, ARTool for conducting nonparametric statistical analyses, the Pointing Magnifier assistive pointing and visual aid, and the versatile EdgeWrite text entry system.

For my contributions to accessible computing, I received the 2017 SIGCHI Social Impact Award and the 2019 SIGACCESS ASSETS Paper Impact Award. I also received the ICMI 2022 Ten-Year Technical Impact Award for work on gesture recognition. In 2019, I was inducted into the CHI Academy. In 2021, I was named an ACM Fellow.

I have also been an entrepreneur. In 2012, I co-founded AnswerDash, where I was a venture-backed CEO for about three years. In 2020, AnswerDash was acquired by CloudEngage. My conversations with The New York Times and The Huffington Post capture some of my experiences as a startup co-founder from academia.

See my bio, full CV, faculty profile, Wikipedia page, ACM author page, or Google Scholar page.

ACE Lab logo Logo for CREATE, the Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences at the University of Washington. Icon is a person with a prosthetic arm holding a lightbulb. DUB logo

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