PhD student at the University of Toronto
Hi there! I am a PhD student studying Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in the DGP lab at the University of Toronto, supervised by Prof. Ravin Balakrishnan and Prof. Tovi Grossman. My research interests are mainly in AR/VR interactions, freehand interactions, 3D user interfaces, and technology-assisted learning. Please contact me for CV.
Di Laura Chen, Marcello Giordano, Hrvoje Benko, Tovi Grossman, and Stephanie Santosa. In 29th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST), October 2023. [PDF] [30-Sec Teaser] [Video] [Presentation]
Franklin Mingzhe Li, Di Laura Chen, Mingming Fan, and Khai N. Truong. In Proceedings of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), May 2021. [PDF]
Di Laura Chen, Ravin Balakrishnan, and Tovi Grossman. In IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR), March 2020. [PDF] [Video] [Presentation]
Franklin Mingzhe Li, Di Laura Chen, Mingming Fan, and Khai N. Truong. In Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), September 2019. [PDF]
Di Laura Chen, Dustin Freeman, and Ravin Balakrishnan. In Proceedings of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), May 2019. [PDF]
I implemented a set of freehand interaction techniques by combining a hand-tracking sensor with an AR head-mounted display. Users can directly interact with virtual objects with bare hands in physically realistic ways. [Video]
An AR application developed on Microsoft Hololens that assists users in learning movements, such as in dance or sports. We used motion-captured data of real instructors performing movements to animate a holographic virtual trainer. We explored a series of visualization techniques to facilitate the learning, including footprints, body motion curves, and keyframes. [Slides (videos included)]
Ingredient labels are crucial in helping consumers make informed decisions about the food they buy and eat. However, ingredient labels are often difficult to understand. IngVis is an interactive application that I developed for visualizing food ingredients that dynamically displays ingredient information based on varying consumer needs. [Video]
Designed and fabricated a multi-purpose, foldable cutlery set. Performed 3D modelling of the tool using OpenSCAD, built a Python application interface to make features of the tool customizable, 3D-printed the components and assembled the tool. [Video]
The UofT Timetable Generator is an Android application that helps University of Toronto students compose their course schedules based on the university's publicly posted calendar. We devised and tested an efficient algorithm to select the best timetable schedule based on chosen courses and other user settings, such as preferring morning vs. night sections. [Website] [Video]
Course instructor for CSC108: Introduction to Computer Programming (In-Person)
Worked on evaluating gesture learning in VR through analysis of physical movements
Course instructor for CSC108: Introduction to Computer Programming (Remote)
Worked on object depth estimation in VR using eye gaze and controller raycasting
Teaching assistant for CSC108 and CSC318