Gerry Chu HCI Researcher
Interaction Designer
Mechanical Engineer
horiz rule

Education


University of Toronto, Canada

MSc, Computer Science (Human-Computer Interaction), DGP lab, 2007
Advisor: Prof. Ravin Balakrishnan

Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

BS, Human-Computer Interaction, Mechanical Engineering. May 2006
Graduated with University Honors, GPA: 3.70

Employment


Finger touching window

Hasso Plattner Institute

Visiting Researcher
Potsdam, Germany
Nov 2008-Early 2009

Conducting study on why pointing using touchscreens is imprecise. Prototyping interactive rings. Advising undergraduate and master's students on interaction design projects.

nanoTouch

Microsoft Research

Research Intern
Redmond, WA
June-Sept 2008

Designed interactions, visual metaphors, and conducted user studies for nanoTouch, a small mobile device with a touchpad on the back. Research paper Back-of-Device Interaction Allows Creating Very Small Touch Devices co-authored with Patrick Baudisch to appear at CHI 2009, Boston.

Featherweight multimedia

Microsoft Research

Research Intern
Bangalore, India
Jan-May 2008

Used an iterative design process to successfully create "featherweight" audio/touchscreen interfaces for illiterate people in India. Elderly villagers had fun using the mobile device prototype I created that taught health information.

 

Robotics Institute

Research Assistant
Pittsburgh, PA
2004-2006

Repaired an arm robot that is mentally controlled by a monkey. Designed, machined, and programmed a rotational haptic device.

Xerox

Mech. E. Intern
Wilsonville, OR
Summer 2005

Designed a fixture for printhead alignment using Pro/Engineer. Analyzed stresses using Ansys. Wrote a GUI data graphing program in Matlab.

Mentor Graphics

Web Application Developer
Wilsonville, OR
Summer 2001

Built customized homepages for a Java web application. Examined the needs of users to design interfaces that provided each with relevant information.

Other Projects


Cleaning tools

Worked in a multi-disciplinary team and used an iterative design process to create a kit of cleaning tools for International Truck as part of the Integrated Product Design course at Carnegie Mellon. This kit was a lifestyle product created to increase brand visibility.

Haptic mousewheel

Created a haptic mousewheel and widgets that use force-feedback to allow people to communicate conviction (how strongly one feels about something) to computers.

 
Photo organization

I prototyped a series of innovative photo organization techniques such as storytelling, RFID, and animated piling.

 

Skills


User-centered design, think-aloud, task analysis, heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthough

Machining, prototyping, Solidworks, Pro/Engineer, Matlab

C#, WPF, XAML, Java, Flash, Visio, Linux, HTML, PHP, SQL

Spanish, Chinese

Teaching


User Interface Design, Hasso Plattner Institute, Fall 2008
Design of Interactive Computational Media, University of Toronto, Fall 2007
The How and Why of Computing, University of Toronto, Spring 2007
Capstone Design of Games, University of Toronto, Fall 2006

Activities


Buggy

Mechanic
2002-2006

Used composite materials to help build a vehicle for a university competition.

Oregon Watersheds

Volunteer
2000-2002

Volunteered for an organization dedicated to bring fish back to urban streams.

Food Drive

Volunteer
2003-2005

Organized a food drive for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank.

Citizenship


USA