Author: Allison Woodruff
Ph.D
Allison Woodruff is a human-computer interaction researcher who uses social science methods to study people and their relationships with technology, drawing on the results to rethink existing technologies and invent new technologies. She often studies extreme users who take unusual measures in their use of technology, in order to uncover problems with existing computing paradigms and to draw inspiration for the design of new technologies for the broader population. She has conducted qualitative studies in a wide range of settings, such as green homes, museums, amusement parks, religious environments, low-income neighborhoods, street sweeper maintenance yards, and traditional work environments. She has also partnered with quantitative researchers to develop and study novel web search and information visualization tools.
To discover new technological opportunities, Allison draws on her interdisciplinary background in computer science, social science, and the humanities. She has 12 years of experience working for leading US corporate research laboratories. She is a co-inventor on 20 issued patents and has published extensively on topics such as mobile computing, sustainable technology, domestic technology, computer-mediated communication, and information visualization. Her work has been covered widely in the press, including the BBC and The Economist. Allison is passionate about using technology for social good, and she is an active advocate for research on sustainability. Her current project focuses on mobile environmental sensing and public policy (www.communitysensing.org).
Woodruff holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley, an MS in Computer Science and an MA in Linguistics from the University of California, Davis, and a BA in English from California State University, Chico. While at the University of California, Berkeley, Woodruff was a member of the database research group led by Michael Stonebraker, and her dissertation focused on the generation of database visualizations that conform to the principle of constant information density. After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, Woodruff worked as a research scientist at Xerox PARC from 1998-2004. In her spare time, she studies singing.
Publications
Co-authors
Productive Colleagues
- Stuart K. Card
- James A. Landay
- Gregory D. Abowd
- 73
- 91
- 116
Publications
Aipperspach, Ryan, Hooker, Ben, Woodruff, Allison (2009): The heterogeneous home. In Interactions, 16 (1) pp. 35-38. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1456202.1456211
Woodruff, Allison, Mankoff, Jennifer (2009): Environmental Sustainability. In IEEE Pervasive Computing, 8 (1) pp. 18-21. https://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MPRV.2009.6
Szymanski, Margaret, Aoki, Paul, Grinter, Rebecca E., Hurst, Amy, Thornton, James, Woodruff, Allison (2008): Sotto Voce: Facilitating Social Learning in a Historic House. In Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 17 (1) pp. 5-34. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10606-007-9067-y
Woodruff, Allison, Aoki, Paul M. (2004): Push-to-Talk Social Talk. In Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 13 (5) pp. 409-441. https://springerlink.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&id=doi:10.1007/s10606-004-5060-x
Aoki, Paul M., Romaine, Matthew, Szymanski, Margaret H., Thornton, James D., Wilson, Daniel, Woodruff, Allison (2003): The mad hatter's cocktail party: a social mobile audio space supporting multiple simultane. In: Cockton, Gilbert, Korhonen, Panu (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2003 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 5-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA. pp. 425-432.
Woodruff, Allison, Aoki, Paul M. (2003): How push-to-talk makes talk less pushy. In: Tremaine, Marilyn M., Simone, Carla (eds.) Proceedings of the International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work 2003 November 9-12, 2003, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA. pp. 170-179. https://doi.acm.org/10.1145/958160.958187
Suh, Bongwon, Woodruff, Allison, Rosenholtz, Ruth, Glass, Alyssa (2002): Popout prism: adding perceptual principles to overview+detail document interfaces. In: Terveen, Loren (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2002 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota. pp. 251-258.
Aoki, Paul M., Grinter, Rebecca E., Hurst, Amy, Szymanski, Margaret H., Thornton, James D., Woodruff, Allison (2002): Sotto voce: exploring the interplay of conversation and mobile audio spaces. In: Terveen, Loren (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2002 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota. pp. 431-438.
Grinter, Rebecca E., Aoki, Paul M., Szymanski, Margaret H., Thornton, James D., Woodruff, Allison, Hurst, Amy (2002): Revisiting the visit: understanding how technology can shape the museum visit. In: Churchill, Elizabeth F., McCarthy, Joe, Neuwirth, Christine, Rodden, Tom (eds.) Proceedings of the 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work November 16 - 20, 2002, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. pp. 146-155. https://doi.acm.org/10.1145/587078.587100
Woodruff, Allison, Rosenholtz, Ruth, Morrison, Julie Bauer, Faulring, Andrew, Pirolli, Peter (2002): A comparison of the use of text summaries, plain thumbnails, and enhanced thumbnails for W. In JASIST - Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 53 (2) pp. 172-185.
Woodruff, Allison, Faulring, Andrew, Rosenholtz, Ruth, Morrsion, Julie, Pirolli, Peter (2001): Using Thumbnails to Search the Web. In: Beaudouin-Lafon, Michel, Jacob, Robert J. K. (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2001 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference March 31 - April 5, 2001, Seattle, Washington, USA. pp. 198-205. https://www.acm.org/pubs/articles/proceedings/chi/365024/p198-woodruff/p198-woodruff.pdf
Woodruff, Allison, Olston, Chris, Aiken, Alexander, Chu, Michael, Ercegovac, Vuk, Lin, Mark, Spalding, Mybrid, Stonebraker, Michael (2001): DataSplash: A Direct Manipulation Environment for Programming Semantic Zoom Visualizations. In J. Vis. Lang. Comput., 12 (5) pp. 551-571.
Woodruff, Allison, Gossweiler, Rich, Pitkow, James, Chi, Ed H., Card, Stuart K. (2000): Enhancing a Digital Book with a Reading Recommender. In: Turner, Thea, Szwillus, Gerd, Czerwinski, Mary, Peterno, Fabio, Pemberton, Steven (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 2000 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference April 1-6, 2000, The Hague, The Netherlands. pp. 153-160. https://www.acm.org/pubs/articles/proceedings/chi/332040/p153-woodruff/p153-woodruff.pdf
Woodruff, Allison, Landay, James A., Stonebraker, Michael (1998): Constant Density Visualizations of Non-Uniform Distributions of Data. In: Mynatt, Elizabeth D., Jacob, Robert J. K. (eds.) Proceedings of the 11th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology November 01 - 04, 1998, San Francisco, California, United States. pp. 19-28. https://www.acm.org/pubs/articles/proceedings/uist/288392/p19-woodruff/p19-woodruff.pdf
Woodruff, Allison, Dey, Anind K., Abowd, Gregory D. (1997): CyberDesk: Automated Integration of Desktop and Network Services. In: Pemberton, Steven (eds.) Proceedings of the ACM CHI 97 Human Factors in Computing Systems Conference March 22-27, 1997, Atlanta, Georgia. pp. 552-553. https://www.acm.org/pubs/articles/proceedings/chi/258549/p552-wood/p552-wood.pdf
Woodruff, Allison, Plaunt, Christian (1994): GIPSY: Automated Geographic Indexing of Text Documents. In JASIST - Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 45 (9) pp. 645-655.
Woodruff, Allison, Augustin, Sally, Foucault, Brooke (2007): Sabbath day home automation: \"it\'s like mixing technology and religion\". In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2007 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , 2007, . pp. 527-536. https://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1240624.1240710
Aoki, Paul M., Szymanski, Margaret H., Plurkowski, Luke, Thornton, James D., Woodruff, Allison, Yi, Weilie (2006): Where\'s the \"party\" in \"multi-party\"?: analyzing the structure of small-group sociabl. In: Proceedings of ACM CSCW06 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work , 2006, . pp. 393-402. https://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1180875.1180934
Aoki, Paul M., Woodruff, Allison (2000): Improving Electronic Guidebook Interfaces Using a Task-Oriented Design Approach. In: Proceedings of DIS00: Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, & Techniques , 2000, . pp. 319-325. https://www.acm.org/pubs/articles/proceedings/chi/347642/p319-aoki/p319-aoki.pdf
Woodruff, Allison, Szymanski, Margaret H., Grinter, Rebecca E., Aoki, Paul M. (2002): Practical strategies for integrating a conversation analyst in an iterative design process. In: Proceedings of DIS02: Designing Interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, & Techniques , 2002, . pp. 255-264. https://doi.acm.org/10.1145/778712.778748
Aoki, Paul M., Woodruff, Allison (2005): Making space for stories: ambiguity in the design of personal communication systems. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2005 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , 2005, . pp. 181-190. https://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1054972.1054998
Woodruff, Allison, Hasbrouck, Jay, Augustin, Sally (2008): A bright green perspective on sustainable choices. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2008 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 5-10, 2008, . pp. 313-322. https://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1357054.1357109
Aoki, Paul M., Honicky, R. J., Mainwaring, Alan, Myers, Chris, Paulos, Eric, Subramanian, Sushmita, Woodruff, Allison (2009): A vehicle for research: using street sweepers to explore the landscape of environmental co. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems , 2009, . pp. 375-384. https://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1518701.1518762
Aipperspach, Ryan, Rattenbury, Tye, Woodruff, Allison, Canny, John F. (2006): A Quantitative Method for Revealing and Comparing Places in the Home. In: Dourish, Paul, Friday, Adrian (eds.) UbiComp 2006 Ubiquitous Computing - 8th International Conference September 17-21, 2006, Orange County, CA, USA. pp. 1-18. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11853565_1
Woodruff, Allison, Szymanski, Margaret H., Aoki, Paul M., Hurst, Amy (2001): The Conversational Role of Electronic Guidebooks. In: Abowd, Gregory D., Brumitt, Barry, Shafer, Steven A. (eds.) Ubicomp 2001 Ubiquitous Computing - Third International Conference September 30 - October 2, 2001, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. pp. 187-208. https://link.springer.de/link/service/series/0558/bibs/2201/22010187.htm
Aipperspach, Ryan, Hooker, Ben, Woodruff, Allison (2008): The heterogeneous home. In: Youn, Hee Yong, Cho, We-Duke (eds.) UbiComp 2008 Ubiquitous Computing - 10th International Conference September 21-24, 2008, Seoul, Korea. pp. 222-231. https://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1409635.1409666
Woodruff, Allison, Stonebraker, Michael (1995): Buffering of Intermediate Results in Dataflow Diagrams. In: VL 1995 , 1995, . pp. 187-. https://csdl.computer.org/comp/proceedings/vl/1995/7045/00/70450187abs.htm
Woodruff, Allison, Wisnovsky, Peter, Taylor, Cimarron, Stonebraker, Michael, Paxson, Caroline, Chen, Jolly, Aiken, Alexander (1994): Zooming and Tunneling in Tioga: Supporting Navigation in Multimedia Space. In: VL 1994 , 1994, . pp. 191-193.
Baldonado, Michelle Q. Wang, Woodruff, Allison, Kuchinsky, Allan (2000): Guidelines for Using Multiple Views in Information Visualization. In: Advanced Visual Interfaces 2000 , 2000, . pp. 110-119.
Woodruff, Allison, Landay, James A., Stonebraker, Michael (1998): Constant information density in zoomable interfaces. In: Catarci, Tiziana, Costabile, Maria Francesca, Santucci, Giuseppe, Tarantino, Laura (eds.) AVI 1998 - Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces May 24 - 27, 1998, LAquila, Italy. pp. 57-65. https://doi.acm.org/10.1145/948496.948505
Olston, Chris, Woodruff, Allison (2000): Getting Portals to Behave. In: InfoVis 2000 , 2000, . pp. 15-26. https://csdl.computer.org/comp/proceedings/infovis/2000/0804/00/08040015abs.htm
Woodruff, Allison, Anderson, Ken, Mainwaring, Scott D., Aipperspach, Ryan (2007): Portable, But Not Mobile: A Study of Wireless Laptops in the Home. In: LaMarca, Anthony, Langheinrich, Marc, Truong, Khai N. (eds.) PERVASIVE 2007 - Pervasive Computing 5th International Conference May 13-16, 2007, Toronto, Canada. pp. 216-233. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72037-9_13