Damien Masson

Contact

damien.massonumontreal.ca
Université de Montréal,
Pavillon André-Aisenstadt,
Office 2349

Bio

2024-now	Asst Prof	U. Montréal
2023-2024	Postdoc	U. Toronto
2019-2023	PhD	U. Waterloo
2016-2018	MSc	U. Lille

Bonjour, I am Damien 👋. I am an Assistant Professor in Human-Computer Interaction at the Université de Montréal, where I co-lead the Montréal HCI group. I am also an associate academic member of Mila and an IVADO professor.

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I am looking for talented students (PhD, master's, or undergraduate) to join my group. If you are interested in collaborating, please read this.

My current research interests include (but are not limited to):

Designing intelligent systems (see supercharging trial-and-error and DirectGPT)
Visualizing information (see Charagraph and ChartDetective)
Augmenting digital documents (see Chameleon, Statslator, and my PhD thesis)

Latest News (see all)

Feb 2025

🗣 Speaking about "Dynamic UI" at the reading group on dynamic abstractions

Nov 2024

🗣 Speaking about "Interacting with AI beyond text" at the Workshop on AI & DH of the CRIHN

Oct 2024

🗣 Speaking (keynote) about "Designing Interfaces That Adapt to Their Users" at the SEMTL

Oct 2024

🏢 Starting as an assistant professor at the Université de Montréal, affiliated with Mila and IVADO.

Jun 2024

🗣 Presenting my PhD thesis at GI'24 in Halifax

May 2024

🏆 Received the "Bill Buxton Award" (outstanding HCI dissertation award)!

May 2024

🗣 Presenting DirectGPT at CHI'24 in Honolulu

Apr 2024

🏅 DirectGPT received a honorable mention award at CHI'24!

International Publications

CHI '25 AR: 24.9% (1249/5020)

Textoshop
Interactions Inspired by Drawing Software to Facilitate Text Editing

Damien Masson, Young-Ho Kim, Fanny Chevalier

PDF Website Video Code DOI Bibtex

@inproceedings{10.1145/3706598.3713862,
    author = "Masson, Damien and Kim, Young-Ho and Chevalier, Fanny",
    title = "Textoshop: Interactions Inspired by Drawing Software to Facilitate Text Editing",
    year = "2025",
    isbn = "979840071394",
    publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",
    address = "New York, NY, USA",
    url = "https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713862",
    doi = "10.1145/3706598.3713862",
    abstract = "We explore how interactions inspired by drawing software can help edit text. Making an analogy between visual and text editing, we consider words as pixels, sentences as regions, and tones as colours. For instance, direct manipulations move, shorten, expand, and reorder text; tools change number, tense, and grammar; colours map to tones explored along three dimensions in a tone picker; and layers help organize and version text. This analogy also leads to new workflows, such as boolean operations on text fragments to construct more elaborated text. A study shows participants were more successful at editing text and preferred using the proposed interface over existing solutions. Broadly, our work highlights the potential of interaction analogies to rethink existing workflows, while capitalizing on familiar features.",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems",
    articleno = "775",
    numpages = "14",
    keywords = "writing, interface metaphors, drawing interaction, LLM, AI",
    location = "Yokohama, Japan",
    series = "CHI '25"
}

CHI '25 AR: 24.9% (1249/5020)

Making the Write Connections
Linking Writing Support Tools with Writer's Needs

Zixin Zhao, Damien Masson, Young-Ho Kim, Gerald Penn, Fanny Chevalier

PDF Website DOI Bibtex

@inproceedings{10.1145/3706598.3713161,
    author = "Zhao, Zixin and Masson, Damien and Kim, Young-Ho and Penn, Gerald and Chevalier, Fanny",
    title = "Making the Write Connections: Linking Writing Support Tools with Writer's Needs",
    year = "2025",
    isbn = "979840071394",
    publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",
    address = "New York, NY, USA",
    url = "https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713161",
    doi = "10.1145/3706598.3713161",
    abstract = "This work sheds light on whether and how creative writers' needs are met by existing research and commercial writing support tools (WST). We conducted a needs finding study to gain insights into writers' process during creative writing through a qualitative analysis of response from an online questionnaire and Reddit discussions on r/Writing. Using a systematic analysis of 115 tools and 66 research papers, we map out the landscape of how digital tools facilitate the writing process. Our triangulation of data reveals that research predominantly focuses on the writing activity and overlooks pre-writing activities and the importance of visualization. We distill 10 key takeaways to inform future research on WST and point to opportunities surrounding underexplored areas. Our work offers a holistic and up-to-date account of how tools have transformed the writing process, guiding the design of future tools that address writers' evolving and unmet needs.",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems",
    numpages = "21",
    keywords = "Creative writing, meta-analysis, literature review, data triangulation",
    location = "Yokohama, Japan",
    series = "CHI '25"
}

CHI '24 AR: 26.3% (1060/4028)

Honorable Mention Award (top 5%)

DirectGPT
A Direct Manipulation Interface to Interact with Large Language Models

Damien Masson, Sylvain Malacria, Géry Casiez, Daniel Vogel

PDF Website Video Code Data DOI Bibtex

@inproceedings{10.1145/3613904.3642462,
    author = "Masson, Damien and Malacria, Sylvain and Casiez, G\'{e}ry and Vogel, Daniel",
    title = "DirectGPT: A Direct Manipulation Interface to Interact with Large Language Models",
    year = "2024",
    isbn = "9798400703300",
    publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",
    address = "New York, NY, USA",
    url = "https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642462",
    doi = "10.1145/3613904.3642462",
    abstract = "We characterize and demonstrate how the principles of direct manipulation can improve interaction with large language models. This includes: continuous representation of generated objects of interest; reuse of prompt syntax in a toolbar of commands; manipulable outputs to compose or control the effect of prompts; and undo mechanisms. This idea is exemplified in DirectGPT, a user interface layer on top of ChatGPT that works by transforming direct manipulation actions to engineered prompts. A study shows participants were 50\\% faster and relied on 50\\% fewer and 72\\% shorter prompts to edit text, code, and vector images compared to baseline ChatGPT. Our work contributes a validated approach to integrate LLMs into traditional software using direct manipulation. Data, code, and demo available at https://osf.io/3wt6s.",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems",
    articleno = "975",
    numpages = "16",
    keywords = "direct manipulation, large language models, prompt engineering",
    location = "Honolulu, HI, USA",
    series = "CHI '24"
}

UIST '23 AR: 25.1% (121/483)

Statslator
Interactive Translation of NHST and Estimation Statistics Reporting Styles in Scientific Documents

Damien Masson, Sylvain Malacria, Géry Casiez, Daniel Vogel

PDF Website Video Code Data Presentation DOI Bibtex

@inproceedings{10.1145/3586183.3606762,
    author = "Masson, Damien and Malacria, Sylvain and Casiez, G\'{e}ry and Vogel, Daniel",
    title = "Statslator: Interactive Translation of NHST and Estimation Statistics Reporting Styles in Scientific Documents",
    year = "2023",
    isbn = "9798400701320",
    publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",
    address = "New York, NY, USA",
    url = "https://doi.org/10.1145/3586183.3606762",
    doi = "10.1145/3586183.3606762",
    abstract = "Inferential statistics are typically reported using p-values (NHST) or confidence intervals on effect sizes (estimation). This is done using a range of styles, but some readers have preferences about how statistics should be presented and others have limited familiarity with alternatives. We propose a system to interactively translate statistical reporting styles in existing documents, allowing readers to switch between interval estimates, p-values, and standardized effect sizes, all using textual and graphical reports that are dynamic and user customizable. Forty years of CHI papers are examined. Using only the information reported in scientific documents, equations are derived and validated on simulated datasets to show that conversions between p-values and confidence intervals are accurate. The system helps readers interpret statistics in a familiar style, compare reports that use different styles, and even validate the correctness of reports. Code and data: https://osf.io/x4ue7",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology",
    articleno = "91",
    numpages = "14",
    keywords = "estimation, explorable explanation, interactive system, nhst, reading interface, statistics, transparent statistics",
    location = "San Francisco, CA, USA",
    series = "UIST '23"
}

CHI '23 AR: 27.6% (880/3182)

Charagraph
Interactive Generation of Charts for Realtime Annotation of Data-Rich Paragraphs

Damien Masson, Sylvain Malacria, Géry Casiez, Daniel Vogel

PDF Website Video Code Presentation DOI Bibtex

@inproceedings{10.1145/3544548.3581091,
    author = "Masson, Damien and Malacria, Sylvain and Casiez, G\'{e}ry and Vogel, Daniel",
    title = "Charagraph: Interactive Generation of Charts for Realtime Annotation of Data-Rich Paragraphs",
    year = "2023",
    isbn = "9781450394215",
    publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",
    address = "New York, NY, USA",
    url = "https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581091",
    doi = "10.1145/3544548.3581091",
    abstract = "Documents often have paragraphs packed with numbers that are difficult to extract, compare, and interpret. To help readers make sense of data in text, we introduce the concept of Charagraphs: dynamically generated interactive charts and annotations for in-situ visualization, comparison, and manipulation of numeric data included within text. Three Charagraph characteristics are defined: leveraging related textual information about data; integrating textual and graphical representations; and interacting at different contexts. We contribute a document viewer to select in-text data; generate and customize Charagraphs; merge and refine a Charagraph using other in-text data; and identify, filter, compare, and sort data synchronized between text and visualization. Results of a study show participants can easily create Charagraphs for diverse examples of data-rich text, and when answering questions about data in text, participants were more correct compared to only reading text.",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems",
    articleno = "146",
    numpages = "18",
    keywords = "active reading, annotation, data-rich documents, in-text data, interactive documents, reading interfaces, visualization",
    location = "Hamburg, Germany",
    series = "CHI '23"
}

CHI '23 AR: 27.6% (880/3182)

Best Paper Award (top 1%)

ChartDetective
Easy and Accurate Interactive Data Extraction from Complex Vector Charts

Damien Masson, Sylvain Malacria, Daniel Vogel, Edward Lank, Géry Casiez

PDF Website Video Code Presentation DOI Bibtex

@inproceedings{10.1145/3544548.3581113,
    author = "Masson, Damien and Malacria, Sylvain and Vogel, Daniel and Lank, Edward and Casiez, G\'{e}ry",
    title = "ChartDetective: Easy and Accurate Interactive Data Extraction from Complex Vector Charts",
    year = "2023",
    isbn = "9781450394215",
    publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",
    address = "New York, NY, USA",
    url = "https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581113",
    doi = "10.1145/3544548.3581113",
    abstract = "Extracting underlying data from rasterized charts is tedious and inaccurate; values might be partially occluded or hard to distinguish, and the quality of the image limits the precision of the data being recovered. To address these issues, we introduce a semi-automatic system leveraging vector charts to extract the underlying data easily and accurately. The system is designed to make the most of vector information by relying on a drag-and-drop interface combined with selection, filtering, and previsualization features. A user study showed that participants spent less than 4 minutes to accurately recover data from charts published at CHI with diverse styles, thousands of data points, a combination of different encodings, and elements partially or completely occluded. Compared to other approaches relying on raster images, our tool successfully recovered all data, even when hidden, with a 78\\% lower relative error.",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems",
    articleno = "147",
    numpages = "17",
    keywords = "chart reverse-engineering, data extraction, vector graphics",
    location = "Hamburg, Germany",
    series = "CHI '23"
}

CHI '22 AR: 24.6% (637/2579)

Supercharging Trial-and-Error for Learning Complex Software Applications

Damien Masson, Jo Vermeulen, George Fitzmaurice, Justin Matejka

PDF Video Presentation DOI Bibtex

@inproceedings{10.1145/3491102.3501895,
    author = "Masson, Damien and Vermeulen, Jo and Fitzmaurice, George and Matejka, Justin",
    title = "Supercharging Trial-and-Error for Learning Complex Software Applications",
    year = "2022",
    isbn = "9781450391573",
    publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",
    address = "New York, NY, USA",
    url = "https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3501895",
    doi = "10.1145/3491102.3501895",
    abstract = "Despite an abundance of carefully-crafted tutorials, trial-and-error remains many people’s preferred way to learn complex software. Yet, approaches to facilitate trial-and-error (such as tooltips) have evolved very little since the 1980s. While existing mechanisms work well for simple software, they scale poorly to large feature-rich applications. In this paper, we explore new techniques to support trial-and-error in complex applications. We identify key benefits and challenges of trial-and-error, and introduce a framework with a conceptual model and design space. Using this framework, we developed three techniques: ToolTrack to keep track of trial-and-error progress; ToolTrip to go beyond trial-and-error of single commands by highlighting related commands that are frequently used together; and ToolTaste to quickly and safely try commands. We demonstrate how these techniques facilitate trial-and-error, as illustrated through a proof-of-concept implementation in the CAD software Fusion 360. We conclude by discussing possible scenarios and outline directions for future research on trial-and-error.",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems",
    articleno = "381",
    numpages = "13",
    keywords = "conceptual model, technique, learning by exploration, software learning, design space, trial-and-error",
    location = "New Orleans, LA, USA",
    series = "CHI '22"
}

UIST '21 AR: 26% (95/367)

Relevance and Applicability of Hardware-Independent Pointing Transfer Functions

Raiza Hanada, Damien Masson, Géry Casiez, Mathieu Nancel, Sylvain Malacria

PDF Website Video Code Presentation DOI Bibtex

@inproceedings{10.1145/3472749.3474767,
    author = "Hanada, Raiza and Masson, Damien and Casiez, G\'{e}ry and Nancel, Mathieu and Malacria, Sylvain",
    title = "Relevance and Applicability of Hardware-Independent Pointing Transfer Functions",
    year = "2021",
    isbn = "9781450386357",
    publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",
    address = "New York, NY, USA",
    url = "https://doi.org/10.1145/3472749.3474767",
    doi = "10.1145/3472749.3474767",
    booktitle = "The 34th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology",
    pages = "524–537",
    numpages = "14",
    keywords = "computer mouse, pointing task, transfer function",
    location = "Virtual Event, USA",
    series = "UIST '21"
}

CHI '20 AR: 24% (760/3126)

Chameleon
Bringing Interactivity to Static Digital Documents

Damien Masson, Sylvain Malacria, Edward Lank, Géry Casiez

PDF Website Video Code Presentation DOI Bibtex

@inproceedings{10.1145/3313831.3376559,
    author = "Masson, Damien and Malacria, Sylvain and Lank, Edward and Casiez, G\'{e}ry",
    title = "Chameleon: Bringing Interactivity to Static Digital Documents",
    year = "2020",
    isbn = "9781450367080",
    publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",
    address = "New York, NY, USA",
    url = "https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376559",
    doi = "10.1145/3313831.3376559",
    abstract = "Documents such as presentations, instruction manuals, and research papers are disseminated using various file formats, many of which barely support the incorporation of interactive content. To address this lack of interactivity, we present Chameleon, a system-wide tool that combines computer vision algorithms used for image identification with an open database format to allow for the layering of dynamic content. Using Chameleon, static documents can be easily upgraded by layering user-generated interactive content on top of static images, all while preserving the original static document format and without modifying existing applications. We describe the development of Chameleon, including the design and evaluation of vision-based image replacement algorithms, the new document-creation pipeline as well as a user study evaluating Chameleon.",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems",
    pages = "1–13",
    numpages = "13",
    keywords = "augmented documents, feature matching, interactivity",
    location = "Honolulu, HI, USA",
    series = "CHI '20"
}

IJHCS '19

Design and evaluation of braced touch for touchscreen input stabilisation

Andy Cockburn, Damien Masson, Carl Gutwin, Philippe Palanque, Alix Goguey, Marcus Yung, Christine Gris, Catherine Trask

DOI Bibtex

@article{COCKBURN201921,
    author = "Cockburn, Andy and Masson, Damien and Gutwin, Carl and Palanque, Philippe and Goguey, Alix and Yung, Marcus and Gris, Christine and Trask, Catherine",
    title = "Design and evaluation of braced touch for touchscreen input stabilisation",
    journal = "International Journal of Human-Computer Studies",
    volume = "122",
    pages = "21 - 37",
    year = "2019",
    issn = "1071-5819",
    doi = "10.1016/j.ijhcs.2018.08.005",
    url = "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581918304609",
    keywords = "Touch interaction, Vibration, Turbulence, Target selection, Aviation, Vehicles",
    abstract = "Incorporating touchscreen interaction into cockpit flight systems offers several potential advantages to aircraft manufacturers, airlines, and pilots. However, vibration and turbulence are challenges to reliable interaction. We examine the design space for braced touch interaction, which allows users to mechanically stabilise selections by bracing multiple fingers on the touchscreen before completing selection. Our goal is to enable fast and accurate target selection during high levels of vibration, without impeding interaction performance when vibration is absent. Three variant methods of braced touch are evaluated, using doubletap, dwell, or a force threshold in combination with heuristic selection criteria to discriminate intentional selection from concurrent braced contacts. We carried out an experiment to test the performance of these methods in both abstract selection tasks and more realistic flight tasks. The study results confirm that bracing improves performance during vibration, and show that doubletap was the best of the tested methods."
}

UIST '17 AR: 23% (73/324)

WhichFingers
Identifying Fingers on Touch Surfaces and Keyboards Using Vibration Sensors

Damien Masson, Alix Goguey, Sylvain Malacria, Géry Casiez

PDF Website Video Code Data Presentation DOI Bibtex

@inproceedings{10.1145/3126594.3126619,
    author = "Masson, Damien and Goguey, Alix and Malacria, Sylvain and Casiez, G\'{e}ry",
    title = "WhichFingers: Identifying Fingers on Touch Surfaces and Keyboards Using Vibration Sensors",
    year = "2017",
    isbn = "9781450349819",
    publisher = "Association for Computing Machinery",
    address = "New York, NY, USA",
    url = "https://doi.org/10.1145/3126594.3126619",
    doi = "10.1145/3126594.3126619",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 30th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology",
    pages = "41–48",
    numpages = "8",
    keywords = "vibration sensor, touch interaction, finger identification",
    location = "Qu\'{e}bec City, QC, Canada",
    series = "UIST '17"
}

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