research area Human-Computer Interaction, research area Tools, Platforms, Frameworksconference UIST
content type paperpublished October 2020

mage: Fluid Moves Between Code and Graphical Work in Computational Notebooks

In collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, Georgia Institute of Technology

AuthorsMary Beth Kery, Donghao Ren, Fred Hohman, Dominik Moritz, Kanit Wongsuphasawat, Kayur Patel

View publication

We aim to increase the flexibility at which a data worker can choose the right tool for the job, regardless of whether the tool is a code library or an interactive graphical user interface (GUI). To achieve this flexibility, we extend computational notebooks with a new API mage, which supports tools that can represent themselves as both code and GUI as needed. We discuss the design of mage as well as design opportunities in the space of flexible code/GUI tools for data work. To understand tooling needs, we conduct a study with nine professional practitioners and elicit their feedback on mage and potential areas for flexible code/GUI tooling. We then implement six client tools for mage that illustrate the main themes of our study findings. Finally, we discuss open challenges in providing flexible code/GUI interactions for data workers.

Related readings and updates.

CVNets: High Performance Library for Computer Vision

We introduce CVNets, a high-performance open-source library for training deep neural networks for visual recognition tasks, including classification, detection, and segmentation. CVNets supports image and video understanding tools, including data loading, data transformations, novel data sampling methods, and implementations of several standard networks with similar or better performance than previous studies.
See paper details

CHI 2020

Apple had three papers accepted at the conference of Human-Computer Interaction (CHI), the premier international conference on interactive technology, in April 2020. Researchers from across the world gather at CHI to discuss, research, and design new ways for people to interact using technology. Although the conference was not held this year, you can read the accepted papers below.

See event details