Morgan Dixon

I am a software engineer and research scientist in Human-Computer Interaction. I did my PhD in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. My work centers around UX engineering, front-end development, and developing novel user interface tools.

I am a professional musician. I currrently play drums for Spesh, and we are signed with Killroom Records.

Here is my CV.

Contact
Email: morgan.dixon@gmail.com
Mailing Address: Morgan Dixon
2404 E Spring St
Seattle, WA 98122
Appsheet (Acquired by Google in January 2020)
Appsheet enables people to build their own mobile and web apps without programming. As a UX Engineer, I design, build, and test new features for the platform, and I also improve the design of existing features. I focus on the customer's experience, ranging from aesthetic improvements to deep infrastructure changes that enable a more expressive UI.
Adobe Research
From 2016 - 2017 I worked as a Research Scientist at Adobe. Here I collaborated with other researchers, designers, and developers to design, research, and test new tools for building interfaces. Publications of this work are listed below. In addition to prototyping new tools, I also worked closely with the Adobe Experience Design (XD) team to create new advanced features.
Teaching
During Fall 2013, I taught the University of Washington's Undergraduate Introduction to HCI course. Here's a link to the course webpage. Here are the fantastic interface designs created by the students.
Prefab
Most of my dissertation was on Prefab, a system for reverse engineering interfaces from their pixels. Prefab enables the modification of applications independent of their source code. In other words, it lets us explore the question, "What if anyone could modify any interface?"
Prefab's Github page includes all of our code, papers, videos, and related press. To quickly see some of the stuff we've built, check out the videos below.

Previous Projects
Cheeseburger Therapy

An online community for talking through troubling situations. Members can chat anonymously with a trained helper, or participate in a training program to learn the psychology and help out others. Our goal is to make mental health support less stigmatized, more accessible, and cheaper for everyone.
Enhanced Area Cursors

Enhanced area cursors are special types of cursors for reducing the fine pointing demands for people with motor impairments.
Framewire
Framewire is a tool for automatically extracting interaction logic from paper prototyping tests.
Codex

Codex is a dual-screen tablet computer that can be oriented in a variety of postures.
Electronic Reading Devices
When reading, people frequently read from multiple display surfaces. We designed a prototype dual display e-book reader and explored how it can be used to interact with electronic documents.
[video]
Crossing-Based Interfaces
We explored crossing-based interfaces, where interactions are performed by crossing a pen through targets. We examined the space-speed tradeoff inherent in these interfaces and designed a new crossing widget.
ExperiScope
ExperiScope is an analytical tool that helps designers and experimenters explore the results of interaction technique user studies. The tool makes it easy to identify and compare key patterns of use.

Publications
Rewire: Interface Design Assistance from Examples
Amanda Swearngin, Mira Dontcheva, Wilmont Li, Joel Brandt, Morgan Dixon, Andrew J. Ko
Charette: Supporting In-Person Discussions around Iterations in User Interface Design.
CHI 2018
Jasper O'Leary, Holger Winnemoller, Wilmont Li, Mira Dontcheva, Morgan Dixon
Prefab Layers and Prefab Annotations: Extensible Pixel-Based Interpretation of Graphical Interfaces.
UIST 2014
Morgan Dixon, Conrad Nied, James Fogarty
Pixel-Based Methods for Widget State and Style in a Runtime Implementation of Sliding Widgets.
CHI 2014
Morgan Dixon, Gierad Laput, James Fogarty
A General-Purpose Target-Aware Pointing Enhancement Using Pixel-Level Analysis of Graphical Interfaces.
CHI 2012
Morgan Dixon
, James Fogarty, and Jacob O. Wobbrock.
Content and Hierarchy in Pixel-Based Methods for Reverse-Engineering Interface Structure.
CHI 2011
Morgan Dixon
, Daniel Leventhal, and James Fogarty.
Enhanced Area Cursors: Reducing fine pointing demands for people with motor impairments.
UIST 2010
Leah Findlater, Kristen Shinohara,
Morgan dixon
, Peter Kamb, Josh Rakita, Jacob O. Wobbrock.
Prefab: Implementing Advanced Behaviors Using Pixel-Based Reverse Engineering of Interface Structure.
CHI 2010
Best Paper Award
Morgan Dixon
and James Fogarty.
Framewire: A Tool for Automatically Extracting Interaction Logic from Paper Prototyping Tests.
CHI 2010
Yang Li, Xiang Cao, Kate Everitt,
Morgan Dixon
, and James Landay.
Codex: A Dual Screen Tablet Computer.
CHI 2009
Ken Hinckley,
Morgan Dixon
, Raman Sarin, Francois Guimbreteiere, and Ravin Balakrishnan.
Navigation Techniques for Dual-Display E-Book Readers.
CHI 2008
Nicholas Chen, Francois Guimbretiere,
Morgan Dixon
, Casandra Lewis, and Maneesh Agrawala.
Optimal Parameters for Efficient Crossing-Based Dialog Boxes.
CHI 2008
Morgan Dixon
, Francois Guimbretiere, and Nicholas Chen. (2008).
ExperiScope: An Analysis Tool for Interaction Data.
CHI 2007
Francois Guimbretiere,
Morgan Dixon
, and Ken Hinckley.
Prefab: What if Every GUI Were Open-Source?
Morgan Dixon
and James Fogarty.
CHI 2010. Workshop Paper.