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Hello, I am DJ!

About me

I am a fourth year PhD student in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. I work at the intersection of accessibility and AI, particularly to enhance sound awareness for d/Deaf or hard of hearing people. My research work is published at top HCI venues such as CHI, ASSETS, and UIST and has received three best paper awards and honorable mentions. I am advised by Profs. Jon Froehlich and Leah Findlater.

Before starting my PhD, I completed by masters from MIT Media Lab, bachelors from IIT Delhi, and took a gap year to backpack 21 countries. Through publishing a critical reflection of my travel experiences as a hard of hearing individual, I introduced the unique method of auto-ethnography to the field of accessible computing. My biggest pride is the indoor navigation system for visually impaired users which was installed in Indian National Science Museum for two years.

Besides professional life, I am a scuba instructor. I also conduct DIY workshops—so far, I have organized 11 one-week workshops in six low-income countries, with a total of 200+ students. Atleast two teams from these workshops have continued their projects and turned them into multinational companies.

Connect with me on email djain [at] uw [dot] edu or twitter.

Note: I am advocate of open science and research. Write to me and I will give all my data, methods, etc.

Recent news

Nov 19: Invited talk on NavGrad at Microsoft.
Oct 31: SoundWatch featured in several popular tech news sites, including Forbes.
Oct 30: Glacier national park road trip!
Oct 28: SoundWatch featured in UW news!
Oct 28: SoundWatch wins the best artifact award at ASSETS 2020!
Oct 28: NavGrad receives the best paper nominee and the most popular project award at ASSETS 2020!
Oct 28: SoundWatch app released to the public!
Oct 26: Two talks at ASSETS 2020.
Oct 15: Invited talk on NavGrad at UW CSE Colloquia.
Oct 15: Invited talk on NavGrad at AccessComputing.
Oct 8: Invited talk on SoundWatch at UW CSE Colloquia.

Publications

HoloSound in use the Kitchen showing the AR view as if looked through the eyes of the user wearing the HoloLens. A person is in the Kitchen chopping garlic, the identified sound on the bottom left shown is Chopping, the circular arc showing the sound source direction is pointed towards the person's hands, and the captions show: Yeah, the garlic looks well done now.

HoloSound

Combining Speech and Sound Identification for DHH Users in Augmented Reality
ASSETS 2020 (Poster): PAPER | VIDEO | CODE
A user donning our black tactile sound awareness device on the wrist.

Vibes

Field Study of a Tactile Sound Awareness Device For DHH Users
ISWC 2020: PAPER | TALK | CODE
A person wearing glasses is sitting in a computer lab, reading a book with the help of an eletronic magnification aid.
AWARD

NavGrad

Navigating Graduate School with a Disability
(Best paper honorable mention)
ASSETS 2020: PAPER | TALK
A user is sitting in a car wearing a smartwatch that shows the recognized sound as Vehicle with a confidence level of 81%.
AWARD

SoundWatch

Exploring Smartwatch-based Deep Learning
(Best artifact award)
ASSETS 2020: PAPER | TALK | CODE
A person opening closing a water faucet in the Kitchen after being informed about the water running sound through an IoT display located on the Kitchen slab. The display shows the top-down floorplan of the house with the sound activity in different rooms. Within each room, a pulsating disc shows the current sound level and a waveform shows the 30-second sound history. Specifically for the Kitchen, the disc is larger and brighter and displays the text 'water running' below. Finally, below the floorplan appears a histogram visualizing the 6-hour sound history for every room.

HomeSound

An Iterative Field Deployment of an In-Home Sound Awareness System for DHH Users
CHI 2020: PAPER | VIDEO
A person sitting in a coffee shop looking at the smartwatch which shows the direction of a sound occurring in the vicinity

SoundWatch

Evaluating Smartwatch-based Sound Feedback for DHH Users Across Contexts
CHI 2020: PAPER
DJ talking to his scuba instructor on a diving trip in Florida.
AWARD

Hard of Hearing Travel

Autoethnography of a Hard of Hearing Traveler (Best paper honorable mention)
ASSETS 2019: PAPER | TALK
A person claps in front of a tablet interface that visaulizes the clapping sound using a pulsating bubble. The bubble is placed inside one of the rooms in a floorplan view of the location.

HomeSound

Exploring Sound Awareness in the Home for People Who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing
CHI 2019: PAPER | TALK
A person's face from the back showing him donning a hearing aid.

DHH Survey

DHH Individual's Preferences for Wearable and Mobile Sound Awareness Technologies​
CHI 2019: PAPER | TALK
Several people in the crowd wearing a Google Glass.

AR Accessibility

Social Tensions with Head-Mounted Displays for Accessibility
CHI 2019 (Workshop): PAPER
DJ conversing with a participant who is wearing a HoloLens while walking.

AR Captioning in Mobile Contexts

Towards Accessible Conversations in a Mobile Context for DHH People
ASSETS 2018: PAPER | TALK
The first author (Dhruv Jain) wearing a HoloLens that shows real-time captions placed over a speaker in the group conversation using AR.

AR Captioning

Exploring Augmented Reality Approaches to Real-Time Captioning: An Autoethnography
DIS 2018 (Poster): PAPER
A person wearing an Oculus Rift VR headset and lying down on a soft inflatable mattress. His limbs are suspended through elastic bands in a rig to simulate swimming.

Amphibian

Immersive Scuba Diving Simulator Using Virtual Reality
UIST 2016: PAPER | TALK | VIDEO
Two people are wearing an Oculus Rift VR headset. One person is defending an incoming virtual snowball launched by another person using a toy gun.

Snowball VR

Resolving Spatial Variation And Allowing Spectator Participation In Multiplayer VR
UIST 2016 (Poster): PAPER
A rig for simulating scuba diving. A person is lying down on a spring table and is wearing an Oculus Rift headset with arms suspended from the rig through elastic bands.

Amphibian

Immersive Terrestrial Scuba Diving Using Virtual Reality
CHI 2016 (LBW): PAPER
A person compressing a cylindrical object with embedded multicolor LEDs that visualize the distribution of compression force along the cylinder.

Next Gen Building Materials

Interactive Digitally Encoded Materials for Architectural Models and Construction
CHI 2016 (Workshop): PAPER
A wooden artifact in the shape of a nest. In it, two 3D printed bird couples that can move close or far from each other using a linear actuator. This artifact is connected to a mobile app showing the number of steps for the day.

JogCall

JogCall: A System to Motivate Couples to Jog Together
Persuasive 2015: PAPER
A head mounted display showing direction of speakers in a group conversation

GlassEar

Head-Mounted Display Visualizations to Support Sound Awareness for the DHH
CHI 2015: PAPER | TALK | VIDEO
A person with a cane, black glasses, and a device on a waist is touching a tactile artwork in the museum.

Roshni in the Museum

Evaluation of a Indoor Navigation System for Visually Impaired in a Public Museum
ASSETS 2014 (Poster): PAPER
A person holding a cane in one hand and a white colored boxed device in the other hand

Roshni

Path-Guided Indoor Navigation for the Visually Impaired Using Minimal Building Retrofitting
ASSETS 2014: PAPER
A blind person navigating in the building by listening to the instructions on the mobile phone. He is also wearing a device on the waist.

Roshni

A Path-Guided Audio-Based Indoor Navigation System For Persons With Visual Impairment
ASSETS 2013 (Poster): PAPER
A blind person reading a refreshable braille display.

TacRead

Application of Shape Memory Alloy based Actuation for Refreshable Display of Braille
ASME/IEEE MESA 2013: PAPER
A double decker bus moving on a road. On it, a small antennae like device.

Whitespace Video Link

Whitespace Networks for Vehicular Communication
COMSNETS 2013 (Poster): PAPER
A person navigating an airport by listening to the instructions on a mobile phone.
AWARD

Indoor Navigation for Blind

Design of an Affordable Mobile-Based Indoor Navigation System for the Visually Impaired
TRANSED 2012 (Best paper award): PAPER

Talks

October 27, 2020 in a virtual event for paper at ASSETS 2020 | PDF | PPTX

Navigating Graduate School with a Disability

October 26, 2020 in a virtual event for paper at ASSETS 2020 | PDF | PPTX

Deep Learning for Sound Awareness on SmartWatches

September 15, 2020 in a virtual event for paper at ISWC 2020 | PDF | PPTX

Field Study of a Tactile Sound Awareness Device

First slide of the talk. A scene of a kitchen in the background with the talk title: Field Deployment of a Smarthome Sound Awareness System for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users
Oct 10, 2019 in University of Washington for CHI 2020 paper | PDF | PPTX

Field Deployment of a In-Home Sound Awareness System

First slide of the talk. Shows DJ riding on a camel in a desert. The title of the talk reads: Autoethography of a Hard of Hearing Traveler
October 29, 2019 in Pittsburgh, USA for paper at ASSETS 2019 | PDF | PPTX

Autoethnography of a hard of hearing traveler

First slide of the talk. A person claps in front of a tablet interface that visaulizes the clapping sound using a pulsating bubble. The title reads: Exploring Sound Awareness in the Home for People who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing
May 10, 2019 in Glasgow, Scotland for paper at CHI 2019 | PDF | PPTX

Exploring sound awareness in the home

First slide of the talk with an image of an ear doning a hearing aid. The title reads: Deaf and Hard of Hearing Individuals' Preferences for Wearable and Mobile Sound Awareness Technologies​
May 10, 2019 in Glasgow, Scotland for paper at CHI 2019 | PDF | PPTX

Online Survey of Wearable Sound Awareness

First slide of the talk showing a person walking and talking with another person. The first person is wearing a HoloLens which shows ​real-time captions in Augmented Reality. Title is Towards Accessible Conversations in a Mobile Context for People who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
October 28, 2018 in Galway, Ireland for paper at ASSETS 2018 | PDF | PPTX

Towards accessible conversations in a mobile context

First slide of the talk showing a rocky beach with waves crashing over the beach. Talk title reads: Immersive Scuba Diving Simulator Using Virtual Reality
October 19, 2016 in Tokyo, Japan for paper at UIST 2016 | PDF | PPTX

Immersive scuba diving simulator using virtual reality​

First slide of the talk showing a round table conversation with a person wearing a Google Glass. The directions of the active speakers in the conversation are visualized as arrows on the Glass. Talk title is Head-Mounted Display Visualizations to Support Sound Awareness for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
April 20, 2015 in Seoul, Korea for paper at CHI 2015 | PDF | PPTX

HMD Visualizations to Support Sound Awareness

Videos