David Hilbert

Details (Last Updated: 2008)

Experience Details

Senior Research Scientist, FX Palo Alto Laboratory, Inc. (Back to Resume)
Research Group (Aug 2000 - Mar 2008)
  • MFD Opportunities (2007): Created and managed a new project to identify compelling service opportunities for Fuji Xerox's next generation multifunction device (MFD). Analyzed market landscape, created IP and prototype, received a top award in Fuji Xerox's MFD programming contest, initiated Silicon Valley partnership discussions, and transferred prototype & initial business model to Fuji Xerox.
  • Presentation Capture (2007): Spearheaded the effort to commercialize a research project in automatic presentation capture. Created the vision, evangelized the technology & business strategy, supervised the R&D team, managed all customer interactions, and orchestrated multiple successful releases to Cisco, the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3), The Institute for the Future (IFTF), and The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS).
  • Corporate Memory (2006): Contributed to the research vision, planning, IP development, UI design, and user studies for a research project in corporate memory. Led the presentation capture activity and evangelized the work to Fuji Xerox culminating in the presentation capture commercialization effort.
  • Usable Security (2005): Proposed and initiated a new research area in usable security, recruited a key researcher, and contributed to security-related patents. Provided "security and usability" consulting to Fuji Xerox on two security initiatives involving smart cards and thin client computing.
  • AnySpot (2003): Supervised and evangelized R&D for a web service-based platform for seamlessly connecting people to their personal and shared resources wherever they go. Presented and demonstrated the technology to Fuji Xerox, including at the FX Annual Technology Conference 2003, resulting in a successful technology transfer to Fuji Xerox.
  • SocialTV (2002): Supervised R&D for a DVR-based, peer-to-peer video sharing service with automatically generated videos distributed over "channels" such as the "Family Channel". Open Sourced the software resulting in over 3000 downloads (first two months), a Slashdot article, and phone interview from Time magazine.  This work anticipated (by 5 years) a nearly identical service from TiVo and One True Media (announced in 2007).
  • Personal Interaction Points (2001): Contributed to and evangelized R&D for a system that allows users to access their personal resources while interacting with shared public devices such as copiers, projectors, and large displays. Fuji Xerox incorporated key research concepts into two products for secure printing and interactive smart boards. Featured at Fuji Xerox's Annual Technology Conference 2001, Xerox's DocuWorld 2002, NTT's R&D Forum 2002, and articles in the South China Morning Post (leading English newspaper in Hong Kong) and ACM Interactions magazine.
  • FX Strategic Initiatives: Hand selected to serve on multiple Fuji Xerox strategic initiatives including Fuji Xerox's Next Generation Visionary Team and the E-Paper Task Force. Created the eFolder and eClipboard concepts, presented business cases to VCs, co-organized an ePaper contest resulting in 60+ concepts and 5 patent applications.

Post-Doc & Graduate Student Researcher, Information and Computer Science, UC Irvine (Back to Resume)
Software Research Group (Sep 1994 - Sep 1999)

  • Created a Java-based platform for deploying software agents over the Internet to collect usage data and user feedback.
  • Helped develop a Java-based framework for building domain-oriented design environments that support the cognitive needs of designers.
  • Co-authored research papers and grant proposals.
  • Presented research at academic conferences and workshops.
  • Worked as teaching assistant.

Summer Intern Program Manager, Microsoft  (Back to Resume)

Word Product Planning Group (Jun 1998 - Aug 1998)
  • Designed, specified, and managed development of an Instrumented Version of Word 2000 used to collect usage data from 500-1000 volunteer Word users.
  • Specified the vision, architecture, and data recording mechanisms for capturing user and session data, command and dialog data, AutoAssist command usage, hyperlink usage, spelling and grammar checker usage, selected state information, and document content statistics.
  • Advised Word and Office Program Management regarding the design and implementation of an Office-wide Instrumented Version that would be more flexible, maintainable, and powerful than the existing Word and Office Instrumented Versions.
  • Successfully implemented an aggressive delivery schedule, managed all development and test, worked with diverse groups (both inside and outside of Microsoft) including Word Product Planning, Word Program Management, Office Program Management, Microsoft Usability, Active Accessibility Group, Natural Language Group, and a third-party data analysis contractor.

Member of Technical Staff / Software Engineer, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory 

Deep Space Network Automation Research Group (Jun 1995 - Sep 1995 & Dec 1995) (Back to Resume)
  • Conceived, designed, and developed a visual programming environment for deep space network automation procedures using Smalltalk and C on Windows and Solaris.
  • Conceived and proposed concept of programming environment for development, execution, and maintenance of DSN automation procedures. Purchased VisualWorks Smalltalk environment and designed and developed prototype that allows automation procedures to be graphically manipulated via workflow style interaction. Automation procedures, represented as temporal dependency networks (TDNs), are constructed by connecting existing procedure elements into completed procedures. Procedures may be constructed by hand or generated by an automated planner. Provided a generic interface for representing, manipulating, and executing automation procedures and demonstrated marked reductions in data redundancy and development effort.
  • Asked by Advanced DMC to adapt prototype to act as operator interface for monitor and control of Advanced DMC automation procedures.  Implemented inter-process communication between Smalltalk client and C server via TCP sockets to interface with existing automation engine.
  • Other responsibilities included multiple presentations to various groups and the Work Package Agreement (WPA) for future work in the knowledge engineering work segment.

Galileo Telemetry Subsystem Team (Mar 1993 - Sep 1994 & Dec 1994) (Back to Resume)

  • Designed and developed user interface applications for telemetry monitor and control on Sun SPARCstation 10's using C, Motif, and X Windows.
  • Designed and developed a real-time performance monitor display program with dynamic graphical updates based on values and expressions of variables stored in shared memory during telemetry processing. Rules for layout and behavior of displays are specified in ASCII files and compiled at runtime using a lex and yacc generated parser to support quick and easy modification of displays without code modification. Dynamic numerical data values on any display can be plotted graphically over time by simply selecting the desired data field with the mouse.
  • Designed and developed applications to provide spectrum plots, history plots, a "type-in" operator directive interface, a debug display generator, and a screen manager program which allows operators to create, save, and recall screen configurations on the desktop.

EUCOM Decision Support System Team (May 1990 - Sep 1990 & May 1991 - Mar 1993) (Back to Resume)

  • Designed and developed user interface applications for decision support on DECstations and Macintosh WIS Workstations using Ada, Motif, X Windows and SQL on the Rational development system.
  • Developed a session manager program that provides a graphical, point and click interface to UNIX operating system functions such as starting and stopping programs, printing, password modification, and workstation power down and reboot.  The session manager task incorporates interprocess communication (IPC) through UNIX pipes and sockets, as well as X Windows Client Messages.
  • Developed an automated user mail system to facilitate the coordination and release of military standard format messages to the Automated Message Handling System (AMHS).  Provided support for parallel and serial distribution lists, real-time notification (via the Session Manager program), and message attachments in text, graphics, and spread sheet formats.
  • Other tasks included development in C, Bourne Shell, C-Shell, and Awk, modification of commercial off the shelf (COTS) software including the X Windows Display Manager (xdm) and the Motif Window Manager (mwm), porting of the software from ULTRIX to secure AU/X, software design documentation (DoD-STD-2167a), configuration management, and work segment scheduling.


Invited Talks (Back to Resume)

Corporate Memory (abstractslidespaper)

  • Google Inc., Mar. 22, 2006
  • UC Berkeley, Mar. 21, 2006
  • Institute for the Future, Mar. 20, 2006
  • Stanford University, Mar. 17, 2006

Personalizing Shared Devices (abstractslidespaper)
  • UC Berkeley, Feb. 19, 2003
  • Stanford University, Jan. 24, 2003
  • Palo Alto Research Center, Nov. 13, 2002

Ubiquitous Information Access (abstractslidespaper)
  • Stanford University, Oct. 26, 2001
  • UC Berkeley, Oct. 9, 2001

​Publications (Back to Resume)

Journal and Magazine Articles

  1. AnySpot: Pervasive document access and sharing.
    J. Trevor and D.M. Hilbert. IEEE Pervasive Computing, Jul + Sep. 2007.

  2. Context-Aware Telecommunication Services.
    B.N. Schilit, D.M. Hilbert, and J. Trevor, UNESCO Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, Apr. 2007.
  3. Designing complex document sharing spaces: a research vision of next-generation conference rooms.
    M. Back, D. Billsus, L. Denoue, and D.M. Hilbert. Book chapter in R. Skare, N.W. Lund, A. Varheim (eds.), A Document (Re)turn. Contributions from a Research Field in Transition, Feb. 2007.
  4. D.M. Hilbert and J. Trevor. Cover Feature, Interactions, Vol. 11, No. 3, May + Jun. 2004.
  5. B.N. Schilit, D.M. Hilbert, and J. Trevor. IEEE Wireless Communications, Vol. 9 No. 5, Oct. 2002.
  6. B.N. Schilit, J. Trevor, D.M. Hilbert, and T.K. Koh. Cover Feature, IEEE Computer, Vol. 35, No. 10, Oct. 2002.
  7. The Elusive Ubiquitous Information System and m-Links.
    D.M. Hilbert, B.N. Schilit, J. Trevor, and T.K. Koh. Fuji Xerox Technical Report, No. 14, Jun. 2002.
  8. D.M. Hilbert and D.F. Redmiles. ACM Computing Surveys, Vol. 32, No. 4, Dec. 2000.
  9. J.E. Robbins, D.M. Hilbert, and D.F. Redmiles. Automated Software Engineering, Special Issue: The Best of KBSE'96, Vol. 5, No. 3, Jul. 1998.

Conference Publications

  1. D.M. Hilbert, T. Turner, L. Denoue, and K. Sankarapandian. IADIS e-Learning 2008.
  2. D.M. Hilbert, M. Cooper, L. Denoue, J. Adcock, and D. Billsus.
    "Multimedia Systems and Applications VIII" at SPIE Optics East 2005.
  3. L. Denoue, D.M. Hilbert, J. Adcock, D. Billsus, and M. Cooper. E-Learn 2005.
  4. D. Billsus, D.M. Hilbert, and D. Maynes-Aminzade. IUI 2005.
  5. J. Trevor, D.M. Hilbert, D. Billsus, J. Vaughan, Q.T. Tran. IUI 2004.
  6. D.M. Hilbert and J. Trevor. HCI International 2003.
  7. D.M. Hilbert, J. Trevor, and B.N. Schilit. HCI International 2003.
  8. J. Trevor, D.M. Hilbert, and B.N. Schilit. UbiComp 2002.
  9. J. Trevor, D.M. Hilbert, and B.N. Schilit, and T.K. Koh. UIST 2001.
  10. B.N. Schilit, J. Trevor, D.M. Hilbert, and T.K. Koh. Mobicom 2001.
  11. D.M. Hilbert and D.F. Redmiles. INTERACT 2001.
  12. D.M. Hilbert and D.F. Redmiles. Agents 1998.
  13. D.M. Hilbert and D.F. Redmiles. ICSE 1998.
  14. J.E. Robbins, D.M. Hilbert, and D.F. Redmiles. KBSE 1996. (Best of Conference Award).

Workshop Publications

  1. D.M. Hilbert, D. Billsus, and L. Denoue. "IntraWebs Workshop" at WWW2006.
  2. J. Trevor and D.M. Hilbert. "Workshop on User-Centered Evaluations for Ubiquitous Computing Systems: Best Known Methods" at UbiComp 2002.
  3. D.M. Hilbert and D.F. Redmiles. "Workshop on Internet-based Groupware for User Participation in Product Development" at CSCW 1998.
  4. J.E. Robbins, D.M. Hilbert, and D.F. Redmiles. "Second International Software Architecture Workshop (ISAW-2) at SIGSOFT FSE 1996.

Conference Demonstrations

  1. D.M. Hilbert, J.E. Robbins, D.F. Redmiles. Formal Demonstration at IUI 1998.
  2. J.E. Robbins, D.M. Hilbert, D.F. Redmiles. Formal Demonstration at IUI 1998.
  3. J.E. Robbins, D.M. Hilbert, D.F. Redmiles. Formal Demonstration at ICSE 1997.

Dissertation (Back to Resume)

Large-Scale Collection of Application Usage Data and User Feedback to Inform Interactive Software Development

Committee: David Redmiles, UC Irvine (Chair); David Rosenblum, UC Irvine; Jonathan Grudin, Microsoft Research


This work explores issues involved in performing post-deployment monitoring and analysis of software use in order to help developers improve the fit between application design and use. The approach developed in this research involves a platform for creating software agents that are deployed over the Internet to observe application use and report usage data and user feedback to developers.


Research activities included the development and evaluation of research prototypes as well as participation in actual industrial development projects in which developers observed use in order to improve design. Broadly speaking, this research suggests that automated data collection techniques can indeed be used to capture usage- and usability-related information useful in supporting design, impact assessment, and effort allocation decisions in the development of interactive systems. More specifically, this research contributes solutions to key technical problems limiting the scalability and data quality of existing automated data collection techniques as well as technical and methodological guidance for successfully incorporating automated data collection into existing development practice.


Thus, this research contributes knowledge relevant to both software engineering and HCI researchers as well as practitioners. By applying the results of this research in practice, development organizations may be able to make more informed design, impact assessment, and effort allocation decisions for more cost-effective development of software that is better suited to user needs.


Here's a summarized version of the dissertation (40 pages)


Here's the full dissertation introduction and chapters