Sylvain Malacria

Loki group

Inria Centre at the University of Lille

Batiment B, bureau B102

40, avenue Halley - Park Plaza

59650 Villeneuve d'Ascq, France

Phone: +33 (0)3 59 35 8785

sylvain dot malacria at inria dot fr

Latest news:

2023 Mar. 8th:

Haven't updated for a while, so lot's of news. In short, 5 papers conditionnally accepted (3 at CHI, 1 at GI, and 1 CHI usecase) as well as a demo at the french HCI conference and a book chapter on command selection. Great job to all my co-authors on this. Also have a new PhD student, Raphael Perraud, that will work on fostering the discovery of features via augmented video tutorials. Welcom Raphaël!

2022 Apr. 8:

So happy for Axel Antoine who won the 2021 AFIHM award of the best PhD in HCI. Congratulations Axel, you deserved it!

2022 Jan. 12:

TOCHI paper from K. Fennedy in collaboration with S. Perrault on soft keyboard hotkeys is now available.

I am a research scientist (Chargé de Recherche 1ère classe) at Inria, in the Loki group. Prior to that, I was a post-doctoral researcher at the University College London and at the University of Canterbury (New-Zealand). I did my Ph.D. at Télécom ParisTech, and passed my Master Degree at UPMC in Artificial Intelligence with a speciality in HCI. I am also an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada (2021-2024).

My research interests are in the areas of human-computer interaction (HCI), with additional focus on designing interactive systems and interaction techniques that can be easily discovered and learned by novice users, while still yielding high performance to more practiced users. More generally, I am highly interested in how interaction can be communicated to the user to foster its discovery. If you are curious about my research, giving a look at the selected publications below should provide a decent overview.

I currently am the Principal Investigator of the ANR JCJC Discovery project (2020-2024) that investigates the design of Graphical User Interfaces that would better support the discovery of their interactive principles.

Selected Publications

Towards a Unified and Efficient Command Selection Mechanism for Touch-Based Devices Using Soft Keyboard Hotkeys (TOCHI' 22)
[PDF]
Investigating Performance and Usage of Input Methods for Soft Keyboard Hotkeys (MobileHCI '20)
[PDF]
Where is that Feature? Designing for Cross-Device Software Learnability (DIS '20)
[PDF]
Investigating The Necessity Of Delay In Marking Menu Invocation (CHI '20)
[PDF]
Awareness, Usage and Discovery of Swhidgets in iOS (ISS '19)
[PDF]
Improving Discoverability and Expert Performance in Force-Sensitive Text Selection for Touch Devices with Mode Gauges (CHI '18)
[PDF]

Ongoing student supervisions

  • Eva Mackamul (PhD Student funded on the Discovery project, co-supervised with Géry Casiez)
  • Raphaël Perraud (PhD Student funded by the Discovery project and Région Hauts-de-France)
  • Vincent Lambert (PhD Student at Grenoble Alpes University, co-supervised with Laurence Nigay and Alix Goguey)
  • Damien Masson (PhD Student at University of Waterloo, co-supervised with Géry Casiez, Daniel Vogel and Edward Lank)
  • Constant Yuan Chen (PhD Student in co-tutelle with University of Waterloo, co-supervised with Géry Casiez, Daniel Vogel and Edward Lank)

Previous student supervisions

  • Dr Axel Antoine (Defended 29th Jan. 2021, co-supervised with Géry Casiez) -- Now research engineer at Inria
  • Dr Nicole Pong (Defended 21st Oct. 2020, co-supervised with Stéphane Huot and Nicolas Roussel)