Devamardeep Hayatpur

about

Hello! I'm a Ph.D. candidate at University of California, San Diego.
I work on systems that improve the usability and learnability of programming. I have found that programmers think and articulate their ideas in a range of different notations. But, these these notations (usually made on pen-and-paper or blackboards) are divorced from the code, and thus are rarely archived as part of the codebase and quickly become stale as the code changes. My thesis explores how visual notations are used in practice and how they can be preserved and coupled with code.
I am advised by Haijun Xia. I completed my undergraduate at the University of Toronto in Computer Science where I interned at Dynamic Graphics Lab under Prof. Daniel Wigdor, conducting research in immersive analytics and interaction design.

conference publications

Joshua Horowitz*, Devamardeep Hayatpur*, Haijun Xia, Jeffrey Heer

Sculpin: Direct Manipulation Transformation of JSON

A direct manipulation interface to sculpt data into new data and interfaces.

UIST 2025: ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.

Devamardeep Hayatpur, Brian Hempel, Richard Lin, Haijun Xia

The Shapes of Abstraction in Data Structure Diagrams

A diagramming language for turning generic notations of data into rich diagrams using a set of 'abstraction moves.'

CHI 2025: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Devamardeep Hayatpur, Brian Hempel, Kathy Chen, William Duan, Philip Guo, Haijun Xia

Taking ASCII Drawings Seriously: How Programmers Diagram Code

A description of the content and use of ASCII drawings across large open-source codebases.

CHI 2024: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Devamardeep Hayatpur, Daniel Wigdor, Haijun Xia

CrossCode: Multi-level Visualization of Program Execution

Programmers reason about code across multiple levels of abstractions. Can we design a program visualization system that can change its level of abstraction according to the programmers’ needs?

CHI 2023: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Devamardeep Hayatpur, Tehilla Helfenbaum, Haijun Xia, Wolfgang Stuerzlinger, Paul Gries

Structuring Collaboration in Programming Through Personal-Spaces

Can we create a pedagogical tool for collaborative programming that balances both agency and interdependence?

CHI 2023: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Devamardeep Hayatpur, Haijun Xia, Daniel Wigdor

DataHop: Spatial Data Exploration in Virtual Reality

Stepping into a museum or a cultural exhibition instills a desire within us to explore new topics and cultures. What if we could create a similar spatial structure for visualizing complex and otherwise difficult to approach datasets? In this work, we explore meaningful layouts and organizational schemes for arranging one’s data analysis steps in the virtual environment.

UIST 2020: ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.

Devamardeep Hayatpur, Seongkook Heo, Haijun Xia, Wolfgang Stuerzlinger, Daniel Wigdor

Plane, Ray, and Point: Enabling Precise Spatial Manipulations with Shape Constraints

A common complaint of high-degree of freedom input is that it can lead to unaligned and askew content. We looked into addressing this by enabling dynamic mappings of input degrees of freedom to manipulation axes.

UIST 2019: ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.

creative stuff

see more