Allen Zhao

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About

Allen Zhao is a researcher whose work sits at the intersection of human-computer interaction, tangible interfaces, and augmented reality. His primary contributions focus on designing novel physical-digital systems that enhance creativity and collaboration. Zhao is best known for "shapeShift" (2017, 25 citations), a pioneering compact, high-resolution tabletop shape display that introduced mobile interaction techniques for both passive and active scenarios. This work demonstrated how users could freely move and spin a dynamic physical interface to render interactive elements, laying groundwork for mobile haptic displays. More recently, Zhao investigated how active tangibles combined with augmented reality can support remote collaboration for creative tasks (2019, 6 citations), exploring new ways to bridge physical and digital spaces for distributed teams. His research has been recognized for pushing the boundaries of shape-changing interfaces and mixed-reality collaboration. By focusing on making tangible interaction more mobile and expressive, Zhao's work continues to inspire new directions in embodied interaction and computer-supported cooperative work.