2018
November
Haptipedia Workshop and Magic Pen Demo at AsiaHaptics - Come say "Hi!" to Hasti and Soheil who are in Songdo, Korea (Nov 12 - 17) to present Haptipedia and Magic Pen - a Workshop and a Demo, respectively! Read about these projects here: Magic Pen and Haptipedia!
SPIN welcomes visiting PhD student Raquel Robinson - Raquel is visiting SPIN through December from the University of Saskatchewan! Her research on biofeedback for social engagement is of particular interest to the CuddleBit and Touch Sensor teams at SPIN!
Haptic Speech is at the Acoustical Society of America - Come say "Hi!" to David, Sophy, and Hannah who are in Victoria, BC (Nov 5-9) to present Haptic Speech, collaboration with Dr Bryan Gick of UBC Linguistics! Read about this project here: Haptic Speech!
Soheil's proposal accepted for an internship at EPFL (Lausanna, Switzerland) - Congratulations to Soheil! He has been invited on a summer internship at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland!
October
Dr Oswald Barral of University of Helsinki visits SPIN - Welcome Oswald! Come hear Dr Barral speak about biophysical signal processing in ICCS X836 on Oct 23rd @ 2pm.
Karon to guest lecture at SCIE113 - Want to know more about undergraduate involvement in HCI research? On Oct 18, Karon will be taking over for one SCIE113 lecture and would love to meet you!
SPIN members Paul Bucci and David Marino featured in AR Art Show - Paul and David's work will be featured in an augmented reality art show on the weekend evenings of Oct 13-14 at Oak Street Studios (8930 Oak St). We'll see you there!
September
SPIN and DFP will be at Radical Research Summit - Come say "Hi!", Karon MacLean will be speaking on behalf of DFP and we would love to hear more about your User Research experience!
August
Haptipedia Workshop and Magic Pen Demo accepted to AsiaHaptics - Congratulations to Hasti, Michael, John, Jessica, and Ashutosh for Haptipedia and Soheil and Lena for Magic Pen - a Workshop and a Demo, respectively, will be shown at AsiaHaptics this year! We look forward to seeing you in Songdo, Korea in November!
June
Designing for People Showcase 2018 with Special Speaker Dr Koji Yatani - Building on the HCI@UBC Poster/demo forum held for the past 5 years in April, this year we highlighted the design projects from the Designing for People (DFP) project course 554K in addition to posters and demos. Congratulations to SPIN members who won awards: Haptic Speech (David Marino, Sophy Chu, Hannah Elbaggari) and CuddleBits (Paul Bucci, Anita Shah, Diego Icaza, and Linda Jiang)! The DFP projects were comprised of collaborations with industry groups such as Mozilla, Samsung, and Tableau. The posters and demos at the event were provided by various organizations such as the School of Interactive Arts + Technology (SIAT, SFU), RREACH/CARIS Lab (UBC), Centre for Digital Media, among others. The event was capped with a presentation on the reshaping of security experiences from Dr. Koji Yatani (University of Tokyo). Photos thanks to Nick Hetherington for the wonderful photos!
SPIN alumni Hasti Seifi and Dilan Ustek Eurohaptics Talks and Honours - Hasti Seifi and Dilan Ustek have both recently attended Eurohaptics to present talks and receive awards! Dilan Ustek presented a talk about her project "A Multimodal Illusion of Force Improves Control Perception in Above-Surface Gesture: Elastic Zoom" as based on her thesis work from UBC. Hasti Seifi received an award as the winner of the 2017 EuroHaptics Society award for the best PhD thesis in the field of haptics. Her work was based on various projects such as VibViz, VibMix, and HapTurk. Additionally, Hasti also presented a talk based on her thesis in a special plenary session. Additional details can be found: https://www.cs.ubc.ca/news/2018/06/cs-alumnae-hasti-seifi-receives-2017-.... Congratulations to both of these alumni for their fantastic work!
April
SPIN presents workshops to highschool students from Eric Hamber minischool - We are excited to welcome Eric Hamber minischool students to UBC on Friday April 13 and to present workshops in both User Experience / Interface Design and Human-Robot Interaction! esigning User Interfaces and Use
James Landay visits UBC - DFP and SPIN lab are happy to host Dr James Landay of Stanford University on April 4 & 5th! The visit is jam-packed with activities from lab demos to talks and workshops. Welcome Dr Landay!
March
EZ-zoom accepted to Eurohaptics 2018 - Congratulations to Dilan and Kevin on their paper acceptance to this year's Eurohaptics conference! Pisa, Italy is in for a treat when it gets to hear all about the pseudohaptic illusion of Elastic Zed Zoom in June!
Haptipedia and Magic Pen impress audiences at Haptics Symposium 2018 - What a showing at Haptics Symposium: Soheil's Magic Pen made a mark both as an oral presentation and a demonstration; and Hasti's Haptipedia garnered serious buzz as a Work-in-Progress! Thanks to Karon for hyping up both projects to an enthusiastic crowd in San Francisco! Read about these projects here: Magic Pen and Haptipedia!
February
Haptipedia accepted as a WIP at Haptics Symposium - Congratulations to Hasti on the acceptance of "Haptipedia: An Expert-Sourced Interactive Device Visualization for Haptic Designers" to Haptics Symposium as a Work In Progress! We look forward to talking more about this project in San Francisco in March!
SPIN at Day on the Hill (Ottawa ON) with UBC Prez Santa Ono - Laura and Karon bundled up with UBC President Santa Ono to act as UBC ambassadors to Parliament in snowy Ottawa! Laura was honoured to introduce the CuddleBit project to the BC Liberal Caucus!
January
Welcome to the new Undergrads - SPIN lab is getting an injection of fresh in the form of talented undergraduates! Linda Jiang, Sean Fernandes, and Anita Shah are joining the CuddleBit prototyping team; Minjia Zhan, Hailey Mah, Laura Rodgers and Anushka Agrawal are joining the EEG project; Edwin Zhou is joining Haptipedia. What a term this will be!
"Is it Happy?" accepted at CHI 2018 - Congratulations to the CuddleBit team, Paul, Lotus, and Laura for getting their paper into CHI! We look forward to attending the 2018 CHI conference in Montreal in April!
Hasti Seifi awarded NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship Award - The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) honours promising researchers with financial support to further cutting edge scientific research. We are very proud to announce that Hasti Seifi has been given such an honour! Congratulations Hasti, we are proud of you!
MagicPen accepted at HAPTICS 2018 - Congratulations to Soheil for his hard work and we look forward to seeing his talk at the March 2018 HAPTICS conference in San Francisco!
2017
December
Kevin Chow receives awarded Honorable Mention - The CRA (Computing Research Association) Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award honours research excellence and we are very proud of you Kevin! Congratulations on this recognition of your hard work!
October
Karon Keynote at ISS - Karon is delighted to be invited as Keynote Speaker at Interactive Services and Spaces conference (Brighton UK)!
September
Paul Bucci is teaching CPSC 344 this term - SPIN alum Paul Bucci is teaching CPSC 344! If you still need your regular dose of Paul, you can find him in X508, X521, or his office in ICCS 185.
August
Paul Graduation - Congratulations to Paul Bucci for the exciting MSc presentation on August 16, 2017! Paul is currently teaching the undergraduate Intro to HCI Methods at UBC (CPSC 344).
Dilan Graduation - Congratulations to Dilan Ustek for the innovative presentation given on August 10, 2017! We wish you the best in your new role as the new Product Manager at Battlefy.
July
Welcome Vanessa Carpenter! - SPIN happily welcomed Vanessa Carpenter, a visiting PhD student (Aalborg University Copenhagen) and UX professional (IdemoLab) from Copenhagen, Denmark. What a fun collaborative time we had!
June
Merel Jung's PhD defense at UTwente (Netherlands) - Congratulations Dr Merel Jung on the completion of her PhD! Karon was happy to sit as external examiner at her successful defense.
Voodle gets Honourable Mention at DIS - Congratulations to the Voodle team and especially to David Marino for the excellent presentation at Designing Interactive Systems conference in Edinburgh, UK!
Student Innovation Challenge at World Haptics - Thanks for the hard work to Colin, Oliver, Ben, and Matthew for running a successful challenge at WHC in Munich, Germany!
May
Paul and CuddleBits at CHI - Congratulations to Paul Bucci for his well-attended talk at CHI 2017 in Denver Colorado!
March
Hasti Graduation - Congratulations to Hasti Seifi on her successful defense of her PhD project on March 7, 2017! Her encouraging presence in the lab has been invaluable since 2011 and we wish her the best as a Post-doctoral Fellow with Prof Katherine Kuchenbecker at the Max Planck Institute in Germany!
MacMix at World Haptics 2017 - Congratulations to Ben Clark and Oliver Schneider for their hard work on MacMix!
Voodle to be at DIS 2017 - Congratulations to David Marino and the rest of the Voodle team for their acceptance at DIS 2017!
February
Hasti Seifi PhD Defense Scheduled - Hasti Seifi will be having her PhD defense on March 7, 2017, Tuesday, starting at 9 am. The location will be room 200, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies building (6371 Crescent Road) on campus.
Cuddlebits Behaviour Paper Accepted for CHI 2017 - Congratulations to the Cuddlebits team (Paul Bucci, Laura Cang, Sazi Valair, David Marino, Lucia Tseng, Merel Jung, Jussia Rantala, Oliver Schneider, Karon MacLean) for their paper acceptance for the CHI 2017 conference. A select few members will also be attending the conference.
January
Oliver Graduation - Congratulations to Oliver Schneider, who as of last December 2016 successfully managed to defend his PhD and has graduated. Oliver has been, without a doubt, an important and fantastic part of the SPIN Lab for many years. Starting out as a SPIN Lab member since 2010, he has been a part of many of the lab's projects, notably haptic design tools, Macaron, and HapTurk just to name a few. His enthuasism and critical insights will solely be missed. We wish him luck on his future endeavors such as his postdoctoral work with Patrick Baudisch in Germany.
Laura rejoins SPIN - Welcome back Laura, as a PhD student and congratulations on your 4YF and NSERC awards!
Welcoming new lab members - We are very pleased to announce that several new lab members such as: Lotus Zhang, Haihua Zhang, Mario Cimet, Mike Spearman, Sophia Chen, Dilorom Padaeva and Kevin Chow will be joining us in assisting on our various projects this year!