Computers give us access to and control over data and machines,
but they have also taken away the tangible handles our bodies evolved with. My
research's larger goal is to restore physicality to computer interaction, and to reduce their load on our attention. In many
cases, this means taking it away from the desktop and embedding it in the world
at its most natural point of use. I use haptic (touch sense)
force feedback as part of a multisensory HCI design toolbox, and apply
design techniques to real problems and contexts to better understand physical
feedback's ideal role. My favorite applications require continuous and/or expressive control or navigation - e.g. manipulating
streaming media, drawing and sculpting, controlling musical instruments, affective
displays, and computer-mediated interpersonal affective communication. Other promising
areas are those where other senses are overutilized (like driving), or a system
is being monitored with low attention (the pager of the future).
My background is a mix of mechatronics, robotics, physiology and
sensory psychophysics; and my work moves through all of these fields. I was at the former Interval Research Corp. (Palo Alto, CA ) from 1996-early 2000, leading a team that put physical interfaces
into consumer contexts and tested them there; that work got us to the point
of understanding what is important.
For more about my research, visit the SPIN lab - the Sensory Perception and Interaction Research Group.
