Sensory Perception & Interaction Research Group

University of British Columbia

Tom Hazelton

Master's Student
Year Departed: 
2010

Yasaman S. Sefidgar

Master's Student

M.Sc. student, May 2010 - April 2012. Her research on TAMER project spanned systematic interaction design, therapeutic human-robot interaction, affective touch, and affective computing.

Yasaman holds a M.Sc. in Computer Science - HCI (UBC) and a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering - Hardware (Sharif University of Technology). She is currently a M.Sc. student in Computer Science - CV (SFU).

Yasaman's major interests are in (1) developing computational models for understanding human's emotions, cognitions, and behaviours, (2) developing technologies that enable machines to display similar abilities, and (3) improving human's life through the development of technologies that build upon (1) and (2). For more information about her, visit her webpage at: http://www.sfu.ca/~ysefidga/Home.html

Year Departed: 
2012

Diane Tam

Master's Student

M.Sc. student, May 2010 - Sept 2012. Diane was a master's student in the SPIN lab working on exploring the benefits of haptic notifications in presentation settings.

Bachelors of Computer Science (UofT, 2007)

Master's of Computer Science (UBC, 2012)

Software Developer at Oracle Corporation Canada (2007-2010)

Enjoys sprint canoeing, biking, and snowboarding.

Year Departed: 
2012

Oliver Schneider

PhD Student

Oliver is interested in how people design, create, and work with new technology, especially combining the physical, digital, and social worlds. Right now, he is working on Haptic Experience Design, developing tools and techniques to work with touch-based technology. He also maintains research interests in expressive interaction techniques, STEM education and learning technology, persuasive computing, and software engineering.

Oliver was with the SPIN lab from 2010-2016. He holds a BSc (Honours) in Computer Science from the University of Saskatchewan (2010), and an MSc (2012) and PhD (2016) in Computer Science from University of British Columbia. He worked with Disney Research Pittsburgh as a lab associate and then research consultant during 2014-2015.

Personal Homepage: 
http://oliverschneider.ca
Year Departed: 
2016
Publication: 
Schneider, O. and MacLean, K. E., “Studying Design Process and Example Use with Macaron, a Web-based Vibrotactile Effect Editor,” in Proc. of HAPTICS Symposium, Philadelphia, PA, 2016.
Schneider, O., Israr, A., and MacLean, K.E., “Tactile Animation by Direct Manipulation of Grid Displays,” in Proc. of Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), Charlotte, NC, 2015.
Schneider, O., MacLean, K.M., "Improvising Design with a Haptic Instrument," Haptics Symposium, 2014, pp 327-332.
Karuei, I., Schneider, O., Stern, B., Chuang, M., MacLean, K.M., "RRACE: Robust Realtime Algorithm for Cadence Estimation," Pervasive and Mobile Computing, vol. 13, 2014, pp. 52-66.
Schneider, O. S., Seifi, H., Kashani, S., Chun, M., & MacLean, K. E. (2016, May). "HapTurk: Crowdsourcing Affective Ratings of Vibrotactile Icons." In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 3248-3260). ACM.
Schneider, O., and MacLean, K. E. “Reflections on a WYFIWIF Tool for Eliciting User Feedback,” in CHI Workshops - Tactile UX. Toronto, CAN: ACM, 2014, pp. 5 pages.
Schneider, O., "Using Gait as an Input Modality for Mobile Exercise Games,", M.Sc. Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2012.
Dawson, J., Schneider, O., Ferstay, J., Toker, D., Link, J., Haddad, S. and MacLean, K. E. “It’s Alive! Exploring the Concept of a Living Phone,” in Proc. of Graphics Interface, Regina CAN, pp. 205-212, 2013.
Schneider, O. et al “Real-time Gait Classification for Persuasive Smartphone Apps: Structuring the Literature and Pushing the Limits,” in Proc. of Int'l Conf in Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI '13), Santa Monica, USA, pp. 161-172 2013.

Louise Oram

Master's Student

Master's student, working on radiology interaction using touch technolgies in mouse form. I am also an avid orienteer, and have competed for Canada at an international level for several years. 

Bachelors of Computer Science (UBC, 2011), Bachelors of Human Kinetics (UBC, 2007)

Personal Homepage: 
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~olouise/
Year Departed: 
2013
Publication: 
Levesque V, Oram L, MacLean K, Cockburn A, Marchuk ND, Johnson D, Colgate JE, Peshkin MA. "Enhancing physicality in touch interaction with programmable friction." In Proc of CHI '11 May 7 (pp. 2481-2490).

Anna Flagg

Master's Student

Anna received her Master's degree in the SPIN lab. She has research interests in affective compiting, sensing technologies, prototyping, design, data visualization, analysis, and machine learning.

Personal Homepage: 
http://www.annaflagg.com/
Year Departed: 
2012