WORKSHOP: Graduate Student Consortium at the 2015 Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI'15) Conference

Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge LA

Investigators

Abstract

The technological advances of the past decade have given rise to an increasing number of creative practices and research areas that seek to overcome the long-standing separation between the physical and digital worlds. One key area of innovation has been tangible computing, which pushes the user interface beyond the screen into the physical world by means of mobile devices, graspable interfaces and interactive surfaces. Closely related is embedded interaction in which the everyday objects and environments we interact with are computationally augmented in new ways. As physical artifacts acquire new computational behaviors, they become reprogrammable, customizable, repurposeable, and interoperable in rich ecologies and diverse contexts. They also become more complex, and require intense design effort in order to be functional, usable, and enjoyable. Designing such systems requires interdisciplinary thinking, and making them encompasses not only technical knowledge of software, electronics, and mechanics, but also the use implications of a system's physical form and behavior as well as its impacts on society. This is funding to support a Graduate Student Consortium (workshop) of about 9 promising doctoral students (5 from the United States and 4 from abroad), along with 3 distinguished research faculty. The event will take place in conjunction with the ACM SIGCHI 2015 International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI 2015), which will be held January 15-19, at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. Launched in 2007 and now in its ninth year, the annual TEI conference is about creating compelling experiences that bridge bits and atoms through research in human-computer interaction, design, interactive arts, tools and technologies. TEI brings together researchers, designers, engineers, and artists who provide an innovative and cross-disciplinary perspective on physical/digital interaction design and technological innovation. The intimate size of this single-track conference (about 200 participants in recent years) provides a unique forum for exchanging ideas through talks, interactive exhibits, demos, posters, art installations and performances. More information about the conference may be found online at http://www.tei-conf.org/15/. The TEI 2015 Graduate Student Consortium will take place on Friday, January 16, immediately preceding the main conference, with follow-up activities during the conference's main technical program. Students will present their research to their peers and the faculty mentors, who will constructively critique the students' work from diverse viewpoints. The students will also get to show their work in posters at the conference, and their short papers will be included in the conference Proceedings. The reception following the Consortium sessions, which will be held in conjunction with other TEI workshops and studios, will facilitate open-ended follow-on discussion and networking. The organizing committee has made a special effort to recruit a diverse set of student participants, particularly seeking persons with disabilities and members of groups that are under-represented in computer and information science and engineering; 4 of the 9 students are women, and at least one (and likely two) of the 3 faculty mentors are women as well. This workshop will sharpen the research skills of a new generation of scientists, engineers, and designers who will shape human-centered computing as it takes place in physical things and places. Already we are observing the impact of this field in our daily lives, as computing becomes embedded in our phones, our bus stops, and soon even our clothing. Now is a critical moment in the field, as a wave of early exploratory prototypes begins to give way to disciplined investigations, the development of toolkits, and more rigorous evaluation methods. Mentoring a next generation of TEI researchers is crucial if the field is to retain its initial vigor and openness as it gains foothold in the academic establishment of human-computing research.