Dear All
Hope everyone has a wonderful long-weekend. Please join us on Tuesday, October 15th at 12:30 p.m. for a talk offered by David Ledo at DGP Seminar Room. Lunch will be provided.
ABSTRACT
The advent of ubiquitous computing brought forth the promise of a variety of interactive artifacts that integrate into our everyday lives. In particular, this has led to a myriad of "smart objects", with computing capabilities such as digital assistant speakers and smart lightbulbs. Yet - people still struggle operating and communicating with these objects. This is largely a design problem, as it is difficult to design and explore interactive behaviours with these objects: how should a smart speaker show that it is currently listening, or that it is retrieving an answer from the cloud? In my work I explore how interaction designers can achieve responsive smart interactive object prototypes by repurposing hardware and software without the need to code. First, designers can repurpose mobile devices (and their rich sensing and output) to replace the need for custom electronics and soldering. Next, designers can use a prototyping tool for creating the physical form around a mobile device by modifying an existing 3D modeling tool. Finally, I show how designers can author rich interactive behaviours on mobile devices by repurposing familiar desktop tools. Through this work it is possible to envision what the future of interaction design might look like, and more broadly helps us reflect on the role of smart objects in our everyday life.
BIO
David Ledo is a Venezuelan-Canadian PhD Candidate at the University of Calgary working with Lora Oehlberg and Saul Greenberg. With almost ten years of experience in HCI research, his work lies at the intersection of interaction techniques, prototyping tools and ubiquitous computing. David is a Killam and Adobe Research Fellow, and has worked at many top institutions in Canada, the US and Europe, including Autodesk Research and Microsoft Research. David enjoys many things, including graphic design, cats, city life and playing flamenco guitar.
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