54. DESIGNING EASILY LEARNABLE EYES-FREE INTERACTION

Department: Computer Science & Engineering
Faculty Advisor(s): William Griswold

Primary Student
Name: Kevin Ansia Li
Email: k2li@ucsd.edu
Phone: 858-534-9669
Grad Year: 2009

Abstract
As computing moves towards mobile devices, new challenges emerge for Human-Computer Interaction. Although mobile phones have typically been used for voice calls, they have increasingly been used for text-messaging and email. Both of these forms of communication require a user’s visual attention. However, there are a number of scenarios where a user might need to interact with his/her device or communicate with someone else, but cannot look at the device (i.e. when driving). Furthermore, the visual and audio senses have already been overloaded by traditional user interface design. Haptic (touch-based) feedback is a promising alternative for information delivery. Research in this domain typically takes an information theoretic approach towards increasing the bandwidth of information transfer through the skin. This approach is valuable because it demonstrates that touch can act as a high bandwidth channel for information transfer, but often results in complex tactile patterns that can be difficult to learn. With the proliferation of mobile devices, and the shortcomings of visual and auditory channels of communication, there is tremendous opportunity for a tactile communication medium.

My research in Human-Computer Interaction and Ubiquitous Computing opens up a new direction of haptic research, exploring how human experience can be exploited to generate tactile messages with pre-learned meanings. My dissertation research examines how this can be done for music, human touch and speech. My research agenda pushes this notion of exploiting human experience to generate tactile messages into the Computer-Mediated Tactile Communication domain.

Related Links:

1. http://www.kevinli.net

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