Alex Smola
When was the last time you enjoyed calling your cable company? You work through the phone tree, explain your problem to the first person, who moves you to a second person, to whom you explain it again, who then needs to transfer you to a third. Somewhere around the fourth handoff you are reciting...
Alex Smola
A user has spent ten minutes preparing for a small art installation. The final exchange goes like this. User: Plain-text packet is final. I’ll send tonight and load the hatchback after work. Model A: Sounds like a clean plan. Drive safe, and go get it. Model B: Before you go, a fast final check:...
Amartya
Since completing my Ph.D., I have been working as a HCI Researcher and Software Lead on the TunePad project. TunePad is a tool for creating music using the Python programming language. It has various musical instruments (bass, drums, synthesizer, sequencer etc.) that are programmable, a healthy...
Amartya
From my childhood, I have loved cars; perhaps it should not be surprising that my graduate studies would involve cars in some form or the other. However, I count myself as being extremely fortunate that my advisor (Mike!) let me to formulate and investigate a research problem for my PhD thesis...
Amartya
The Digital Rails project was done in partnership with the fine folks at Chicago's Field Museum. The museum had recently opened up a state-of-the-art gallery called the Hall of China with the intention 0f educating museum visitors about China's complex history using historical/cultural artifacts....
Amartya
When I started working at the TIDAL Lab in 2012, a project that investigated family practices around appliances and household energy usage was already in place (NSF grant). Over the next couple of years, we developed two "board games" to investigate if a thoughtfully designed board game can make...
Amartya
GhostHunter started as an offshoot of the GreenHomeGames NSF grant, where we were exploring ways to augment traditional heating and cooling systems controls (such as the thermostats) in homes to help families learn about their energy footprint. energy use is "invisible", how can we make it more...
Amartya
We added various actuators, sensors, and a micro-controller to a frisbee that could be used to give throw feedback to an ultimate frisbee player. left: exploded view of circuit components, middle: after mounting on a custom designed and etched circuit board, and right: mounted on a frisbee, note...