Karon MacLean Professor, Dept. of Computer Science University of British Columbia Director, SPIN The Sensory Perception and Interaction Research Group E-mail: maclean@cs.ubc.ca Office Phone: (604) 822 8169 Office Fax: (604) 822 4231 Office: ICICS/CS X641 FIND ME FIND MY SCHEDULE

Computers give us access to and control over data and machines, but they have also taken away the tangible handles our bodies evolved with. My research's larger goal is to restore physicality to computer interaction, and to reduce their load on our attention. In many cases, this means taking it away from the desktop and embedding it in the world at its most natural point of use. I use haptic (touch sense) force feedback as part of a multisensory HCI design toolbox, and apply design techniques to real problems and contexts to better understand physical feedback's ideal role. My favorite applications require continuous and/or expressive control or navigation - e.g. manipulating streaming media, drawing and sculpting, controlling musical instruments, affective displays, and computer-mediated interpersonal affective communication. Other promising areas are those where other senses are overutilized (like driving), or a system is being monitored with low attention (the pager of the future).