Research Projects

Service Sciences

This project examines Service Sciences which is an emergent research area that systematically studies services and service systems. Bringing together knowledge from diverse fields such as Engineering, Management, Computer Science, Human Sciences, and Design, this new discipline aims to bring for the service industry the benefits of systematic innovation based on research, as, for instance, Industrial Engineering brought formal methods to manufacturing processes.

In the Customer-Intensive Systems area we study systems with high customer-intensives, where the customer is a fundamental part of the input to the production process. The input maybe tangible, such as when the customer's body is the input to the production process of a hospital; or intangible, when the customer's information is supplied as input.

customer-intensive systems

Related publications:
Service Systems as Customer-Intensive Systems and its Implications for Service Science and Engineering. In Proc. of of HICSS'08.
 A Services Theory Approach to Online Services Applications. SCC'07.
 Ubiquitous Services. SCC'07.

Everywhere Interactive Displays Project
This project aims to develop systems that allow the transformation of every surface in a space into a projected "touch screen". We are developing a prototype where we combine a LCD projector, a rotating mirror or a pan/tilt head, and a camera. The pan/tilt head is used to move the image of the projector to surfaces, walls, or the floor of a room. We process the projected image to compensate for the perspective distortion.

A video camera is employed to detect hand/body activity on the projected area, so people can interact with the projected image by simply touching the surface.

More details:
Everywhere Interactive Displays Project webpage.

 ED prototype

Related publications:
To Frame or Not to Frame: The Role and Design of Frameless Displays in Ubiquitous
Applications. Proc. of Ubicomp'05.
Dynamically Reconfigurable Vision-Based User Interfaces. Best paper, Proc. of ICVS'03.
Steerable Interfaces for Pervasive Computing Spaces. Best paper, Proc. of PerCom'03.
The Everywhere Displays Projector: A Device to Create Ubiquitous Graphical
Interfaces. Proc. of Ubicomb'01.

BlueSpace Project

The goal of BlueSpace project is to research the issues associated with next-generation workspaces in which integrated electronic transdurcers, displays and network appliances are used to augment personalization and context awareness. Toward this goal, we have constructed a full-scale prototype office and implemented several applications, which include situation-triggered environmental adjustments and context-aware event notification. These applications use a set of infrastructure services based on document technology (XML) for sharing contextual information. The prototype is viewed as a sandbox to which additional technologies and interesting applications can be added and evaluated in the future.

More details: BlueSpace Project webpage.

   

 image of BlueSpace

Related publications:
BlueSpace: Personalizing Workspace through Awareness and Adaptability. Int. Journal of Human Computer Studies, vol. 57, 2002.
BlueSpace: Creating a Personalized and Context-Aware Workspace. IBM Research Report 22281.
 

E-culture Project

The e-culture project has developed prototypes of streaming multimedia experiences for home audiences (56K modems). The project started with an extensive research with potential users of cultural web experiences. In this research, we have identified a strong desire for entertaining multimedia experiences, to be guided and narrated by experts and celebrities. Based on the results of this research, two prototypes were developed that illustrate the potential of experiences combining still images, sound, and short video clips as a substitution for full video streaming in the case of 56K modem connections.

Related publications:
That's Entertainment! Designing Streaming, Multimedia Web Experience. Int. Journal of Human-Computer Interaction vol. 14, 2002.
Can Web Entertainment Be Passive? Proc.of IWWW 2001, Web and Society Track.
Less Clicking, More Watching: Results of the Iterative Design and Evaluation of Entertaining Web Experiences. Proc. of Interact 2001.

 
For information about my PhD research projects at the MIT Media Lab, check the PhD Research page.