ATLAS Professor Ellen Yi-Luen Do had the opportunity to be a keynote speaker at TaiCHI 2023, a symposium hosted by the Taiwan Human-Computer Interaction Society at Taiwan University in Taipei. The event gathered researchers and practitioners across a range of backgrounds in technology, design and human factors to deepen community connections and explore new ideas.
Sessions included presentations on fabrication, perception, interactions and other timely topics, with a surprising range in mediums from humble materials like felt and puppets to advanced VR technologies and metaverse interactivity.
As director of the ACME Lab at ATLAS, Do and her team conduct research on using everyday items as interfaces, creating objects to think with, new ways of working, and methods and tools to help others make things. Do delivered her presentation, entitled “Fun with Creative Technology & Design”, advocating for playful computing with easily accessible materials like paper and cardboard, while highlighting ways to make toolkits for others to create for themselves.
The audience, which included experts in computer science, psychology, media, art, design and business responded enthusiastically, finding common ground in this relatable, inclusive approach to otherwise complex technologies. Do received a particularly warm reception from students in the field. She noted, “Several students came to thank me for my talk, stating that they learned so much from me, and that they never thought research could be this fun and interesting.”
Do expressed excitement for a few standout presentations from the conference including Ed Chi, Distinguished Scientist at Google DeepMind, who delivered a keynote on the large language model revolution. She said, “I was happy to learn that Bard will be a tool-use application applying to many of the Google apps and services people already use, including Maps, Sheets, Gmail, Docs, and more.”
She also called out FeltingReel: Density Varying Soft Fabrication with Reeling and Felting by Ping-Yi Wang and Lung-Pan Cheng as particularly intriguing.
Back in 2015, Do wrote the article “A flourishing field: a guide to HCI in China, Taiwan, and Singapore”, and saw the founding of Taiwan HCI. Looking back, she reflects, “I’m happy to see TaiCHI 2023 have 300 people registered with vibrant discussions, demos and posters. It's definitely growing!”
