T. Scott Saponas Research Statement

As our interactions with computing continue to expand off the desktop, we want to use mobile devices in many, if not all, of our everyday activities. However, the touch screen and physical button centric interfaces of today’s mobile devices offer relatively poor support for interaction in many situations where computing is not our primary task. For example, when wearing gloves in the cold, a mobile phone’s touch screen can be difficult or impossible to use. Similarly, when someone is jogging and listening to music on their portable music player, their arms are typically swinging freely and their eyes are focused on their jogging path, making it awkward to reach for the controls to skip songs or change the volume. My research interests are in creating novel human-computer interfaces to expand the situations and opportunities for computing.