Thad Starner

Title:

Wearable Computing:  Through the Looking Glass

Abstract:

Google's Glass has captured the world's imagination, with new articles speculating on it almost every day.  Yet, why would consumers want a wearable computer in their everyday lives?  For the past 20 years, my teams have been creating living laboratories to discover the most compelling reasons.  In the process, we have investigated how to create interfaces for technology which is designed to be "there when you need it, gone when you don't."  This talk will attempt to articulate the most valuable lessons we have learned, including some design principles for creating "microinteractions" to fit a user's lifestyle.  In addition, I will present some unusual wearable computing interfaces, ranging from  silent speech recognition to fingerless gloves that can help the wearer learn piano melodies or Braille typing without active attention.

Bio:

Thad Starner is a wearable computing pioneer.  He is a Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Technical Lead on Google's Glass.  Starner has been wearing a head-up display based computer as part of his daily life since 1993, perhaps the longest such experience known.  Thad is a founder of the annual ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers, now in its 18th year, and has authored over 150 peer-reviewed scientific publications.  He is an inventor on over 60 United States patents awarded or in process.