I will discuss Autour, an audio augmented reality app that helps blind people serendipitously discover locations of interest around them while they walk down the street. I will then discuss my ongoing research, MIMIC, a mobile system that gives each member of a couple a visceral, background sense of their partner's current activity through frequent, simple vibration (haptic) patterns on the leg. In both cases, the focus is on moving away from needing to look at a smartphone screen to be aware of useful information. I will discuss some specific issues that designing and testing MIMIC has raised for haptic information delivery, and experiments to address these shortcomings.
Last, if there is interest, I will also touch on an alternative form of haptics, Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS), and how it could potentially be used to warp temperature perception in a VR/AR application.
Jeff Blum has worked in mobile software for over 20 years, starting as a Program Manager on Microsoft's Windows Mobile team in 1994, followed by his role as Director of Product Design at Mindsurf Networks, a startup building PDA software for use in schools. After developing several mobile products for professional photographers, Jeff joined McGill University's Shared Reality Lab, where he is currently a PhD Candidate leading research projects that use mobile devices to improve people's lives. Jeff holds a B.S.E. in Computer Science from Princeton University.