The Design & Innovation workshop explores new and innovative technologies through four specific tracks. Each track represents an area of significant interest to academic researchers, industry leaders, and society at large. The different tracks require a variety of skill sets and innovative thinking to bring new technologies to the world.

Mobile devices have turned the world beyond our desks into venues for exciting new interactions. We no longer need to be in front of our computers or laptops to interact with our friends, colleagues, and information — they can now easily come with us wherever we are.

In this track, we'll design and build prototypes of new applications for living mobile. We'll look both at large scale mobility where applications use your current location to tailor an appropriate experience for your location as well a small scale mobility around the house or office where we can use mobile devices to augment social situations of all kind. We'll use web technologies to present these applications on mobile devices, use sensors to better understand our environments, and use techniques from data visualization and user interface design to think about how best to create our systems.

Drew Harry, Andrea Colaço

There will be a billion more cameras coming out in next 5 years. They will be placed on our cellphones, computers, cars, houses, machinery, robots and perhaps our bodies as well. How can we best capture the visual information in different times, localities, wavelengths, polarizations and viewpoints to help humans better understand this world?

The answer is computational imaging. Computational imaging starts where image processing ends. This paradigm has opened new opportunities for applications beyond just picture taking — for instance, refocusing an image after it has been captured, getting 3D shapes of scenes in a single shot and looking around corners. In this track we will explore technology that uses cameras in novel ways — altering the hardware of capture systems to learn more from the scenes we capture; retrofitting a camera with a coded mask in front of the aperture to extend the capabilities of image processing techniques; Kinect cameras for applications in depth sensing; cameras interacting with ubiquitous tags such as, Bokodes; exploiting the trend of cameras everywhere to create useful image mash-ups; reading your opponents card (that you once thought was only a magic trick), and more!

Rohit Pandharkar, Ahmed Kirmani

Throughout human history storytelling has played a primary role in the transmission of the human experience. Stories preserve history, teach, embody cultural identity, provide a medium for conversing with one another, and entertain. As human culture has advanced the art of storytelling has not only employed advancing technologies to re-craft narratives, but has helped create new technologies to tell stories in more fantastic and imaginative ways.

A story can take many forms, including: visual storytelling, music and audio, live interactions, video games, interactive environments, data or process visualizations, and collaborative stories to name a few. These different forms require specific mediums and technologies to convey their message. We will review the history and current state of technology in relation to storytelling, while we explore and develop new process, mediums, and technologies for telling stories in the future.

In addition to visual storytelling, music and audio are powerful media to tell stories. Music and audio processing include technologies for sound design and synthesis, live interactive installations in buildings and open spaces, interactive environments for making music on mobile devices, music recommendation systems for listening to personalized music.

Micah Eckhardt, Santiago Alfaro, Mihir Sarkar

In popular culture, 'artificial intelligence' often takes form of sentient, competent robots, taking over tasks from pilots to lovers. In reality, technology is employed more as an extension of man, augmenting the human ability to remember, travel, build. Currently, tools for human augmentation are often mass-produced, and do not always fit their user that well. However, the rise of low-cost manufacturing and improved CAD/CAM interfaces enable more personalised human augmentation. In this workshop we will explore making appropriate extensions for human ability. We will touch on robotics and biomechanics of humans, and design and build physical prototypes that help or augment humans. In particular, we will be using the fabrication tools provided in the Fab Lab to design and build everyday technology for patients suffering from cerebral palsy.

Ken Endo, Nadya Peek
Prof. Dhananjay Gadre, Vinayak Dharmadhikari