Human-Computer Interaction Institute Seminar
Speaker
ANDRÉS MONROY-HERNÁNDEZ
Principal Research Scientist, Snap, Inc.
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science, Princeton University
When
-
Where
Virtual Presentation - ET
Description
It is common to spend hours on our digital devices connecting with people far away while disconnecting from those right beside us. Even before the pandemic, researchers have argued that digital technologies make us feel “alone together,” turning human contact into a luxury good. How might we reimagine those same technologies as enablers, rather than distractors, of in-person interactions with friends and family? In this talk, I will present Project IRL, a novel suite of mobile augmented reality (AR) applications designed to foster in-person, short-form, playful experiences. These included, collaborative storytelling for parents and their children, collective sculpture-making among friends, and embodied physical play for people and their pets. I will share a set of design patterns for co-located AR that we are developing after sharing these systems with millions of people inside and outside the lab. I will close by reflecting on the role of social computing systems research in industry and academia and my team’s future research directions to tackle societal challenges.
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Andrés Monroy-Hernández leads human-computer interaction research at Princeton and Snap Inc. He builds and studies technologies that have helped millions of people connect and collaborate in new ways, including MIT’s Scratch online community, Microsoft’s first hybrid AI scheduling agent, and some of Snapchat’s co-located AR experiences. His research has received best paper awards at CHI, CSCW, HCOMP, and ICWSM, and featured in The New York Times, CNN, Wired, BBC, and The Economist. Andrés was named one of the 35 Innovators under 35 by the MIT Technology Review magazine in Latin America and one of the most influential Latinos in Tech by CNET. He holds a master's and Ph.D. from MIT, and a BS from Tec de Monterrey in México.
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