Recent technological advances have enabled digital applications to move away from purely desktop and office settings to gain greater relevance in our everyday lives and spaces: homes, classrooms, public and cultural places, scientific laboratories and beyond. This has given rise to an increasing number of creative practices and research areas that seek to overcome the long-standing separation between the physical and digital worlds. The ACM Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction (TEI) serves as a gathering place for the interdisciplinary community of researchers, practitioners and theorists who work in this emerging field. This award is in support of the second annual TEI 2011 GSC, to be held at the TEI 2011 conference in Madeira, Portugal in 2011. The TEI 2011 GSC serves to hone the research and design skills of a new generation of scientists, engineers, and designers who will shape the technological and socio-cultural landscape of the future as computing integrates more and more tightly into physical objects and spaces. The consortium program aims to increase participation in the tangible, embedded and embodied interaction academic community by providing mentorship for young scientists, researchers, and designers in this field, and by giving them the opportunity to meet and engage with more senior TEI researchers at the conference.
Building on the success of the 2010 GSC the 2011 GSC will help to promote national and international collaborations that happen at the intersection of diverse fields and creative practices, from science and engineering, to social and cultural studies, to arts and design. The TEI 2011 GSC will bring together students from a range of fields, including industrial design, arts, digital media, human-computer interaction and computer science, and opened their perspectives to each other's different practices and methods. The aim of the GSC is to encourage students to take a broad perspective on creativity and research that bridges the physical and digital worlds in the growing field of tangible embedded and embodied interfaces. During the TEI 2011 GSC, students will be invited to present their work, and will have the opportunity to receive constructive criticism from diverse viewpoints by a panel of faculty mentors. In addition to this, they will also present their work in posters at the main conference, and their short papers will be included in the conference Proceedings and in the ACM Digital Library.
The Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI) 2011 Graduate Student Consortium (GSC) was a one-day workshop aimed at broadening participation in the tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction research community by providing mentorship for young scientists, researchers, and designers entering this field. Our recruitment made an effort to reach students who would be interested in and would benefit from the workshop, but who would otherwise be unable to attend the conference. We also sought to broaden participation in the TEI conference and research community by students from underrepresented groups and at institutions not historically represented at the conference series. Participants were selected through a peer-review process based on two-page research paper submissions. The selection criteria included: the overall rating of the papers and comments by the referees, the diversity of topic areas, as well as geographic, gender, and race/ethnicity distribution among participants. Twelve graduate students (both Master’s and PhD level) participated in the one-day event, which was held on January 23, 2011 in conjunction with the TEI 2011 conference in Madeira, Portugal. Students presented their work, which was discussed and critiqued by a panel of four faculty mentors: three from academia and one industry designer and researcher. The format provided students experience with presenting their research work and responding to critical feedback, both about their work and about their presentation. The workshop also provided a venue for a candid and wide-ranging discussion of professional issues that are relevant for researchers beginning their careers. Students had the opportunity to ask questions about career paths in their field, and to discuss the transition from the role of student to that of established researcher. Finally, the students participated in the main conference event, giving them the opportunity to meet and interact with large number of more senior TEI researchers. The workshop enabled students to broaden their research network in several ways. First, the students got to know the four faculty mentors well over the course of the day, who may serve as future connections for them as they move forward in their careers. Second, it gave them the opportunity to meet and connect with peers who are studying and doing research in the same field from around the world. And third, it provided the opportunity for the students to showcase their work to the broader tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction community and connect with a large group of senior researchers in the field.
