Humanizing Technology with Assistive Augmentations

The overarching topic of this talk is centred around the design and development of intelligent human-computer interfaces that fundamentally augment human abilities—physical, cognitive, and perceptual, while ensuring that the technology becomes a natural extension of the person. We call this ‘Assistive Augmentation.’ We believe carefully designed Assistive Augmentation can empower people constrained by impairments, to live more independently and even extend one’s perceptual and cognitive capabilities beyond the ordinary.

However, creating such Assistive Augmentations pose a threefold challenge as they require 1) exploring ways to seamlessly integrate into users body or behaviour, 2) deeper understanding of the user so as to provide the right level of support while keeping the user in control 3) holistic design approach to create meaningful applications. Inspired by insights from psychology, human centred machine learning, and design thinking, we have an unprecedented opportunity to design a new generation of Assistive Augmentations. To highlight this, we will present several proof-of-concept Assistive Augmentations such as ‘AiSee’, that allows blind users to access information simply by pointing at objects and asking questions; ‘Prospero’ a memory training assistant that is able to detect when a user can learn more efficiently; ‘MuSS-Bits’, that allows deaf users to feel the music.

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