Principles of Interfaces
I'm deeply interested in the underlying principles of interface design. I see a lot of opportunity to test:
- how do people build concepts of their tools? (in other words, let's run a test to understand whether a multifunction device like a phone always is distracting. Do all phones carry that significance? Just the phone you've experienced being distracting? How far from the form factor of a phone can we get before our mental relation breaks and we don't self-interrupt or remind ourselves we could be checking our email?)
- how do people want to engage with technology? (how many agents like LLMs, who we humanize, do we want in our lives? When is a system complex enough to warrant a model of agency/intelligence vs a static tool?)
- there have been many misrepresentations about the power of subtle influences on our experience in the psychological literature. I'm also interested in studying the impact of these pervasive cultural ideas; and fixing them. If you're interested in the replication crisis, let me know.
- how do the systems we use to measure the impact of interfaces affect users themselves? A chicken and egg problem. I'm interested in building devices that help us record more invasively while feeling less invasive (i.e. tell when someone is talking and record only then).
- there are now eye-contact filters; it would be great to build a more immersive window to talk to someone face-to-face and experiment with eye contact at close range.
- nothing is more interesting than trying technology out for ourselves, and I love the spirit of self-experimentation. If there are devices you're willing to try in your life, that is something we could explore.