Top Academic and Industry Wants

During EdTech Innovation in Alberta, there was a special session on the wants and needs of industry and academia. We had representatives from Universities across Canada and many industrial companies such as Husky Energy (HSE.TO), Telus (TU), Desire 2 Learn and SMART (SMT).

Top 3 Academic Wants

1. Government Matched $$
2. Cooperative Industry-Academia People Exchanges (e.g. internships)
3. Free Hardware and Software

Top 3 Industry Wants

1. Teamwork and Communication skills
2. Real-world studies (compared against the next best alternative)
3. Return on Investment

Tim Workman from Husky Energy put it best when he gave us two quotes:

"Everybody calls to sell me something. Very few people call to solve my problems."

"An Expert is something who knows more and more about less and less until they know almost everything about nothing"

While I don't agree with the second, the first rings very true.

Dear Academia: We're breaking up.

Dear Academia,

This relationship is not working out so we are going to end it. It's not us, it's you. You have gamed the system making it so exclusive to academics that we no longer feel welcome at your conferences. Your highly tweaked review process has pushed you to ever more niche areas of novelty and customer outcome irrelevance. The result is clear: dismal academic to industry ratios (100:1 in some conferences).

It pains us to hear employees complain about a lack of relevance and return on investment on even the conference fee itself. While we are pleased to hear that the ivory tower of academia is alive and well, we lament that it has fallen so far away from real-world customer outcomes. 

We wish that you would let us talk about real customer outcomes but this doesn't meet the criteria for peer reviewed papers by novelty-seeking computer science graduate students. But here's the thing: customer outcomes don't change over time and are not novel. The iPhone did not change customer outcomes, it made what people wanted to do (phone, email, browsing, music) ubiquitous and simple. Customers don't measure us to related work, they use alternatives that are good enough. We are less concerned with statistical significance and more concerned about cost and value to the next best alternative. 

Clearly, we don't share the same values. We wish you all the best in your future relationships. 

Industry

ICT for Education Article

The results of an interview that I did with ICT for Education (a UK Education technology magazine) have now been published. See the article here.

The story behind the SMART Table

Heather Ellwood wrote a feature article about the invention and innovation process of the SMART Table in this month's EdCompass feature.

It's an interesting story that includes interviews with both the SMART Table development team and the reaction from a Calgary Board of Education Elementary classroom.

We've been thrilled with how quickly the SMART Table has gone from research prototype to shipping product.

Innovation at SMART Technologies

When I started my job search a few months ago, I was looking for a position that would allow me to learn about the process of innovation in a real world setting. In particular, I wanted to learn how to take novel ideas and bring them to product.

My PhD has focused mostly on invention: coming up with novel ideas and pushing the boundaries of what can be done with computers. While I had taken courses on innovation, starting a business, and marketing ideas I wanted a venue where I could apply these skills in practice.

After a long period of deliberation and negotiation with people from companies all around the world (including U.S.A., Holland, Japan, and Finland) I have decided to accept a position at Smart Technologies. I strongly believe that Smart Technologies will provide an excellent opportunity for me to learn how to transition novel ideas from conception to actual product. Check out this post by Executive Chairman David Martin on innovation.

In addition, I have decided to accept the Alberta Ingenuity Research and Development Associates award. As reflected in my previous post, we already have significant external validation about our future collaborations.

Dr. Gerald Morrison (External Research Manager at Smart) was instrumental in collaborating with me on the Alberta Ingenuity award and the job offer from Smart. I would like to express my deepest thanks to him for his support.

On that note, Gerald was interviewed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) today. When asked about the benefits of Smart's collaboration with our lab, Gerald mentioned the recent hire of Edward Tse. If they use this clip on national television, this will be a very public announcement of my new position!

AI Research Associate Approved!

Good news! I just got my Alberta Ingenuity Industrial Research Associate application approved with glowing results. Alberta Ingenuity uses the ProGrid evaluation system to rank candidates who apply for a particular scholarship. I learned that my scholarship was one of the top ranked in terms of benefits and initiative. Chart 1 is a 2D plot of my ranking (square) to all other applications of this scholarship. It is the highest in terms of benefit and tied for second in terms of initiative.
When I looked at the proposal profile I found that all four categories relating to the candidate (letters of reference, academic record, career track record, and candidate suitability) were given the maximum possible relative strength.
A quote from an Evaluator's comment on my application:

Edward has glowing letters of refrence commenting on the knowledge, skills, and ability relevant to this opportunity. He is an outstanding, award-winning researcher with numerous competitive awards and independent media response to presentations and achievements. He is quickly emerging as a star player in this field and is a strong match for this opportunity.

Now I need to decide if I will accept this grant or not...

Herr Doktor Tse

I'm happy to annouce that I've successfully defended my doctoral dissertation! The defense presentation and question rounds went surprisingly smoothly. After my defense friends from the Interactions Lab presented me with a little surprise.

I received a custom made hat with a scene depicting my PhD research on speech and gesture interaction over digital tabletop displays. Apparently this is a tradition done in many German Universities and started in our by some of our graduate students from Germany.

The theme of my hat is focused around speech and gesture interaction around a table. It has a tabletop display with two chairs (made of foam core) and a wooden mannequin attached connected to a series of strings. Pulling the strings on the tassle causes the mannequin's arms to move and also plays a sound.

Sound was achieved by using a Napolean Dyanmite gift card. The hat says a quote from the movie whenever the tassle is pulled "So like, nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills". Some matching text was added around the base of the hat that says "critics agree, you got flippin sweet PhD skillz!"

This was certainly a very pleasant surprise, thanks iLab!

Digital Tables as a Disruptive Technology

I've been reading The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen of Harvard Business School and I've been thinking about how the lessons of his book would apply to disruptive technologies such as interactive wall and table displays.

Essentially, this book argues that companies (such as the Hard Drive industry) are exceedingly good at listening to their customer base and sustaining innovations in their products to meet their client's needs. Disruptive technologies (e.g. smaller hard drives, solid state disks) are usually first developed and marketed by large corporations. However, these technologies usually do not meet the needs of existing clients (e.g. too small size, too expensive, too slow) thus these projects are shelved until the technology becomes more viable in the marketplace.

Microsoft Surface
On the flipside, startup companies focus on niche markets (e.g. laptops, mp3 players) and ignore the needs prized by current vendors. Often the rate of improvement of these technologies greatly exceeds the demand by their niche market. This happens until the technology improves to a point that it can compete with the sustaining technologies of the large corporate vendors (e.g. 3.5" disk drives).

Hewlett Packard
At this time we see a huge shift in the industry, people start migrating towards the disruptive technologies and the large corporations are continually catching up to the latest advancements of the startup companies. This continues to happen in many areas such as the Internet, PCs, GUIs, industrial hauling, cell phones, portable audio, PDAs, laptops and much more.

Panasonic
Digital tables are a disruptive technology, right now they are not as efficient as using a keyboard and a mouse. Speech and gesture recognition have years of improvement ahead of them before they become viable for everyday use. However, the rate of improvement of interactive surface technology is significantly faster than the rate of improvement of desktop interaction technologies.

Hitachi
Eventually the performance of interactive (small and large) surfaces will rise to challenge the efficiency of desktop computers. This will not happen overnight, it could be decades before we see such a transition. Nonetheless it will happen. And when it does I wonder if the existing companies will rise to deliver these next generation technologies, or if it will be startup companies that will once again lead the way in technology innovation.

Smart Technologies
As I enter my second and third round of job applications, I have applied to many large corporations that are adamant about making sure they are on top of the large display interaction trends. Large corporations such as Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Panasonic, Hitachi, Smart Technologies, Philips, Mitsubishi, Accenture, and Sony have already created demonstration systems of interactive large displays.

Philips
Several startup companies have also been created to market large display interactions to niche audiences. These companies include Perceptive Pixel, Lemur Jazz Mutant, and Fingerworks which was recently acquired by Apple for the development of the iPhone which was later replicated by Nokia).

Mitsubishi
The billion dollar question is: will it be the startup companies or the large corporations that deliver these next generation interactive touchscreen technologies. I'm really not sure, but I intend to find out by apply to each of these companies.



Accenture









Sony









Perceptive Pixel








Jazz Mutant









Fingerworks

The Job Hunt Begins

Great news! I'm almost finished my PhD and I am now getting ready to apply for jobs for the fall. I'm planning on having three waves of job applications, and I just completed my first wave yesterday.

I spent the most of the day writing these emails, editing them, getting friends and family to read them and editing them some more. Basically, I had six Gmail tabs open and was constantly moving back and forth. My first wave is composed of people that I know personally and that I have met numerous times at various industry, academic and general conferences and conventions.

I sent out all six emails at exactly 10:48pm EST. That way everyone on my first wave has an equal opportunity. I jokingly say to friends that I'm an "equal opportunity interviewee."

Most of my experiences thus far have been academically focused around inventing new interaction techniques and publishing papers. During the next steps of my job search I would very much like to learn about the innovation side of this equation. In particular, what does it take to make novel technologies accessible to a general audience?

Thus, when searching for companies I am looking for companies that will advocate for the research that I am doing internally within the organization. I am also looking for my supervisor to be transparent about the needs and direction of the company so that I can better target my research. I am also interested in staying connected with the external communication (academic and industry) so that I can see how my work compares to other leading firms in the field.

My goal is not to work as a member of a team in a industry setting, where I'm interested in learning about a company's values so that I better target my own research and development.

Why Hollywood should hire Interactions experts

Having watched a number of movies lately, I've found the digital display interactions more and more irritating to watch. I am becoming increasingly concerned that the interactions portrayed in movies shape our expectations for how we expect to interact with computers in the future.

Seriously, I've spoken with many researchers who have complained that their work is constantly being compared to movies such as Minority Report, or The Island. This is a good thing as it means that people are becoming more aware of novel interactions for large displays, but it can also makes it difficult to convince others that the interactions shown in movies are not necessarily the best there is. For example, I've found that Minority Report has made it difficult to convince others about the benefits of direct touch interaction, where you touch directly on a large display instead of working at a distance.

Photo from Yahoo! Movies
Another recent example that I found a bit strange was Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. In this movie Dr. Reed Richards (a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic) uses a portable handheld computer (looks like an Archos 604) to control a large satellite located on the roof of his home. Dr. Reed comments on how wonderful the device is as he types with his two stretchy thumbs on the display. Apparently he is able to type incredibly quickly by stretching his thumbs to all parts of the display (e.g. his left thumb moves to the right side of the screen).

This doesn't seem effective for a number of reasons, I'll briefly describe two: first, the QWERTY layout of most onscreen keyboards will not be faster with longer thumbs. In fact, the opposite will likely be the case since speed is achieved by switching between using your left and right thumbs. This fast switching is not necessary if your thumb can reach the entire screen. Second, anyone with big thumbs can attest that this typically results in less accurate typing. Your thumb covers more area and thus it is hard to accurately point to a particular key. Onscreen keyboards have other issues such occlusion and lack of haptic feedback.

Now, this might seem a bit harsh for such a brief scene but I emphasize that many other movies share the same problem. Which brings me to my point, Hollywood movies would benefit from having an interactions expert on staff to help plan out and design suitable interactions for a movie.

Collaborations between interactions researchers and Hollywood have been successful in movies such as Minority Report when Spielberg and his team visited the the MIT Media Lab to learn about current projects. They took some of these interactions and showed what they would look like in a futuristic setting. The result was an interaction that wowed audiences around the world and set a precedent for future interactions expectations. People were talking about the interactions in this movie long after it had left theaters, it had a lasting impact on people.

I hope that Hollywood will continue to collaborate with interactions researchers in the future, there's a lot of interesting stuff happening in our field that we'd love to see on the big screen.