NYU Guest Lecture on Directing Design Teams for Accessible Neurotech and Augmented Reality
Today I had the opportunity to provide a guest lecture on my background, work experience and design wisdom to students in Professor Reginé Gilbert’s “Human Spatial Computing” class at New York University, where I was once a student in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). In Reginé’s own words:
“This course will teach how spatial computing facilitates our relationships with people, places, and digital 3D objects and environments. An inclusive future for Spatial Computing depends on our willingness to engage with the impact of these technologies on the human brain, global culture, and our bodies. Students will engage with hands-on learning with augmented reality and virtual reality concerning ethics/privacy, storytelling, policy/regulation, the body, the mind, universal design, and other topics.”
Reginé and I first met in person in 2019 at the first XR Accesss Symposium in New York City, where we both participated in a workshop focused around making spatial computing platforms accessible. At the time I was representing Magic Leap, and also ran some demo sessions of the device for those in attendance. There was a great energy present there.
Fast forward to today, I talked briefly on other topics, then moved onto showing work examples, including recent Augmented Reality + Brain Computer Interface user interface efforts from the Design Team at Cognixion, where I served as Design Director, Interactive Experiences. Building, managing and guiding this team to solve communication challenges for persons with ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and cerebral palsy was one of the most rewarding experiences in my career thus far.
