Three students' project "BuddyBearings" has been accepted for the Student Research Competition at the CHI 2010 conference.
BuddyBearings, created by first-year master's students Dhawal Mujumdar, George Hayes, and Thomas Schluchter, originated as a student project in the I School's Tangible User Interfaces course in Fall 2009.
BuddyBearings is a mobile application to facilitate the meeting of people in unmarked spaces. It uses GPS, a digital compass and directional sound feedback to lead participants to a midpoint between them that is established as they walk. "Think of it as an audio-augmented treasure hunt," say the students. In the submitted paper, they report on the concept, aspects of the work-in-progress, implementation and future steps."
CHI (ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) is the premier international conference for the field of human-computer interaction. The Student Research Competition (SRC) is a forum for students to share their research results, exchange ideas, and improve their communication skills while competing for prizes at CHI 2010. The Student Research Competition is a juried track; a jury of experts that will evaluate the students' work based on its overall quality, originality, and relevance to the CHI community.
BuddyBearings is one of only ten graduate-level projects competing for Student Research Competition prizes.
In addition to the submitted paper, the team will present a poster of their research at the 2010 CHI conference, April 10–15 in Atlanta, Georgia.
