Welcome

Welcome to the Wellesley College Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory.

Here at the HCI Lab we are dedicated to innovation and investigation of next-generation technology. Over the past two decades, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research has generated a broad range of interaction styles that move beyond the desktop into new physical and social contexts. Key areas of innovation in this respect are tangible, tabletop, and embodied user interfaces. These interaction styles share important commonality: leveraging users' existing knowledge and skills of interaction with the real non-digital world usch as naive physics, spatial, social and motor skills. Such interfaces offer a more natural, intuitive, and accessible form of interaction that reduces the mental effort required to learn and operate a computational system and supports high-level cognition.

Currently we are investigating how next-generation interaction techniques can benefit and enhance collaborative brainstorming and scientific discovery in areas where vast amount of abstract information must be accessed and manipulated.