Research Highlights

Merry Miser

A financial watchdog that watches out for you
Merry Miser

Merry Miser is a mobile application that helps its users make better decisions about spending. The application uses the context provided by a user's location and financial history to provide personalized interventions when the user is near an opportunity to spend. The interventions, which are motivated by prior research in positive psychology, persuasive technology, and shopping psychology, consist of informational displays about context-relevant spending history, subjective assessments of past purchases, personal budgets, and savings goals.

Bokode: The Better Barcode

Tiny labels packed with information
Comparison of Bokode to regular barcodes

The ubiquitous barcodes found on product packaging provide information to the scanner at the checkout counter, but that's about all they do. Now, researchers at the Media Lab have come up with a new kind of very tiny barcode that could provide a variety of useful information to shoppers as they scan the shelves—and could even lead to new devices for classroom presentations, business meetings, videogames or motion-capture systems.  more ›

SixthSense: A Wearable, Gestural Interface to Augment Our World

Turning any surface into a touch-screen display
SixthSense

SixthSense is a wearable, gestural interface that augments our physical world with digital information, and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.  more ›

Meet TOFU: A Squash and Stretch Robot

Soybeans not required
Tofu

TOFU is a project to explore new ways of robotic social expression by leveraging techniques that have been used in 2d animation for decades. Disney Animation Studios pioneered animation tools such as "squash and stretch" and "secondary motion" in the 50's. Such techniques have since been used widely by animators, but are not commonly used to design robots.  more ›

Chameleon Guitar

Can traditional values be embedded into a digital object?
Amit Zoran and the chameleon guitar

In this research we implement a special guitar that combines physical acoustic properties with virtual capabilities. A wooden resonator - a unique, replaceable piece of wood that gives the guitar a unique acoustic sound, will embody the acoustical values. The acoustic signal created by this wooden heart will be digitally processed in a virtual sound box in order to create flexible sound design.  more ›

Mycrocosm

Sharing everyday data
mycrocosm data

The rise in popularity of the Weblog, and the development of its many variants such as photoblogs, vlogs, moblogs, and tumblelogs, demonstrate that people are increasingly willing to share what they are doing, seeing, and thinking.  more ›

Quickies

Intelligent sticky notes
quickies

‘Quickies’ brings one of the most useful inventions of the twentieth century—the ubiquitous sticky note—into the digital age. Sticky (aka Post-it) notes help us manage our to-do lists and capture short reminders and information needed in the near future, but keeping track of them can be a task in and of itself.  more ›

GIRLS Involved in Real-Life Sharing

Reflecting on emotions by constructing pictorial narratives
G.I.R.L.S. Involved in Real-Life Sharing

Girls Involved in Real-Life Sharing (G.I.R.L.S.) allows users to reflect actively upon the emotions related to their situations through the construction of pictorial narratives. The system employs common-sense reasoning to infer affective content from the users' stories and support emotional reflection.  more ›