Hello there! My name is Rishi. I’m currently a third-year PhD student in the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. I am advised by Ellen Do, and work at the ACME Lab. Before joining ATLAS, I completed an undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering, and a graduate degree in Interaction Design (where I was a member of the IMXD Lab), both from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.
Research
For a more details, here’s a list of publications, and a link to my CV.
My (high-level) goal is to support people as they make meaning and memories while collaborating across distance, time, and devices. Space, and spatial interaction, is a crucial aspect of how meaning and memories are made in everyday life. Through my research, I explore how we can maximize the potential of everyday devices like mobile phones and tablets for spatial computing, and study how this changes the way people work together in hybrid environments.
For example, in the DualStream project (also here), we showcase how mobile phones can be used to support practical forms of spatial remote communication in a range of contexts. More recently, we have been exploring how these concepts can apply to asynchronous interactions, through Spatial Mobile Memories.
During my PhD, I’ve also been fortunate to work with:
- The Intentional Meetings team at Microsoft Research Cambridge, on supporting intentionality across meetings using Generative AI (Summer 2024).
- Ericsson Research (CA, USA), on developing systems for spatial remote communication that adapt to changing network conditions (Summer 2023).
Design
Some other things I’ve worked on over the years:
- A mobile AR application to play games with friends across distances.
- A real-time VR music visualization experience for people playing the piano.
- Experiments with paper prototyping for AR applications.
- A podcast about applying to graduate design programs in India.
- Some speculative design (and a short story) about the future of conversational AI.
- A large-scale expressive typewriter installation.
- A series of comic strips, and a photobook about the undergraduate experience at IIT Bombay.
Beyond
Music
I’ve been sporadically writing songs and composing music for a few years now. Some of my work can be found on my Soundcloud Page.
In another life, I was part of a semi-professional blues rock band, with five friends of mine. We were called Bluemoss.