Kashyap Todi

Research

Thesis

Projects

Publication

Me

I am currently a PhD Student at EDM (Expertise Centre for Digital Media), Hasselt University. I am working on Urban Interfaces and the use of HCI to enhance and enrich interactions with urban infrastructure. Visit my personal web page at www.kashyaptodi.com.




I worked as a research assistant at i10, on two different projects.

• I am in charge of maintaining, and regularly inspecting, the hardware and software of the Aachener Frieden exhibit at the Town Hall. I am currently also responsible for the implementation of the next iteration of the exhibit.
• I am working with Chat on further elaboration of Sniper Pointing—a mid-air input technique, which was conceived during the course of my Master's Thesis. We are interested in exploiting the volume above the surface (e.g. keyboard) to provide users with various input interaction techniques.

Supervisor: Chat Wacharamanotham
Topic: Sniper Pointing: Above the Surface Pointing with Multiple Resolutions



I investigated the use of mid-air interactions to perform free-hand cursor manipulation. My thesis dealt with the design and evaluation of an interaction technique which allows users to acquire on-screen targets using the volume available above the keyboard, in a standard desktop environment. The interaction involves the use of multiple pointing granularities, allowing for both, fast as well as accurate cursor manipulation, while overcoming typical problems such as homing between devices, and the "fat-finger problem".
My full thesis is available here.

Recent and on-going projects

	Sniper Pointing (2012–'13) A novel mid-air interaction technique, which uses volume above the keyboard to provide pointing with multiple precision levels. We are interested in exploring further usage of this 3D volume, which opens up the possibility for a wider range of input interactions, including free-hand pointing and gestural interactions.
	Aachener Frieden Exhibit The Aachener Frieden is an interactive exhibit at the city hall of Aachen. It lets users explore the historical background of the Peace of Aachen in a playful tangible way. (read more)
	User-Friendly Toasters (2012) Nothing worse than beginning the morning with a burnt slice of toast. To avoid this, I recently modified my toaster dial and added a custom-made overlay to make it a bit more intuitive :-)
	Gotcha! (2011–'12) A location-based augmented reality game, developed on the Android platform. This application was developed as a part of the User-Oriented System Design and Personalized Information Services Lab at Fraunhofer FIT, Sankt Augustin, and involved user-centric design, implementation and evaluation of a modern game based on the popular Tamagotchi toys.
	Eco-mmunity (2011) A prototype of a Facebook application, developed to make users aware of energy consumptions in their household. This mini-project, performed as a part of the Designing Interactive Systems II course, aimed at using the concepts of serious gaming and competition, in order to promote awareness among users and help in reducing the amount of energy consumed on a daily-basis.
	Touch 'n' Go Multitouch Game Controller (2011) A multitouch game controller designed and built for the lecture Designing Interactive Systems I. It uses Frustrated Total Internal Reflection to detect touches on a non-planar surface, through the emission of infrared light and its detection using an infrared camera. The device, built from simple electronics and laser-cut parts, allows people to play games which require steering and two button commands—accelerate and break. Check the youtube video to see how finger touches are detected!
	Facebook Profiler (2011) A Facebook application was developed in order to study social aspects and the behavior of users on social networks, as a part of the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Experience Lab at Fraunhofer FIT, Sankt Augustin.

2014

• Chat Wacharamanotham, Kashyap Todi, Marty Pye and Jan Borchers. Understanding Finger Input Above Desktop Devices.  In CHI '14: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pages 1083–1092,New York, NY, USA, April 2014.
  

2013

• Kashyap Todi. Sniper Pointing: Above the Surface Pointing with Multiple Resolutions. Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, February 2013.
  

2012

• Mateusz Dolata, Ibrahim Cakir, Kashyap Todi, and Nils Jeners. From heavyweight framework to lightweight patchwork. In Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work Companion (CSCW '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 67-70.

My updated information is available on my personal website.
You can see my detailed Curriculum vitae (CV) here.

Talk to me about:

• Designing user studies and usability testing.
• Statistical analyses (including using statistics softwares like JMP).
• Fitts' Law—I have used it extensively during (and after) my Master's thesis!
• Vicon Motion Tracking System—I have organised the set-up of the system at our chair, and maybe could help you with using it, or with app development which integrates data from the Vicon.
• Latex—because it makes writing so much better :)
• Graphic and Video Editing—Things like Illustrator, Final Cut, and Photoshop.
• Music—It's one of the things (apart from HCI) that I'm most passionate about. Apart from listening to various genres of music (Classic Rock, Grunge, Trance, Drum n Bass, among others), I also enjoy mixing electronic music as a hobbyist DJ (see my page), and I play the guitar now and then.