And, in most cases, the result is not
satisfactory. So, fluency in English is
the skill that we miss most, especially
when approaching a CHI deadline.
What is the one thing you see as most
important about what you do there?
Attempting many things and
experiencing many failures. One
student tried six different ideas before
an idea finally resulted in a paper. Too
often we feel that we should be more
efficient; however, we also believe that
a university laboratory should be an
environment that can embrace failure
for creative challenges. Investing
time to elaborate on crude ideas and
sharing the experience of failure are
the most privileged things we do.
(This is what our advisor tells us, and
we all want to graduate early.)
http://hcil.kaist.ac.kr
known to have a relatively high power-distance index, but we tend to forget
this around a meal.
What is a unique feature of your lab?
We like making things, software
or hardware. We sometimes make
things just because we feel like making
them—without a clear purpose. Some
of these things eventually lead to a
paper, but more often they fail to find
a good use and become a mere display
in the lab. This is why we like venues
such as the UIST Student Competition
and the SIGGRAPH Emerging Tech
exhibition. This is in fact a tradition
of our lab that we cherish. During
interviews with a new student, the first
thing that our adviser asks is, “Do you
like to make things?”
What is one feature of your lab you
could not do without?
A feature that makes us stand out
from other CS labs is a workshop for
prototyping. The workshop is small
but has everything needed for making
and trimming prototypes: a 3D printer,
a laser cutter, a CNC machine, an
electronics workbench, and many
other small tools. The workshop has
accumulated many leftovers from
numerous past prototyping activities,
including various electronic parts and
mechanical debris in various shapes,
and has been optimized for our specific
prototyping needs.
What is one feature of your lab that you
want and do not have?
As most any university lab would
answer, we would love to have more
space for our prototyping activities
and experiments. A more specific
wish, as a lab in Korea, would be the
ability to freely express our thoughts
in English. Most of us have difficulty
thinking in English, so we often write
the outline of our papers in Korean
and then translate it into English.
→ Transture: a touch gesture on a small
screen continued into the air.
→ Trampoline: a double-sided,
elastic-surface input device
for relievo modeling.
DOI: 10.1145/2732252 COP YRIGH T HELD B Y AU THORS
INTERACTIONS.ACM.ORG 16 INTERACTIONS MARCH–APRIL2015
DAY IN
THE LAB