Jarrod Knibbe

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Introduction

Jarrod is a PhD student researching novel interaction techniques and devices to support, facilitate and encourage self-reflection within expert physical skills. Reflection is an important part of developing and refining expertise, but the temporal and physical demands of active skills can hinder this process. By examining different fields and scenarios, such as archaeology, extreme sports and the maker community, Jarrod's work has explored tools and techniques for assisting both reflection-in-action (streamlining reflection within the ongoing task) and reflection-on-action (looking back at task performance). As one example of his work, Jarrod observed archaeologists across a number of different excavations. Archaeological work is heavily time pressured as a result of budgetary constraints, weather-induced delays and existing workplace practises. These practises have led to a separation of the physical act of excavation from the later documenting and reporting. This separation requires the archaeologists to construct their reports based on memory and reflection, with additional support from captured material ('finds', photos, videos, etc.) The material is typically captured by a separate team, however, and thus can easily miss the information most key to the archaeologists. Based on these observations, Jarrod designed a prototype lightweight, portable, real-time 3D scanner. By giving these scanners to the excavators, they were able to quickly capture personal views on their surroundings as they excavated. This meant that, when reporting later, the archaeologists had a clear, detailed personal record of the information that was important to them. In this way, they could reflect in detail on both their actions and settings, facilitating clearer, more accurate reports. Alongside his PhD work, Jarrod has been heavily involved in a number of other research projects within the lab. These include the research and development of multi-modal ambient displays and collaborative musical instruments based on bubbles. As ephemeral objects, bubbles offer unique interaction possibilities - they can be manipulated, shaped, split, directed, and popped, to name but a few. Jarrod's research interests and publications cover a wider area, include: natural user interfaces, smart spaces, mobile and wearable devices, ethnography, observation-based design, embodied interaction, 3D interaction and interfaces, exploiting gesture, ambient and transient displays.