What I liked most in CHI2017 was participating the demonstrations and ask questions to learn underlying thoughts of presenters that are not in the papers. For instance, I talked with BCI demonstrators and had an interesting discussion about if robots can extend human body. Although there is more mystery than knowledge about the human brain, currently it can control external objects through BCI. The demonstrated example was controlling a small robot by “thinking” of moving an arm without moving it. It showed a possibility to me that humans may change the “thinking of an arm” to “thinking of a robot” by training, and can consequently control the robot without thinking of the arm anymore.

The discussion continued to the next question: can we extend our sensory with artificial sensors. In HCI, there are many pieces of research to give haptic feedback with electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) to enhance VR experience, staying in the boundary of existing human sensory. However, the research may be able to extend to sensations that humans do not have yet. It means that humans may not need any physical interfaces by the development of human sensory stimuli in a far future.

My research topic is shape-changing interfaces – physical interfaces that change shape to adapt functionality and provide physical affordance – and this discussion made me think of meanings and future directions of my research. I truly enjoyed the open discussions at CHI. I appreciate ACM-W giving me the opportunity to participate in it.