This is the professional site of Karen Tanenbaum, a PhD candidate at the School for Interactive Arts & Technology (SIAT) at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.My research interests include artificial intelligence, ubiquitous computing, tangible computing, interaction design, design philosophy and design fictions.

My dissertation research is on adaptivity in ubiquitous and tangible systems. I am currently working on data analysis and the writing of my dissertation. I plan to defend in early 2012, and have just started an internship at the Interaction & Experience Research Group at Intel Labs in Hillsboro, OR.

Last term I worked as Sessional Faculty at Emily Carr University of Art & Design in Fall 2011, teaching the DESN 315: 4D/Interaction Design Core Studio course.

My dissertation work is grounded in the Reading Glove project, produced in collaboration with fellow PhD student Josh Tanenbaum. The Reading Glove is an adaptive, tangible storytelling system consisting of a custom-built wearable RFID reader glove used to interact with a set of tagged objects and a tabletop display.  Our design and research process is being documented on our blog.My supervisory committee consists of Professor Marek Hatala, Professor Ron Wakkary, and Professor Alissa Antle.  My dissertation is a collective case study of the design of 3 different adaptive, tangible/ubiquitous systems, including The Reading Glove, the Kurio project, and the socio-ec(h)o project.

My past research projects include:

• Kurio, an adaptive, tangible museum guide system for families
• Everyday Design, an ethnographic study of non-professional domestic design and the notion of sustainable interaction design
• EventTable, a tangible tabletop system

Josh and I also collaborate on a number of other projects, including filmmaking and entering student design contests.For a full list of my publications and my cv, please see this page.You can contact me at karen.tanenbaum (at) gmail (dot) com