CoLab Seminar

Wednesday, May 29, 2002 at 2pm in K9509

Title
Social and Informational User Interface Constructs in Avatar based Virtual Environments

Abstract
Steve DiPaola will discuss his years of work in alternative user interface design and 3D virtual world systems. He will demonstrate (as time and resources permit) two working systems he has co-authored: OnLive Traveler - a voice based emotive avatar system design for social tele-presence and Muse - a next generation, broadband platform that integrates multiple technologies such as HTML, rich media, 3D graphics, and multi-user community into a unified, synergistic environment. Steve will discuss the original design goals of creating these systems, and how those goals succeeded and failed over the years. He will mainly concentrate on the user interface design issues and how these can be applied to distanced collaboration. He will also demonstrate his new research in synthetic 3D facial creation and communication realized as an n-dimensional spatial domain system.

Biography
In August, Steve DiPaola left Stanford University to join the Technical University of British Columbia (TechBC, now part of SFU) as Assoc. Professor. He is also the co-founder and CTO of the San Francisco, 3D facial communication company Apeerance Technologies. He has been involved in alternative user interface and animation design since 1984, when at the NYIT Computer Graphics Lab, he conducted pioneering work in 3D character and facial animation, producing papers as well as commercial and experimental animations. As Director of Development at Communities.com's OnLive Group, Steve led programmers, designers and musicians in developing 3D voice-based avatar software used by MTV, ABC and Universal Studios. As Creative Director, Steve co-founded and ran Saatchi and Saatchi's innovation arm in San Francisco and worked at the Advanced Technology Group of Electronic Arts. Before joining Stanford, he was the VP of Creative Development at the next generation, broadband browser company, Muse. Steve is an invited lecturer at such conferences as Internet World, Siggraph, SigCHI, and The Institute for the Future. See www.dipaola.org for additional information.