Speaker: Tiffany Tseng (Apple)
Title: Design Tools for Creative Empowerment
The seminar will be available for in-person and Zoom participation.
Design tools can play a transformative role in supporting creators by enabling new forms of expression. My research integrates new technologies (particularly technologies traditionally requiring deep technical expertise to use) into creative design tools, with the goal of empowering users with a broad range of interests and skill levels to engage in designing with computing.
In this talk, I will share two threads of work: 1) supporting beginners building creative applications powered by machine learning, and 2) enabling new forms of design documentation for young people to share their design process. These ideas manifest in three different research projects: Co-ML, a collaborative ML modeling tablet app for building machine learning models; PlushPal, a tool for supporting storytelling with interactive toys using gesture recognition; and Spin, an open-hardware platform for capturing playful animated documentation of physical design projects. I will share how these tools were used by young people in makerspaces, museums, and schools to support computing education and creative expression.
I will then end with a discussion of how these two threads might combine to enable new generative AI-powered design tools sensitive to the needs and workflows of creatives, from ideation to iteration and refinement. Through these tools, my work contributes new design principles for enabling learners to realize their creative potential by learning to use and create with new technologies.
Tiffany Tseng is a senior research scientist at Apple in the Human Centered Machine Learning group. Her research contributes design tools that empower young people to realize their creative potential through learning to create with new technologies – including collaborative ML modeling tools, 3D CAD software, and online code editors. She has partnered with a range of learning institutions, including the Exploratorium, New York Hall of Science, and Chicago Public Library to develop new creative computing tools. Prior to Apple, she was a Project Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Engineering and a lead UX Designer at Autodesk and Design Engineer at Glitch, developing free design software like Tinkercad, a popular 3D design tool with millions of users.
Her work has been recognized with Best Paper and Honorable Mention Awards from ACM Interaction Design and Children and a Disney Research Learning Challenge Innovation Award. She received her PhD from the MIT Media Lab in 2016, sponsored by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and holds an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.