Yannick Assogba

yannick @ media . mit . edu

Bio

Yannick Assogba is a graduate student in the Sociable Media Group interested in creating sociably enabling interactive systems that provide new opportunities for people to communicate with each other. Before coming to the Sociable Media Group he was a researcher at OBX Labs at Concordia University where he worked on integrating human performance with dynamic typography. Yannick received his BSc in Computer Science with a minor in Digital Image/Sound and the Fine Arts from Concordia University. Some of his previous work can be seen here.

Resume in HTML format.

Projects

Share is a new kind of IDE (integrated development environment) that explores some ideas around enabling particular forms of co-operation within a community of practice, as well as issues around individual and social creativity. Practically speaking it is a development environment which automatically shares ones code with other members of the community but tracks how it is used in order to provide automatic attribution, and enable discovery of new resources and individuals in the networks surrounding code artefacts.

Metropath(ologies) is an art installation about living in a world overflowing with information and non-stop communication. The sounds and visual imagery incorporate live and recorded data ranging from personal updates and private information, to global news reports. Done in collaboration with the other member of the sociable media group, I was responsible for the audio of the installation , which include live and pre-rendered sound. As well as the sensing infrastructure (computer vision and motion sensors) used to incorporate visitors into the installations imagery.

Mycrocosm is a web service that appropriates the visual language of statistics to allow users to share small chunks of personal information or track a wide variety of the minutiae of their daily lives to build up a rich online picture of the tiny things they find meaningful. It is an exploration of the trend in microblogging and the audience this form of publishing enables.

Selected Coursework

How To Make (Almost) Anything. A class in rapid-prototyping, fabrication and electronics with Neil Gershenfeld.

New Paradigms in HCI. Human Computer Interaction's past, present and future, taught by Pattie Maes and Hiroshi Ishii. In this seminar class we were asked to come up with speculative proposals for new interaction scenarios, my proposals included, gaze and attention based interaction, a look at some possibilities to apply AI and machine learning to graphic design for the web and a persuasive interface to 'encourage' keeping in touch with friends.

Designing Sociable Media. Taught by my advisor Judith Donath, this class focused on weekly design exercises on interfaces for mediated communication.

Signals, Truth and Design. Also taught by Judith Donath, a theory focused class on issues around identity and communication in mediated spaces.