It has been quiet around Talking-Points for a while, but now we are back!
Many of the former Talking-Points members have graduated, so a nearly completely new team has formed for the winter semester 2009. With more than 10 core team members the 2009 will be substantially bigger than 2009 and we are planning to move into several very interesting directions. There will be 4 different sub teams focusing on research, business, implementation and design of the Talking-Points idea.
The research team consists of Professor Mark W. Newman, Ph.D. student Pablo Quinones and HCI Master students Tammy Greene and Taeho Ko. They will conduct some basic research about visual impairment and its consequences for orientation and navigation.
The business development team is made up of Master students Andres Montejo and Dan Marano and will develop ideas on what it would take to turn Talking-Points into a viable business.
There is also a technical development team which main objective will be to implement a new, improved version of the Talking-Points prototype. It is made up off returning Talking-Points members Jakob Hilden (HCI Master student), Donggun “Travis” Yoo and Peter Kretschman (both CS undergrads). They are joined by UM HCI Master student Sanghyuk Koh and Sheila Miguez who is remotely working on the project from Chicago.
Finally there is also a design team including HCI Master students Rayoung Yang, Ashutosh Kaushik and Eunice Yoo Jin Shin. They are accompanied by Talking-Points veteran Jim Knox and their objective is to further develop the concrete Talking-Points design and to be and interface between the research and business team on the on side and the implementation team on the other side.
The whole team is looking forward to a very productive winter semester 2009!
Finally we want to thank Talking-Points alumnis Jason Stewart, Michelle Escobar, Sara Baumann, Kumud Bihani and Josh Rychlinski for their great work in 2008. Without their contributions we would not be where we are now.
If you have any questions about the project, feel free to contact us at talkingpoints@umich.edu