Karl D.D. Willis

Kia ora. I'm a Ph.D. candidate in Computational Design at Carnegie Mellon University and a lab associate at Disney Research. This site documents the projects I have worked on at the cross-section of design, technology, art and science. My interests lie in exploring new interfaces for digital fabrication, spatial augmented reality, and drawing & creativity.

The SideBySide project that I worked on at Disney Research won ‘Best Paper’ and ‘Best Demo’ at the UIST 2011 conference! Given the amazing quality of work at the conference this year it was a quite an achievement to take out both awards. Special thanks to my co-authors Ivan, Scott, and Mo.

SideBySide has also been covered widely in the press, including articles by Wired, New Scientist, Engadget, Gizmodo, Creative Applications, CNET, and Discovery.

Members of the Interaction Group at Disney Research Pittsburgh are featured in the current issue of London-based Monocle Magazine.

The article focuses on the ‘second life’, or renaissance, of Pittsburgh. It shows a sneak-peek at the upcoming SideBySide handheld projector prototype we will present at the UIST ’11 conference.

The MotionBeam project has been very well received with numerous press articles:

“…the most unique gaming system we’ve ever seen” – PC World

“No, they’re not kidding” – Bruce Sterling, Wired

“Disney appears to be thinking ahead for western smartphones and is already developing game applications for [projector] phone[s]” – New Scientist

The recent work I have been doing on the Interactive Fabrication project with Cheng Xu and Kuan-Ju Wu has been highlighted with an interview on the BBC World Service. The segment featured on the ‘Click‘ show on March 29, 2011 and is also available online as a podcast. A gallery of images from the project was also featured on the BBC News Website.