Jarrod Knibbe

Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor), HCI
The University of Queensland

I am a researcher in Interaction Design. I enjoy building new interactive devices and understanding the experience of using those devices. Currently, I have a special interests in Haptics for Extended Reality and Smart Clothing for Muscle Control. 

As a researcher, I describe myself as a future technologist and pursue technology-first human-computer interaction - revealing and exploring novel tech that may later provide solutions to human-centered problems. My research has inspired new features in smartphones from Google and Samsung, and has been featured in various news outlets (including Wired, the Economist, Hackaday, Fast Company, and the Guardian). I am always happy to chat about new and emerging technologies and how they may present opportunities. 

As a collaborator, I work with companies and organisations to explore ways for digital transformation to solve their challenges. I facilitate design thinking workshops to help identify new opportunities, build new partnerships, and reveal next steps. I have run workshops for numerous multinationals and government organisations, leading to substantial new work packages and meaningful change. If this sounds of interest, please get in touch. 

Research Focus

Haptics for VR

One of the great challenges of virtual reality is that you can't actually touch stuff - you can't feel it's texture, weight, heat, etc. There are two broad camps trying to address this: the Accuracy camp and the Naturalness camp.

The accuracy camp wants you to experience material properties as accurately as possible, so they build specialist controllers. The naturalness camp wants you to be unencumbered by controllers, so they use illusions. 

I have no allegiance to either camp and work across them both. I am currently building controllers to let you grasp objects of complex shapes and sizes, and building illusions that play with your sense of where you are in the room so you can use physical props in your VR experiences. 

Smart Clothing

We are increasingly able to integrate an amazing range of sensors and actuators into fabric, creating Smart Clothing. However, we are not seeing these clothes in stores or in our wardrobes. I believe this is for two key reasons: (1) no killer app - we are not yet doing anything really convincing with these clothes, and (2) tailoring is hard - we are not yet able to make smart clothing work regardless of your body shape or size. Once we have solved problem (2), I believe solutions to problem (1) will follow.  

If you want to watch me and Paul Strohmeier talk about some of our work, check out this video.  

Publications

The most up-to-date place to see my publications is on my Google Scholar. If you are looking for a specific paper and can't find a free version, send me a message and I'll send it to you. 

Here are 5 of my favourite papers that I've written:

Current PhD Students (Supervised with various brilliant colleagues)

Ulan Kelesbekov
VR, Haptics, Materials

Marvin Bai
VR, Collaboration, Meetings

Sara Khorasani
VR, Learning Analytics

Ying Ma
Social Analytics

Yan Zhang
Human-Robot Interaction

Monica Lim
Music, Novel Instruments, Collaboration

Rakesh Patibanda
(Honorary Member)
 EMS, Motor Learning

Former PhD Students

Shreya Ghosh
Computer Vision, Gaze, AI

Aldrich Clarence
VR, Haptics, Illusions.

Future PhD Students

I am always looking for PhD candidates. If you have a background in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics, or Mechanical Engineering please get in touch. I like students who want to get stuck in and get hands-on. If you do a PhD with me, you will likely use/develop skills in digital fabrication, electronics, Unity, and mixed methods evaluation. I am emphasising students currently that want to build haptic devices, study perception using psychophysics, and develop cool XR demos. (I don't like gloves for interaction!)

We are a large group of academics in HCI at the University of Queensland, with diverse interests spanning a broad spectrum of human-centered design and engineering. We have great lab facilities and equipment for you to use and exploit. Queensland is a great place to work and live - great weather, good food, and an amazing beach is never far away. If you are interested in chatting further, please get in touch. 

Research Project Students

I am interested in supervising research project students working on similar ideas to the prospective PhD students above. So, expect to build physical prototypes, link them to interesting interactive experiences, and evaluate them in some way. I have a guide, that gives more information on what doing a project with me is like and what I'd expect you to do - you can find it here. 

If you'd like to do a project with me, email me. 

Get in Touch

Email: j.knibbe@uq.edu.au