My research, like my teaching, has been focused on physical interaction. I am interested in helping people find effective ways to use electronic devices in their lives, and in reducing the negative impact of the production and use of those devices. This has taken me in a number of directions.
Research in physical interaction means building devices and systems and having people use them. To this end, I’ve collaborated on various projects, and been active as an advocate for exhibitions in this area.
In 2002 and 2003, I worked with David Bianciardi and Eric Singer on an interactive musical event for Eos Orchestra. For that project I designed a set of networked banquet table centerpieces.
In 2003 and 2004, I took several ITP students to present their projects to the Ubicomp 2003 and 2004, the Fifth and Sixth International Conferences on Ubiquitous Computing, conferences.
In 2005, I joined with a team led by Chris Bregler to develop Squidball, a large-scale motion capture system for large group games. The project was presented at the ACM INETETAIN conference in 2005.
In 2007, I co-organized the Interactivity exhibition at the ACM Computer/Human Interaction 2007 Conference (CHI), along with Lars-Erik Holmquist.
In multiple years from 2007-2017, I organized ITP student exhibitions at Maker Faire New York.
In 2015, I organized the TEI student design challenge for the Ninth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI).
2005 Bregler, C., Castiglia, C., DeVincezo, J., DuBois, R.L., Feeley, K., Igoe, T., Meyer, J., Naimark, M., Postelnicu, A., Rabinovich, M., Rosenthal, S., Salen, K., Sudol, J., and Wright, B. Squidball: An experiment in large-scale motion capture and game design. Proceedings of the First Annual Conference on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment (INTETAIN), Springer Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence.
2005 Bianciardi, D., Igoe, T., and Singer, E. EOS pods: Wireless devices for interactive musical performance. ACM Fifth Annual Conference on Ubiquitous Computing Adjunct Proceedings: pp. 13-16.
Since 1999, I’ve been part of the physical computing area of the ITP curriculum, and been in charge of it since 2001. I’ve developed several courses in this area, and experimented with multiple tools and platforms to use in teaching it. I’ve written and edited multiple versions of the ITP physical computing website and the ITP Networks website as a part of that work.
In 2005, I was invited to co-found a company around the Arduino microcontroller platform. I’ve been a part of that company since then. My role is primarily advisory and design focused, and I have written many example programs for the platform.
2007 Mellis, D., Banzi, M., Cuartielles, D, and Igoe, T. Arduino: An open electronics prototyping platform. alt.chi presentation at CHI, 2007, San Jose, CA.
See also the books and articles in the writing section of this site.
From 2009 through 2016 I worked with Dr. Anthony di Fiore on new tools for ethographic observation of monkeys at Dr. di Fiore’s research site in Ecuador. As part of that work we explored new methods for tracking, note-taking, and new ontologies for describing behavioral observations. In the course of the project we ran a class, Wildlife Observation Tools, in which students learned about technologies and methods primatologists use their field research, and worked to develop new tools to aid the work in the field. We received three grants as part of this work, including a National Science Foundation grant.
2009 - 2010 University Research Challenge Fund, New York University (co-PI with Dr. Anthony Di Fiore). “Wired” monkeys: Developing physical computing products for wildlife biology.
2009-2010 Curricular Development Challenge Fund, New York University (co-PI with Dr. Anthony Di Fiore). Wildlife observation and sensing: Interactive telecommunications in the natural world.
2013 - 2016 National Science Foundation, Building Community and Capacity for Data-Intensive Research in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences and in Education and Human Resources Program. I was a co-PI, with Dr. Anthony Di Fiore, Dr. Jane Phillips-Conroy and Kenneth Chiou). COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Ethoinformatics: Developing data services and a standard “etho-grammar” for behavioral research.
2016 Di Fiore, A., Chiou, K.L., Chevett, M., Overstreet, R., Igoe, T. Ethoinformatics II: developing open-source software and digital data services for primatology. Joint meeting of the International Primatological Society and the American Society of Primatologists. Chicago, Illinois. [poster]
2016 Chiou, K.L., Di Fiore, A., Overstreet, R., Chevett, M., Igoe, T. Ethoinformatics I: developing a community-informed standard vocabulary and data model for primatology. Joint meeting of the International Primatological Society and the American Society of Primatologists. Chicago, Illinois. [poster]
2016 Di Fiore, A., Chiou, K.L., Chevett, M., Overstreet, R., Igoe, T. Ethoinformatics II: developing open-source digital data services for behavioral field research. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 159(Suppl. 62), 130-131. [slideshow]
2016 Chiou, K.L., Di Fiore, A., Overstreet, R., Chevett, M., Igoe, T. Ethoinformatics I: developing a standard vocabulary and data model for behavioral field research. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 159(Suppl. 62), 115-116. [slideshow]
Marianne Petit (ITP) and Anita Perr (Steinhardt Occupational Therapy) started teaching assistive tech classes together through ITP and Steinhardt in the early 2000s. Their collaboration later led to the Ability Project at NYU. As an advisor to the Ability Project team, I am always pleased to assist them in their work, becuase I see this is one of the most valuable uses of physical interaction skills and resources.
2020 Lauren Race, Claire Kearney-Volpe, Chancey Fleet, Joshua A. Miele, Tom Igoe, and Amy Hurst. 2020. Designing Educational Materials for a Blind Arduino Workshop. In Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–7.
2019 Lauren Race, Chancey Fleet, Joshua A. Miele, Tom Igoe, and Amy Hurst. 2019. Designing Tactile Schematics: Improving Electronic Circuit Accessibility. In The 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 581–583.
It is impossible to teach physical computing without acknowledging the physical impact of the production of electronics. Since this is a major part of our curriculum, I try to make students aware of it, and participate in workshops and projects related to it.
From 2008 - 2011, I assisted Co-PI Marianne Petit on GreenFab, a three-year NSF-funded program to introduce high school students to Science, technology, engineering, and math skills through sustainable values. The project was a joint venture between ITP, Vision Education & Media, Sustainable South Bronx, and the Bronx Guild High School.
In 2006 and 2007 I co-organized the following conference workshops:
2007 Foth, Marcus & Satchell, Christine & Paulos, Eric & Igoe, Tom & Ratti, Carlo. (2007). Pervasive persuasive technology and environmental sustainability. Accepted proposal for a workshop held at the 6th International Conference on Pervasive Computing, May 19th, 2008, Sydney, Australia (Workshop).
2006 Hasbrouck, Jay & Igoe, Tom & Mankoff, Jennifer & Woodruff, Allison. (2007). Technologies for Green Values. Accepted proposal for a workshop held at the 5th International Conference on Pervasive Computing, September 16th, 2007, Innsbruck, Austria, Innsbruck, Austria (Workshop).