Designing the Everyday Spatial Computer

Meaningful collaboration in the real world takes place when people interact with each other, in space, and over time. As more of our everyday interactions with friends, family, and colleagues take place across distance, a key challenge for Human-Computer Interaction research has been the design of interfaces that support meaningful remote collaboration. Currently, there is a divide between tools for remote collaboration that are widely available—such as video conferencing over laptops and phones—and those that support spatial interaction—such as Augmented and Virtual Reality headsets. This dissertation provides a pathway to support meaningful collaboration within and across space by maximizing the potential of mobile devices and designing the “Everyday Spatial Computer”. By highlighting the importance of designing for the seamful trajectories of everyday life, building novel mobile-based interfaces that support dynamic, spatial, and embodied interactions with people and environments across locations, and studying how people work together using these interfaces, this dissertation contributes new technical artifacts, empirical insights, and conceptual devices to guide future design. Taken together, this dissertation provides reasons to question dominant narratives of technology development and argues for an alternate vision of spatial computing that works for all of us.