Designing human-centered tools for skill-learning

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• Dr Dishita Turakhia, NYU's Tandon School of Engineering
• Monday 24 March 2025, 11:00-12:00
• Institute of Manufacturing (IfM), Seminar Room 2.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Slawomir Tadeja.

Abstract:

Today, how humans learn physical skills is transforming profoundly owing to the lightning-speed advances in technologies like sensing, AR/VR, and AI tools. However, amidst this excitement for innovation, it is more critical than ever before to center the design of tools around the multifaceted principles of human learning.

In this talk, I will present my vision of building a learner-centric future by designing, building, and studying tools for skill learning that are grounded in learners’ and educators’ experiences. I’ll share my research projects on adaptive motor skill learning, game-based fabrication skill learning, and reflection-based makerskill learning. I will also briefly introduce my ongoing projects on analyzing AR videos and designing open-ended training in VR for manufacturing. These projects illustrate how my work expands the design space of learning tools beyond merely focusing on skill acquisition and contributes to advancing our understanding of human learning. I’ll conclude with my plans to expand my research into areas such as scalable learning, workforce training, and promoting equitable skill-learning futures.

Speaker’s Bio:

Dishita Turakhia is a faculty fellow in the Computer Science Engineering (CSE) department at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. She completed her PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at MIT in 2024 with a research focus in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Design and a minor in Brain and Cognitive Science. She works on designing systems for learning physical skills at the intersection of HCI and learning sciences.

Dishita is part of the EECS Rising Stars (‘23 cohort), a Meta Ph.D. Research Fellowship recipient (‘22-24), and holds the MIT Edwin S. Webster Graduate Fellowship (‘18). She is a SERC and Grace Hopper scholar. Her research has raised over $2.2 million in funding and is supported by several grants, including two National Science Foundation grants.

Before starting her Ph.D., she earned a dual master’s degree in EECS (MS) and Architecture (SMArchS computation) from MIT (‘17), and a master’s (MSc) in Emergent Technology and Design (EmTech) from the AA School of Architecture (‘11). Besides academic research, she has worked in the industry as a computational designer on several award-winning projects in London, Singapore, and Bern, and as a licensed architect in Mumbai, where she also co-led her design firm.

This talk is part of the Cyber-Human Lab Seminar Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Cyber-Human Lab Seminar Series
• Institute of Manufacturing (IfM), Seminar Room 2

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