My work interests are closely related to the computer science field, although I have other hobbies I'm trying to develop aside from that (see Miscellaneous, on the left side).
Human-computer interaction
For me, the most interesting thing about computers is not how many numbers they can crunch in a second or how they can solve complex problems, but simply how they can be useful to us, human beings. Since I was 10, I have been constantly surprised by how hard it is to get a computer do what I want. During my scholarship, I followed two courses called "Human-computer interaction", and sadly they were more about how to build interfaces than how to improve interaction. Hopefully, I was introduced to computer-human interaction research a few years ago, then I could travel to Canada and follow a more consistent HCI course and now I am starting to spot interesting questions.
- Why graphical interfaces are so long-lasting and ubiquitous, but yet a failure ? What interaction paradigms could work better and succeed where current ones have failed ?
- How to better enable complex and heterogenous content creation ?
- How so-called tactile, gestural, tangible interaction styles or virtual reality could improve interaction in offline and realtime information manipulation and creation contexts ?
- How about designing interaction techniques and frameworks that enable complex manipulations through abstractions and programming-like concepts ? What about visual programming ? Functional programming ? Visual functional programming ?
Computer music
As a (poor) musician and computer enthusiast, I have often been searching for ways to integrate the computer in my musical practice, be it as a sound processor for recording or a virtual musician in a live band. Computer music studies the analysis, synthesis and control of musical sound and structures and poses a wide variety of problems. In my year at Université Bordeaux 1, I was lucky enough to learn the bases of musical sound analysis and synthesis in detail and to discover two interesting problems : score following for automatic musical accompaniment and control of musical processes in realtime. However, and even if I love to create and use music technology, I discovered what I liked the most about computer music research is interaction.
Pedagogy for computer science
I strongly think teaching is a complex matter. I remember only a few good teachers, because when I was young I thought the vast majority of them was unable to "pass the message" correctly. Then tutoring put me the other side of the desk and I found teaching was a non-trivial problem : complex and overwhelming ideas, excessive formalization, different viewpoints, different personalities, no time... I believe it is possible to raise interest and motivation in any computer science or math related subject, no matter how complicated or boring, by using entertaining analogies and specialized tools to help ideas forming, and encouraging "global vision" thinking.