Why We’re Here
In our projects and research work, we fully adhere to the following ethics statement:
“We seek to make tools for real world impact, enhancing quality of life with innovative design, science and engineering inspired by research in brain and biological sciences. Every new tool we create in turn enables exploration of new scientific questions. We conduct novel research, we share tools with other labs to further discovery, and we aim to shepherd a conversation about the future of a rapidly changing field.
We understand that our work can influence both public dialogue and corporate development: Our developments, systems, protocols and interfaces can prompt discussions of privacy, power dynamics and societal norms. Both inside and outside the research lab, we aim to engage in critical conversations about these techniques and technologies which are increasingly becoming part of us and our society. We welcome feedback on the potential benefits as well as potential negative impacts and misuse of the technology we develop. We are also committed to designing and sharing our projects in a way that minimizes potential for harmful use of our work.
We are responsible for presenting our work transparently. We strive to clearly describe the potentials and limitations of our research. We categorize our work to improve clarity of public perception with respect to the stage of the research, i.e. whether a work is at the level of a concept, early prototype, evaluated prototype, or technology ready for deployment. Some technologies might remain artifacts of curiosity in the lab, while others grow to be fully developed and available for use by other researchers or the general public.
As researchers and community members, our responsibility is to create tools that can benefit and inspire many sectors of society; we strive to include diverse groups of people in our studies to avoid biased development. We believe it is essential to work with the communities that our research might be useful for, and are committed to hearing the voices of specialized populations. We take the stance that quality of life is a value to be defined by each unique individual. Thus, when we build and communicate research, we aim to:
Enable rather than enforce behavior
Support development rather than create dependency
Design alongside target users
Maximize privacy of data. ”
How To Reach Us
nkosmyna@mit.edu
MIT Media Lab Fluid Interfaces Group, 75 Amherst St E14-548, Cambridge, MA 02139
Interested in participating in a research study? Sign up here and we will get back to you with more information.
Where We’re From
While today's pervasive digital devices put the world’s information at our fingertips, they do not help us with some of the cognitive skills that are arguably more important to leading a successful life, such as motivation, attention, memory, creativity, and emotion regulation. Building upon insights from psychology and neuroscience, we create systems and interfaces for cognitive enhancement. Our designs enhance cognitive skills by teaching users to exploit and develop the untapped powers of their mind and by seamlessly supplementing users' natural cognitive abilities. The solutions we design are compact and wearable to support real-life studies and interventions. Our work is highly interdisciplinary and combines insights and methods from human computer interaction, sensor technologies, machine learning, brain computer interfaces, psychology, and neuroscience to create new opportunities for studying and intervening in human psychology in-the-wild.