spatialcomputing.info

Hello r/augmentedreality community,

I am currently finishing my master in HCI with a focus on Mixed Reality. Because of this chapter of my life ending, I am reassessing my professional goals. A dream job that still has not left my side is designing suits for extremely specialist individuals.

Astronauts, divers, firefighters have extremely high-tech suits. These are area where I see a lot of potential for augmented reality, as the suits and equipment isolate these people from their environment. For example astronauts rely only on sight, while all the other senses could be augmented to give them a better understanding of their environment.

What inspired this interest of mine was a Ted talk that presented vests helping deaf people to hear, by translating voice in vibration patterns (https://www.ted.com/talks/david_eagleman_can_we_create_new_senses_for_humans/up-next). This is the area i want to work in. Currently I believe the only way to work in this area is doing a PhD, because I can't find Job opening for this kind of work and it seems like the area of work where you have to create your own job opportunity.

I am looking for thoughts and advice for this area of HCI. I have a CS background, but I would enjoy a job as a designer---before the implementation---way more. How would you start looking for opportunities like this? Do you have any advice?