School of Engineering

Human-Centered Computing

We Design Human Interaction with Information

The Human-Centered Computing (HCC) research group at InIT focuses on innovative natural interaction concepts between users and digital information. These interactions are increasingly mobile and multimodal and include new modalities such as gestures, voice input and output as well as mixed reality interactions in addition to the classic interaction options. As today's users place high demands on the usability and user experience of mobile applications and services in particular, these must be developed in a user-centered and participatory manner from the outset and continuously evaluated with users in terms of usability. When developing interaction concepts, it is also important to ensure that the interaction is accessible for as many users as possible, including those with disabilities or older people.

Research Areas

Immersive Technologies

In Mobile Computing and Visual Computing we explore the latest interaction modalities (speech, gestures, augmented reality, virtual reality) on the one hand and deal with the user-centered development of innovative mobile applications and services with special requirements on the other hand. The sensor technology and interaction possibilities of today's and future mobile devices are used to achieve an optimal user experience.

Speech and sound (sonification) are important modalities of Natural User Interfaces, especially for applications with limited screen interaction (like smartwatches or hands-free AR). Deep-learning-based speech recognition has made tremendous progress in recent years, and promising applications are now possible, such as live-captioning of videos or conversational assistants.

The "AR Cloud" concept addresses web-based persistent enrichment of indoor and outdoor spaces. We develop collaborative AR/VR applications to make the content of the "Metaverse" actively designable for users and smartly experienceable thanks to "Scene Understanding".

Current Research Projects and Topics

In the Innosuisse flagship project "Data-driven transformation of surgical education for proficiency-based performance", a completely new concept for the practical training of surgeons is being developed, based on innovative virtual and augmented reality simulators.

ICT-Accessibility

ICT accessibility focuses on the research and development of ICT-based solutions to reduce barriers for people with disabilities and older people, whether through barrier-free user interfaces, barrier-free access to digital information or barrier-free mobility. In doing so, we are increasingly using AI-based approaches.