Previous HCI seminar topics
Autumn semester 2021
Community-owned gig driver platform
Ride sharing and delivery companies represent one of the major industries in the gig-economy. A common claim of the gig-economy – e.g. from Uber – is that workers may work ‘whenever they want’, ’wherever they want’, and that they can ‘be their own boss’. This claim, at least in the case of Uber, is not always supported by Uber and its platform. This is primarily due to the various barriers that drivers face to their agency in terms of information/power asymmetries, algorithmic management, and emotional labor. The motivation of this review is to support an early-state research on developing alternatives to existing gig driver platforms, specifically to be community-owned.
References:
Ma, N. F., Yuan, C. W., Ghafurian, M., & Hanrahan, B. V. (2018, April). Using stakeholder theory to examine drivers' Stake in Uber. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-12).
Glöss, M., McGregor, M., & Brown, B. (2016, May). Designing for labour: uber and the on-demand mobile workforce. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1632-1643).
Reference person:
- Sailin Zhong
Community-owned gig-driver platform alternative - François-Xavier Wicht
Numerous criticism have been levelled at Uber and the gig-driver platforms over the years, whether with regard to the status of the drivers, the opacity of the ratings and the rides assignation mechanism, or the power imbalance between the drivers and the platform. In this paper, we address these criticism by targeting the individualistic nature of gig-driver platforms and thus formulating a community-owned alternative. However, a proof of concept is required to show the feasibility of this project. To address this, we describe the outline of a possible experiment. It involves volunteers who would use a mobile application to simulate a community-owned alternative to gig-driver platforms. This experiment can potentially be the subject of another paper in which the experiment is conducted and analysed in more details.
Virtual Reality for Rehabilitation – Applicability for Visually Impaired Individuals
Virtual reality has been used in many contexts; from games, to phobia treatment but also for rehabilitation purposes. We would like to investigate its potential to rehabilitate or assist during the rehabilitation of individuals who are visually impaired. In this seminar the student will precise the notion of visual impairment, review the domain of rehabilitation in virtual reality, investigate works focused on visually impaired individuals and potentially propose an new experiment/system that could be useful in this context.
References:
Paul N. Wilson, Nigel Foreman & Danaë Stanton (1997) Virtual reality, disability and rehabilitation, Disability and Rehabilitation, 19:6, 213-220, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3109/09638289709166530
Krasovsky, T., Lubetzky, A.V., Archambault, P.S. et al. Will virtual rehabilitation replace clinicians: a contemporary debate about technological versus human obsolescence. J NeuroEngineering Rehabil 17, 163 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12984-020-00769-0
Pedroli, E., Serino, S., Cipresso, P., Pallavicini, F. and Riva, G. 2015. Assessment and rehabilitation of neglect using virtual reality: A systematic review. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. 9, AUGUST (2015). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00226
Lauren Thevin, Carine Briant, and Anke M. Brock. 2020. X-Road: Virtual Reality Glasses for Orientation and Mobility Training of People with Visual Impairments. ACM Trans. Access. Comput. 13, 2, Article 7 (August 2020), 47 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3377879
Reference person :
- Dr Simon Ruffieux
Virtual Reality for Rehabilitation, Applicability for Visually Impaired Individuals - Klodinë Dërguti
Developing navigation systems that can guide visually impaired and blind people in outdoor scenarios has remained a challenge for decades. One of the growing technologies that have shown high potential to train orientation and mobility (OM) skills to visually impaired people (VIP) is virtual reality (VR). Despite the advent of VR technology, VR has only recently begun to be adopted in OM rehabilitation settings. That’s why the range of interactions available to VIP has remained limited. To fully immerse VIP in the world of VR whether through visual, auditory, or haptic channels a detailed amount of work for each of these is needed. The objective of this paper is to examine the past years of research and development on the role of VR in OM rehabilitation. In this context, this paper offers a concise overview of the current state of the art of VR applications for blind and visually impaired users. To this end, previous solutions will be briefly described and analyzed so that the results can have the potential to influence future research and the development of new OM aid that could enhance navigation abilities. In addition, we will propose ideas that could enhance VR OM training, in order for the VIP to achieve similar skill gains as in real-world training.
How to foster error handling by operators in the industrial context, applied to collaborative robotics?
The industry 4.0 is profoundly affecting the manufacturing sector because of its vision of automation. Cyber-physical systems (CPS), like collaborative robots (cobots), bring new opportunities for this revolution, but employees need to develop new skills to foster this transition (Fantini et al., 2020).
At the Bern University of Applied Sciences, we are developing a robotic cell that tries to bring a solution to this problem, using the help of no-code programming, AR/VR tools and cobots. The use of different CPS brings us the opportunity to provide to the user a maximum of information about its state, important to allow the correction of a task in case of failure. The goal of this project is to analyze the state of the art of error management approaches, to provide a guideline to the user in case of failure, and apply it to our system as a use case.
References:
Placing the operator at the centre of Industry 4.0 design: Modelling and assessing human activities within cyber-physical systems (Fantini et al., 2020)
Human–robot interaction in industrial collaborative robotics: a literature review of the decade 2008–2017 (Hentout et al., 2019)
Reference person :
- Charly Blanc
How to foster error-handling guidelines in collaborative robots? - Suada Abukar
Through the introduction of Industry 4.0 robots become increasingly autonomous. However, they are still bound to make errors. Due to the difference of the communication language between humans and robots, understanding and fixing errors is not a trivial task. To understand how errors are handled in human-robot interaction, a literature review was done and different error-handling strategies were examined. Lastly, we propose an experiment to compare two error-handling strategies and evaluate which strategy is perceived as more trustworthy and helpful in handling errors
Automatic handling of office lighting
The biggest source of energy consumption in modern office environments is lighting. Lighting automation in office spaces has been proven over the years to be an effective way of reducing energy consumption considerably. However, most existing lighting automation techniques do not allow for personalisation and are cumbersome for office workers. The important advantages in terms of energy consumption reduction are thus often counterbalanced by user discomfort, leading to consequent development of techniques to bypass lighting automation. Viable, customisable and human-centred lighting automation strategies are thus researched in order to provide at the same time energy efficient and productive office environment.
The idea for this seminar is thus researching strategies to automate CCT (Correlated Color Temperature) in a human-centric way through the use of task lights and analyze possible advantages of this techniques over a fixed CCT control in a non-controlled ("in the wild") setting.
References
Xiaodong Chen, Xin Zhang, Jiangtao Du, The potential of circadian lighting in office buildings using a fibre optics daylighting system in Beijing, Building and Environment, Volume 182, 2020, 107118, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2020.107118
Reference person :
- Moreno Colombo
- Dr Julien Nembrini
Automatic handling of office lighting with special focus on correlated color temperature - Noah Bühlmann
Traditional office lighting automation has mainly focused on reducing energy consumption. In this paper, we perform a literature review of automatic handling of office lighting in a human-centered way, with a special focus on correlated color temperature. With health effects, productivity impacts, preference learning, and balancing energy consumption with visual comfort we have identified four research directions that are of interest in this field, and for each we report the major findings from literature. Additionally, we present in detail the results of three selected papers, including a promising approach to fully automate office lighting. We synthesize our results by proposing an adapted approach that could be used to automate correlated color temperature in the future in order to implement a human-centered lighting system. Finally, we describe an experiment that can be used to evaluate future lighting systems in a field test.
Digital technology support for co-working spaces
The recent success of co-working spaces raised the question of the quality of the working environment they provide. Co-workers have conflicting aims and seek at the same time interaction and production supporting conditions. Co-working spaces themselves have to provide comfortable environments fostering both serendipity and focused work, struggling with parameters such as air quality, acoustic comfort, food smells, etc. The review will concentrate on what kind of technological support hardware and/or software would enhance the interaction specificities that users seek in co-working spaces.
References
Lee, A., Toombs, A. L., Erickson, I., Nemer, D., Ho, Y., Jo, E., & Guo, Z. (2019). The Social Infrastructure of Co-spaces: Home, Work, and Sociable Places for Digital Nomads. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 3(CSCW), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1145/3359244
Miller, C., Sood, T., & Janssen, P. (2020). Spacematch: Using Environmental Preferences to Match Occupants to Suitable Activity-Based Workspaces. Frontiers in Built Environment, 6, 13.
Verma, H., Alavi, H. S., & Lalanne, D. (2017). Studying Space Use: Bringing HCI Tools to Architectural Projects. Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 3856–3866. https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3026055
Reference person :
- Dr Julien Nembrini
Effect of sound masking in co-working spaces - Yanisa Butphrom
Co-working spaces are a new type of working environment where people from different companies work in the same place. Noise is one of the main disturbing factors in these spaces. The primary objective of this research is to investigate the effects of noise on the satisfaction of occupants of co-working spaces. There are various ways to reduce noise; one of these ways is to use sound masking devices. This paper will test the beneficial effects of sound masking devices to reduce noise levels in co-working spaces. In order to conduct the experiment, two groups will work simultaneously in different rooms for several days, and their satisfaction will be evaluated. The results should show that participants would be more satisfied, more productive, and more focused when working in a co-working environment with sound masking devices.
Spring semester 2021
Dark-mode or night-mode in real settings
It is known that screen luminance settings affect health and productivity. However, screens are being used in specific environments that can consist in differing lighting conditions, such as daylight or artificial light, or have changing illuminance levels. The topic will focus on how screen interface settings come in interplay with environmental lighting conditions to affect comfort, productivity and health.
References
Benedetto et al (2014). Effects of luminance and illuminance on visual fatigue and arousal during digital reading. Computers in Human Behavior, 41, 112–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.09.023
Cajochen et al (2011). Evening exposure to a light-emitting diodes (LED)-backlit computer screen affects circadian physiology and cognitive performance. Journal of Applied Physiology, 110(5), 1432–1438. https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.00165.2011
Pedersen et al (2020). User Interfaces in Dark Mode During Daytime – Improved Productivity or Just Cool-Looking? In Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction (Vol. 12188, pp. 178–187). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49282-3_13
Reference person :
- Dr Julien Nembrini
- Michael Papinutto
Dark & Night Modes: In Combination with Light Environment - Karim Aebischer
The impact of digital displays on visual fatigue and on our sleep through short wavelength have been demonstrated in many studies. Moreover, in recent years, the screen time per individual has been increasing. In order to avoid sleep disturbance and visual fatigue, Big Tech companies have popularized solutions called "Dark Mode" and "Night Mode". Through this small systematic review of the literature, we aim to find out whether the claimed beneficial effects of these two modes are actually supported by research studies. The main relevant papers were extracted and synthesized to find the actual parameters involved in achieving the benefits from the two modes. However, the lack of appropriate research material from the point of view of Human Computer Interaction is rapidly becoming a limitation. In addition, a new controlled experiment has been described to show the way forward for further research studies in this topic. Inspired by the selected papers, this new experiment attempts to address the interaction of two modes in low light environment.
The Dark Mode: Psychological Impacts and Influences on Productivity - Dimitri Gurtner
This article is a literature review of the psychological and productivity impacts of dark mode interfaces. The dark mode consists of presenting light-colored text on a dark screen. We have chosen to focus on the effects of the dark mode on perception and productivity and have selected articles accordingly. The articles we considered suggest a potential impact on productivity when the dark mode is used in a low-light environment but no impact on productivity in daylight. Moreover, the black color associated with the dark mode might influence our perception. Notably, we might interpret messages more negatively when using the dark mode. More work needs to be undertaken in this area, as tiny differences in our perception can significantly impact our daily lives, and how we make crucial decisions. Therefore, we have proposed an experiment to determine the impact of the dark mode on our perception in the specific context of fiction reading, which is intrinsically subject to emotions.
Space usage tracking methods for Human-Building interaction
The analysis of space usage is of particular interest for new office typologies such as co-working or hot-desking offices. In these contexts, workplace is dynamically chosen or assigned, displaying differing patterns of space usage depending on qualities such as access to daylight, noise, wifi or electricity plugs availability, etc. The topic focuses on mapping the different methods applied in research to acquire space occupancy and their respective advantages and drawbacks.
References:
Alavi, H. S., Verma, H., Mlynar, J., & Lalanne, D. (2018). The Hide and Seek of Workspace: Towards Human-Centric Sustainable Architecture. Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173649
Chen, Z., Jiang, C., & Xie, L. (2018). Building occupancy estimation and detection: A review. Energy and Buildings, 169, 260–270. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2018.03.084
Oppermann, M., & Munzner, T. (2020). Ocupado: Visualizing Location‐Based Counts Over Time Across Buildings. Computer Graphics Forum, 39(3), 127–138. https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.13968
Reference person:
- Julien Nembrini
Human tracking: Behaviour modification based on the awareness of being observed - Jazmin Fernandez
Human tracking inside a closed-space can be done following different methods. From body-centric devices to wireless sensors, there is a wide offer of alternatives to understand how individuals interact with their environment. But technology is not enough, there is also a human factor behind those methodologies that has an impact on the results and need to be considered. This article analyses how the acknowledgement of being observed could modify the behaviour of humans under observation inside a commercial building, while they are carrying out work activities. This work proposes an experiment to identify the influence that different methods could have on people under observation and how these variables could modify the observation results. An integral solution is proposed, where concepts as privacy and data security are considered, reducing the inference that some devices could have on humans.
Occupancy tracking: Can the right kind of people increase space usage? - Zanfina Gashi Sadriu
The use of occupancy tracking methods to reduce energy consumption has been at the forefront of many occupancy tracking solutions in buildings. But, a gap has been seen in the Human-Building Interaction. Can the same methods be used to detect interactions and other human-related activities? In this paper, an experiment has been proposed to evaluate if the presence of Multitasking Knowledge Workers in the Collaboration Room will increase the usage of this collaboration space and if Bluetooth Low Energy is the appropriate tracking method for people counting in the Collaboration Room and for detecting interactions between participants and Multitasking Knowledge Workers. A concise number of tracking methods and possible purposes of occupancy tracking have been reviewed before choosing Bluetooth Low Energy as the method to be used in the proposed experiment.
Visual fatigue management during teleconferencing
The coronavirus pandemic led an unprecedented number of people to work from home which also caused to an increasing number of online meetings. Several surveys in Switzerland and around globe has shown that the home-office option will persist after the pandemic. In an ongoing survey we conducted with 40 participants (so far), 92.5% of the participants reflected that teleconferencing can make their eyes slightly to extremely tired. Among which, 27.5% of the participants reflected the condition is worse than when they do individual work on screen. While it has been advised to follow the 20-20-20 rule to limit eye constrain from computer use, in reality this is hardly achived (our survey indicated that 65.85% of the participants only take a break after more than 60 minutes computer usage). Sensing technologies which could capture human visual fatigue could assist user to manage their visual comfort. The motivation of this review is to understand the acceptabable and effective ways to notify users during (long/consecutive) teleconference and discover measures to predict eye fatigue condition.
References
https://www.uclahealth.org/eye/computer-related-eye-fatigue
Pfleging, Bastian, et al. "A model relating pupil diameter to mental workload and lighting conditions." Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems. 2016.
Hirzle, Teresa, et al. "A Survey of Digital Eye Strainin Gaze-Based Interactive Systems." ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications. 2020.
Reference persons :
- Dr. Hamed S. Alavi
- Sailin Zhong
Videoconferencing Visual Fatigue - Mounir Khouja
The videoconferencing technologies has brought to office workers huge possibilities for collaboration. This has been confirmed during crisis times such as COVID-19. However, visual fatigue and discomfort are very common consequences of excessive usage of such technologies. The aim of our article is to study videoconferencing related visual fatigue in order to find healthy habits to persevere intellectual, psychological and biological capacities of the users. In this paper we report insights from our literature review of articles of different domains and disciplines. We explore various concepts and techniques with the goal of supporting users’ health and productivity in using video-conferencing technologies. This article addresses those issues and proposes a design model for assessing and reducing visual fatigue caused by videoconferencing usage.
See-through smart glasses for visually impaired individuals
With the latest technological advancement, see-through smartglasses devices have the potential to improve the daily life of millions of visually impaired individuals. Smartglasses devices can notably support visually impaired individuals for mobility, social interactions and reading. As a new domain of research, many questions remain open in terms of optimal functionalities, human-computer interaction design and potential of feedback modalities. We want to investigate the different types of feedbacks that have been used in literature.
References
M. Hu, Y. Chen, G. Zhai, Z. Gao, and L. Fan, “AN OVERVIEW OF ASSISTIVE DEVICES FOR BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE,” Int. J. Robot. Autom., vol. 34, no. 5, 2019.
S. Azenkot and Y. Zhao, “DESIGNING SMARTGLASSES APPLICATIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH LOW VISION,”, ACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing. Issue 119, Nov. 2017.
Reference persons :
- Dr. Simon Ruffieux
Real-time hazard detection using smart glasses for visually impaired individuals - Stefan Stojkovski
This article presents an explorative study with an overview of existing papers in the area of AR smart glasses with object detection that help visually impaired individuals. We propose a novel hybrid audio and video AR smart glasses application, with priority object detection, to help people with peripheral vision loss not to get harmed while navigating in space. The priority on the object is determined based on the situation with the potential to harm the visually impaired individual. The solution is using a lightweight powerful architecture based on ResNet-50 with a dynamic data reconciliation filter (DDR). The proposed solution is tested in a laboratory experiment with 20 visually impaired individuals. The experiment contains an initial problem-determined survey, an intersection-like testing laboratory environment where users can test to pass an intersection, and a result evaluation.
Automatic handling of office lighting
The biggest source of energy consumption in modern office environments is lighting. Lighting automation in office spaces has been proven over the years to be an effective way of reducing energy consumption considerably. However, most existing lighting automation techniques do not allow for personalisation and are cumbersome for office workers. The important advantages in terms of energy consumption reduction are thus often counterbalanced by user discomfort, leading to consequent development of techniques to bypass lighting automation. Viable, customisable and human-centred lighting automation strategies are thus researched in order to provide at the same time energy efficient and productive office environment.
References
Christel de Bakker, Myriam Aries, Helianthe Kort, Alexander Rosemann. Occupancy-based lighting control in open-plan office spaces: A state-of-the-art review, Building and Environment, Volume 112, 2017, Pages 308-321, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2016.11.042.
H. Burak Gunay, William O'Brien, Ian Beausoleil-Morrison & Brent Huchuk (2014) On adaptive occupant-learning window blind and lighting controls, Building Research & Information, 42:6, 739-756, DOI: 10.1080/09613218.2014.895248
Reference person :
- Moreno Colombo
- Dr Julien Nembrini
Automatic lightning in the SCOTT headquarter - Valeria Schmidt
In this paper we look at ways to implement automatic lightning with the goal of reducing energy consumption without lessening user comfort. We first look at different implemented methods and the procedures to test their efficiency, concentrating on both aspects, energy consumption and user comfort. In a second time we analyze the automatic lighting system in the new SCOTT headquarter Building in Givisiez. Finally we present a test method for the building focusing on three aspects :m visual lighting parameter measurements, energy savings and user satisfaction.
Fall semester 2020
See-through smart glasses for visually impaired individuals
With the latest technological advancement, see-through smartglasses devices have the potential to improve the daily life of millions of visually impaired individuals. Smartglasses devices could notably support visually impaired individuals for mobility, social interactions and reading. As a new domain of research, many questions remain open in terms of optimal functionalities, human-computer interaction design and potential of feedback modalities.
References
M. Hu, Y. Chen, G. Zhai, Z. Gao, and L. Fan, “AN OVERVIEW OF ASSISTIVE DEVICES FOR BLIND AND VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE,” Int. J. Robot. Autom., vol. 34, no. 5, 2019.
S. Azenkot and Y. Zhao, “DESIGNING SMARTGLASSES APPLICATIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH LOW VISION,”, ACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing. Issue 119, Nov. 2017.
Reference persons :
- Dr. Simon Ruffieux
- Chiwoong Hwang
Eye tracking for human visual stress management
During the transition seasons, the decay of natural light during sunset period variates from day to day and can reach insufficient level at different time. As more people are working from home and lightning setup are individual, this could be sometimes unnoticeble when people are concentrating on their work. Sensing technologies which could capture human visual fatigue could assist user to manage their visual comfort. A system that could learn user’s preferences on light control at their domastic workspace and encourage new habits of vision stress management by detecting visual fatigue using eye tracking techniques is an interesting direction to investigate.
References
Christiano, P., Leike, J., Brown, T., Martic, M., Legg, S., Amodei, D. (2017). Deep reinforcement learning from human preferences
De Carli, Michele, Valeria De Giuli, and Roberto Zecchin. Review on visual comfort in office buildings and influence of daylight in productivity. Indoor Air (2008): 17-22.
Borisuit, Apiparn, et al. Effects of realistic office daylighting and electric lighting conditions on visual comfort, alertness and mood. Lighting Research & Technology 47.2 (2015): 192-209.
Reference persons :
- Dr. Hamed S. Alavi
- Sailin Zhong
Data-driven methodologies to provide satisfying visual comfort
Data produced automatically by sensors or experimentally in the field of indoor comfort are traditionally aggregated across predefined experimental groups, time and occupants. However, findings produced by this methodology were not found to completely satisfy occupants. One way to overcome this issue would be to extract groups using data-driven approach and to use data as close as raw data as possible without aggregation. The goal of this review is to list the pros and cons of both aggregation and data-driven individualised methods for visual comfort.
References
general review on methods used in indoor comfort https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=8812727
example of personal visual comfort https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360132314001322
Reference persons :
- Michael Papinutto
- Dr Julien Nembrini
Explainable artificial intelligence for air traffic control
As Air Traffic Flow Management becomes increasingly complex, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven aids will gain in relevance in the future. However, AI-driven aids only prove useful if they are understandable by human users. In a context where Machine Learning (ML) models become more complex and less interpretable than ever, new eXplainable AI(XAI) methods are needed in order to allow the operator to track the behavior of the automation. Nowadays, agents often experience difficulty understanding the behaviour of AI-driven aids, and the benefits offered by automation are balanced by a poor User Experience (UX). This literature review will focus on new methods aimed at improving the cooperartion between Air Traffic Controller and AI-driven systems.
References
Kistan, T.; Gardi, A.; Sabatini, R. Machine Learning and Cognitive Ergonomics in Air Traffic Management: Recent Developments and Considerations for Certification. Aerospace 2018, 5, 103. https://www.mdpi.com/2226-4310/5/4/103#cite
Reference persons :
- Prof. Denis Lalanne
- Raphaël Tuor
Automatic building time series data analysis
Contemporary buildings are fitted with sensors (temperature, presence, light, etc) and actuators (automatic blinds and lights, heating and cooling, etc) which allow dynamic building control to achieve comfort. Such systems generate time series data which can be analyzed to optimize control and/or understand problematic situations. Automatic time series analysis bears the potential to automatically identify non-standard behaviour for notification purpose.
References
Miller, C., Nagy, Z., & Schlueter, A. (2017). A review of unsupervised statistical learning and visual analytics techniques applied to performance analysis of non-residential buildings. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.05.124
Reference person :
- Dr Julien Nembrini