If you don’t find the information that you’re looking for here, please send a query via email to the address given below.

Main Research Questions

• 1. How can a better understanding of human choice and decision making benefit design of and research on interactive systems?
[Show]
[Hide ↓]

Users of computing technology are constantly making small choices and larger decisions. Research areas in a variety of disciplines have together produced a vast collection of knowledge about the different ways in which people make choices and decisions. But so far, only isolated parts of this knowledge have been used to improve people’s interaction with computing technology.

In collaboration with several colleagues, I have been working since 2008 on ways of synthesizing and complementing this research to make it useful for people who design and study interactive computing systems. I gave a tutorial on this topic at IUI 2011 and a related course at CHI 2011, of which an updated version will be offered at CHI 2012. I’ve written a chapter on this topic for the forthcoming 3rd edition of the Human-Computer Interaction Handbook. A brief overview and motivation of the topic is given in the paper that we presented in the alt.chi track of CHI 2011.

• 2. How can we achieve a better synergy among different approaches to research on interactive intelligent systems?
[Show]
[Hide ↓]

Technology involving various forms of machine intelligence already serves useful functions in a wide variety of interactive computing systems, and the open-ended future possibilities are being explored in a number of research communities. These communities can learn a lot from each other about general issues that arise when human and machine intelligence interact.

The special issue of AI Magazine titled “Usable AI”, focused on questions of usability. As a broader effort, John Riedl and I recently cofounded the ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, which publishes relevant research from a wide range of areas.

• 3. How can the web-based exchange of media be improved through organization in terms of events?
[Show]
[Hide ↓]

When exchanging media (such as photos and videos) on the web, we all have seen how useful it can be to relate them to geographical locations. But an additional type of organization – in terms of the events that the media depict – can have similar value.

The European Integrating Project Glocal is working on various fronts to make this sort of organization useful and usable in professional and amateur contexts. The DFKI team is focusing on issues of interaction design and personalization.

• 4. How can we more effectively support internet-scale human problem solving?
[Show]
[Hide ↓]

Recent successes in areas such as social computing and collective intelligence have demonstrated the potential of computing technology to support large-scale distributed collaboration among people. But there are still many open lines of interdisciplinary research that need to be pursued if we want to exploit the full potential of human intelligence and collaboration for the solution of major societal problems.

I have been working within the Social Computer initiative, which aims to promote European research in this area.

[Earlier Research Topics] [Show]

Earlier [Show]

Tutorials at International Conferences

Recent

Choice and Decision Making for HCI Half-day course at CHI 2011, the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (7–11 May 2011, Vancouver, BC, Canada). Note added in December 2011: An updated version of the course will be offered at CHI 2012. Advance program description and additional information

What Every IUI Researcher Should Know About Human Choice and Decision Making Half-day tutorial at IUI 2011, the 2011 International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (13–16 February, Palo Alto, California) One-page description in the IUI 2011 proceedings volume: Tutorial / What every IUI researcher should know about human choice and decision making

Earlier [Show]

Longer-Term Research Projects

Current and Recent

Glocal Since December, 2009 The overall goal of the European Integrating Project Glocal is to develop improved techniques for the sharing of media (e.g., photos and videos) among professional and/or nonprofessional users by supporting the organization of media in terms of events. The DFKI team is responsible mainly for the design and evaluation of (personalized) user interfaces that enable users to benefit from the technology developed in the project.

Prevolution December 2007 – March 2010 This small targeted research unit, funded by the Autonomous Province of Trento, set itself the goal of helping researchers in HCI better to understand and take into account the choices and decisions that computer users make about their use of interactive technology.

Earlier [Show]

University Courses

Latest

At the University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy:

• Interazione uomo-macchina con elementi di comunicazione multimodale (Human-Computer Interaction With Elements of Multimodal Communication) (September – December 2008)

Earlier [Show]

Service Activities

Current

Founding co-editor-in-chief (with John Riedl) of the new ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems (TiiS).

Chair of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the research program Continuous Access To Cultural Heritage (CATCH), funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)

Earlier [Show]

Background

Education and Previous Places of Work [Show]

Addresses

E-mail: (see note below)

Postal mail and courier deliveries: DFKI Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3 66123 Saarbrücken Germany Phone: +49 681 85775-5337

Note: When sending email for the first time (from a given address), you can start the subject line with the words Genuine email: to minimize the likelihood that your message will be mistakenly classified as spam.