Courses at Vienna University of Technology

Courses at other locations

(Co-)supervision of Bachelor/Master/PhD Theses

• Harald Stix. 2012. Development of a wearable computing glove to detect spasms and log information to support therapy. Joint master thesis 2012 (TU Wien).
• Markus Martin. 2012. Development of a wearable computing glove to detect spasms and log information to support therapy. Joint master thesis 2012 (TU Wien).
• Christof Kopfer. 2012. SenseRhetoric: Using Sensor Technologies for Improving Communication Skills. Master thesis 2012 (TU Wien).
• Thomas Adelbauer. 2012. Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Bachelor Thesis 2012 (TU Wien).
• Jakob Frohnwieser. 2013. Prototyping Citizen Sensing Networks. Bachelor thesis 2013 (TU Wien).
• Gabriel Größbacher. 2014. Flexglove. Bachelor thesis 2014 (TU Wien).
• Daniel Dudo. 2015. Technisches Proof-of-concept für ein modulares System zur 'thing-orientierten' Programmierung von Ubicomp Applikationen. Bachelor thesis 2015 (TU Wien).
• Djordje Slijepčević. 2015. Learning Programmes and People with Disabilities: Case study of the impact of a computer-based learning programme on the cognitive skills and social interaction of a specific user with cerebral palsy. Bachelor thesis 2014 (TU Wien). 
• Dominik Hartl. 2025. Just one more page: Persuasive Technologies as an intervention strategy against bedtime procrastination. Master thesis 2015 (TU Wien).
• Gerfried Mikusch. 2015. Supporting Social Awareness across distributed Work Groups with interactive tangible Devices. Master thesis 2016 (TU Wien).
• Daniel Dudo. 2018. Designing a Tangible Programming Interface for the Internet of Things. Master thesis 2018 (TU Wien).
• Lisa Lengauer. 2018. Participatory Research for a Pressure-sensitive Pen For Children with Problems in Controlling Their Strength During Writing. Master thesis 2018 (FH Campus Wien).
• Johanna Pfabigan. 2018. Development of a Pressure-sensitive Pen For Children with Problems in Controlling Their Strength During Writing. Master thesis 2018 (FH Campus Wien).
• Patrizia Murko. 2019. Explorative Design of a gesture-based video game environment for people with dementia considering reminiscence triggers. Master thesis 2019 (FH Campus Wien).
• Lukas Wohofsky. 2019. Design and development of a programmable, individual remote control for infrared controlled devices for people with upper limb motor disabilities. Master thesis 2019 (FH Campus Wien).
• Michael Urbanek. 2020. Understanding Audio Games: Perspectives and Guides for Design. PhD thesis 2020 (TU Wien).
• Jaison Puthenkalam. 2020. Pen-Post: Using Smartpens to Support Active Communication for Elders. Master thesis 2020 (TU Wien).
• Georg Edlinger. Virtual Ball-run for Children with CVI. Master thesis, ongoing (TU Wien). 
• Markus Hassler. Requirements for a prototype that supports rehabilitation of patients with neglect following stroke. Master thesis, ongoing (TU Wien).

Bill of materials

• 1x TCS3200D color sensor
• 5x Neopixel ws2812b
• 1x resistor 330 Ohms
• 1x capacitor 1000 uF 6.3V
• 2x Eneloop AAA
• 1x battery holder for 2 AAA
• 1x small on/off switch
• 1x boost converter 5V
• 2x push button. These fit into our STL model.
• 1x charger for Eneloop batteries
• 1x power jack for charger. We used a 5.5mm/2.1mm DC barrel plug
• 1 x 6-pin stacking header
• 4 x small skrews

Resources

• Pictorial instructions as PDF
• STL models for 3D printing
• Arduino Code

Notes on pin connections

• The switch should be connected to VCC battery, VCC In Boost, and VCC of the power jack. Put VCC in die middle so that the decive is shut off while charging. 
• Connect VCC Out Boost and GND Boost to the Arduino's RAW and GND
• Neopixels' Data line is connected to 300 Ohms and then to Arduino D11
• Neopixels' VCC and GND is connected to the capacitor
• The push buttons are connected to GND and D3
• Colorsensor S3 goes to D7
• Colorsensor S2 goes to D6
• Colorsensor S0 goes to 5V
• Colorsensor S1 goes to GND
• Colorsensor VCC goes to D10
• Colorsensor Out goes tp D8

Research Statement

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has expanded rapidly since its establishment as a field, not even half a century ago. Today, it is concerned with almost every conceivable topic that deals with humans (or animals even) and technology. My research contributes to this eclectic endeavor by the creation and study of novel interactive devices, services, and interaction techniques, designed to support specific needs. These needs are often articulated by marginalized user groups like people with disabilities (in particular, in my more recent work for my habilitation), the interactive artifacts are often smart tangibles incorporating embedded systems, and the design process is regularly employed as an epistemological device for inquiry (“design-led” or “practice-based research” or “research through design”). That is, the whole human-centered design circle, from ideation to prototyping to evaluation, is used to unravel insights into design and related social phenomena by drawing on design’s capability to “pose questions” and to alter situations by the introduction of designed artifacts. In this course, rapid prototyping iterations allow the users or participants to receive first-hand experiences of novel artifacts or services and to further appropriate them according to their needs. These appropriations and the way people make use of the artifacts, again, constitute intended learning opportunities to contribute to design knowledge.

At the end of the first decade of the new century, mobile phone usage picked up momentum, and this now ubiquitous technology came along with an enormous impact on people’s life and society. For example, people started the everyday habit of creating an astonishing amount of digital photographs, only to leave them unattended on the storage space of their mobile devices and to never revisit them again. In my dissertation, I took a design-led and interdisciplinary route to explore ways people can capture valuable digital resources for remembering, which go beyond conventional (digital) photography. Facilitated by recent advancements in technology, I created a number of interactive artifacts for capturing media content like photos, videos, GPS coordinates, etc. with mobile phones. For example, my application “2sidez” triggered both front- and back-facing camera of mobile phones at the same time, resulting in digital photos with literally speaking two sides (back-side showing the photographer and front-side the motif). It was downloaded more than 250.000 times on Android devices, and this “experiment” led to a fruitful resource for people for dwelling in and reminiscing about the past as well as for conducting PhD research about people’s experiences with novel media formats to support remembering. Drawing on primarily qualitative research methods like “Thematic Analysis”, I synthesized the findings of the “2sidez” deployment and insights form my additional design interventions into a framework, supporting designers of digital memory systems in analyzing, understanding and exploiting digital memory retrieval cues (e.g., photo, video, audio, etc.).

In sum, the dissertation led to eight first-authored publications at established international conferences and journals. All of them explored how media content could be captured, related to each other, and experienced in innovative ways: (1) “Getting more out of your images: Augmenting photos for recollection and reminiscence” presented first work-in-progress at the British HCI Conference 2011. (2) “Capturing rich media through Media Objects on smartphones” and (3) “Through two different lenses: A tool for new perspectives into context” were both presented at the Australian HCI Conference 2012. The latter paper won the best paper award and was based on the “2sidez” app. (4) “Of unkempt hair, dirty shirts and smiling faces: Capturing behind the mobile camera”, presented at the Nordic HCI Conference 2012, and (5) “Duography in the classroom: Creative engagement with two-sided mobile phone photography” published in the International Journal of Mobile HCI 2015, were further publications about “2sidez” in different application areas. The remaining three of eight articles all explored how different media content could function as memory retrieval cues when combined with further contextual information: (6) “Making sense of rich data collections on mobiles” was presented at the European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics 2014, (7) “Digital archives on mobile phones with MEO” was published in the iournal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 2015 and (8) “De+re: A design concept for provoking meaningful interactive experiences” was presented at the International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia 2015.

My more recent research and my work for the habilitation connect to the dissertation work through the use of digital photography. There are a great number of marginalized user groups that can benefit strongly by means of digital photography and from communication technology, for example, to overcome social isolation or to spur their experience of self-efficacy and overall autonomy. Thus, taking a practice-based approach again, I created several design artifacts aimed at people with motor disabilities or at older people who are not used to information technology. Among other artifacts, I designed easy to operate digital cameras for capturing photos and sharing them online including associated digital photo-frame devices for receiving and displaying these images. This work led to several first authored publications (e.g.,” Making space to engage: An open-ended exploration of technology design with older adults” in International Journal of Mobile HCI 2015) and to the winning of the UINQA/ÖAR Design Competition for “A monitoring Device as assistive Lifestyle Technology: Combining functional Needs with Pleasure” (presented at Augmented Human International Conference 2013). I continued this strand of research by focusing on the theme of autonomy and by exploring how marginalized people can be supported by technology in living autonomously. Currently, a first-authored manuscript named “An autonomy-perspective on the design of assistive technology: Experiences of people with Multiple Sclerosis” is to appear at CHI'19. This EU-funded work investigated what the notion of autonomy meant to physically disabled people and what they thought technology could do for them. Moreover, I had the opportunity to advance my design and research by working with children with Autism as well as visually impaired children in a number of nationally funded projects. Especially, the latter project resulted in a series of publications at excellent conferences, which I authored or co-authored. In this work, we investigated the design space of occupational therapy (e.g., “The use(fullness) of therapeutic toys: Practice-derived design lenses for toy design” at Designing Interactive Systems 2018) and how novel interactive toys could be employed to build up competencies in affected children in order to strengthen their autonomy (e.g., “Interactive and open-ended sensory toys: Designing with therapists and children for tangible and visual interaction” presented at Tangible and Embodied Interaction 2018). Methodologically, I continued the use of qualitative research methods (e.g., by studying and employing “Grounded Theory” methods) and associated interpretative approaches to epistemology. While most of the dissertation design work was based on mobile phone and tablet applications, my newer artifacts are increasingly based on digital fabrication technologies like 3D-printing and laser-cutting. Those techniques enabled the above-mentioned design of interactive therapeutic toys or additional smart devices like toolkits for customizing accessible Internet computers (e.g., see my publication “Tailor-made accessible computers: An interactive toolkit for iterative co-design” presented at Tangible and Embodied Interaction 2018).

In conclusion, my research is characterized by practice-based interventions to support people with innovative, often smart and networked technologies. From a practical perspective, I make use of tools for digital fabrication like 3D-printers or laser-cutters for creating physical designs, and I complement this with higher-level programming frameworks like Arduino or the Android API to implement interactivity. Theoretically, I mostly draw on qualitative research methods to understand people’s experiences of their social world and of the technologies that surround them. This understanding in combination with own experiences made during iterative prototyping processes is the resource for my contributions to advancing design knowledge. Currently, I prepare the newer body of my work, in particular the research about technology, autonomy, and the need’s of marginalized user groups, for submission as my habilitation thesis.

Teaching Statement

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) concerns the design and assessment of interactive products with the user in mind. Hence, researchers, engineers, and designers working in HCI need an understanding of both technology and people. In more detail, professionals should develop technical skills as well as design competencies to create and analyze interactive artifacts situated in use. Moreover, they have to build up a repertoire of research methods to study how people appropriate these designs and to elaborate their insights scientifically. Apparently, the acquisition of such broad skills needs an ambitious training. To face this challenge, I chose to implement numerous hands-on and tangible design exercises in my courses in HCI and complement them with corresponding theory (see below for a course overview). In my experience, HCI is a highly suitable subject of study for combining practical exercises with theoretical considerations in order to create a deep, lasting, and also fun learning experience. Overall, my primary teaching objectives are three-fold:

• Students learn to conceive well-founded design concepts and to systematically implement them in soft- and hardware.
• Students learn to take the users’ perspective, and they realize the importance and multifaceted nature of social factors in interaction design.
• Students learn to justify and choose appropriate means for their work (e.g., selecting an appropriate prototyping technique or evaluation method) and can relate it to the scientific literature.

To accomplish these learning objectives, I motivate the students by incorporating cutting-edge and illustrative (and often fascinating) research, for example, on tangible or ubiquitous computing, and I draw on aforementioned practical hands-on activities. These can be “conventional” brainstorming sessions but also additional user-centered design methods or ideation techniques like paper prototyping or design/future workshops. For ensuring to engage students in relevant topics facilitated by hands-on experiences, I also created a number of optimized toolkits for my teaching. UbiKit [1], for example, enables students to quickly create tangible user interfaces by assigning capacitive touch-buttons to interactive functions. By means of UbiKit, the students were able to obtain quick feedback on their design proposals and interactive prototypes. This was both important for motivational reasons as well as to learn appropriate approaches to designing interactive products. Moreover, I developed a mobile phone application for gathering user requirements in an innovative fashion. Here, the motivation was to provide the students with a new perspective on the context of use and thus provoke interesting insights. This idea led to a publication at the OzCHI conference and finally won the best paper award [2]. I also regularly encourage students to conduct additional scientific research about their prototypes. So, one group of students developed a prototype ("LightSight") for children with vision impairment in one of my courses lately. This effort resulted in a publication [3] at the Designing Interactive Systems conference, and this also highlights the special eligibility of the domain of HCI for combining teaching with state-of-the-art research.

• Please note this link for a complete list of the courses that I have taught

Demo Videos from Building Interaction Interfaces and Beyond the Desktop

Following videos were created during the courses “Building Interaction Interfaces” and “Beyond the Desktop” of the master programme Media Informatics. The ideas and videos are property of the students. They work in groups, and each group is supposed to create about five prototypes of interactive systems and a corresponding video documentation, as part of these two courses.

The quality of the 'filmmaking' is not part of the grading; all that officially matters are the ideas, and how they implemented them. However, students often enjoy creating quite polished videos.

1. Video Prototype using "UbiKit"

This is a video prototype showing a concept of a smart rehabilitation set to be taken home by the patients. The students used the "UbiKit" (see also above) for creating the mock-up in the video.

2. Computer Game with an unconventional Controller

Here, students demonstrate a video game that they made using the Processing environment. They control the game with their own experimental input device. The objective of this exercise was to combine a custom-made piece of hardware with own software.

3. "LightSight"

This is the prototype already mentioned above, which was created as a therapeutic toy for young children with problems in vision and motor skills.

4. Body-Tracking/Natural User Interfaces

This video is a screen-recording in which we can see students play their own Kinect-based video game. Hence, the objective of this exercise was to create a game incoporating body-tracking.

5. "Mindbubble"

This is an "arty" project where the user can attach virtual notes and thoughts to locations in a museum. This information can be found and accessed by other visitors.

References

• [1] Güldenpfennig, F., Nunes, F., Subasi, Ö., & Urbanek, M. (2017). UbiKit: Learning to Prototype for Tangible and Ubiquitous Computing. In Proc British HCI’17.

• [2] Güldenpfennig, F., Reitberger, W., & Fitzpatrick, G. (2012c). Through two different Lenses: A Tool for new Perspectives into Context. In Proc OzCHI’12, 170-179. 

• [3] Salihodzic, H., Zilberburg, K., Chakhmaghi, N., Güldenpfennig, F., Fikar, P., & Ganhör, R. (2018). LightSight: A Dice to Meet the Eyes. In Proc Designing Interactive Systems (DIS’18).