Computing devices and digitally enhanced artefacts are ubiquitously present in most human activities and are smoothly integrated in the fabric of our everyday life, making our living space “smart”. Interactive multimedia content is pervasively available in large or small displays; sensors and actuators are embedded in objects, appliances, vehicles, lights, or furniture; digital “extensions of our body” are available through wearable devices like smart watches, wristbands, or virtual/augmented reality headsets such as Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR, or Microsoft Hololens. Physical artifacts and digital devices are Internet-connected, and users communicate with them using new interaction paradigms that go beyond “click” or “touch" and include gestures, body movements, tangible manipulation, or text-based or speech-based conversations (which are also used to interact with data e digital services).

While the power of technology increases and opens up extraordinary opportunities for new applications in many domains, we also need to face the challenge of how to design and evaluate application interfaces and interaction modes so that end users can use technological solutions in a meaningful way for meaningful tasks.

This course helps students to address this challenge, and provides some methodological and technological know-how needed to master the complexity of these new technologies and to develop innovative solutions in this arena. The course also stimulates a thinking “out of the box” attitude and the attention to user needs and requirements, which are crucial to exploit the full potential of novel interactive technologies and to address the related challenges.

After this course, the students will be able to capitalize on their technical competence and their creativity to master and integrate innovative hardware and software technlogies (depending on the chosen project) in order to develop new interactive solutions  that address complex user requirements in different domains.

TEACHING AND LEARNING APPROACH

The teaching/learning approach is project-based (students learn by doing a project) and problem-based (project work starts from users’ needs and requirements). Project-related activities will start since the beginning of the course and intense project tutoring will be offered in the classroom, with the weekly supervision of teacher and teaching assistants.

Please notice that for organizational reasons we will not be able to offer tutoring after the end of the semester; therefore students are strongly recommended to develop their project work during the course to benefit of the support of the teacher and the teaching assistance.

The project activities will also benefit from on going collaborations with educational/therapeutic institutions and with companies and research labs participating in research projects with Politecnico di Milano, including TIM, Reply, CHICCO Artsana, IBM Watson Labs US, MIT Media Lab, Fraternita' e Amizia Onlus, L'Abilita' Onlus. Examples of projects developed in current and past collaborations can be found in http://i3lab.elet.polimi.it/.

Testimonials from the above partners will offer (on site or remote) live seminars during the course and in some case will be involved in the students’ projects, to help course attendants to better understand users’ needs and requirements, and to provide feedbacks on their results.

Most projects can be extended to master thesis. For the best projects, students will be invited to write scientific papers about their work and to submit them to outstanding international conferences, or to participate to international student competitions. They will receive funding to attend these events in case their submissions are accepted. In teh past years, some AUI students had the opportunity to attend ACM CHI, the most important conference worldwide on Human Computer Interaction, IEEE Roman, one of the most important conferences in Interactive Robotis, and ACM ASSETS , the most important conference in assistive digital technology, and to present their project in national events such as Meet-me-tonight (La notte dei ricercatori).

PROJECT TOPICS

Students’ projects focus on the design, development and evaluation of applications based on smart objects, wearable virtual anag augmente reality, chatbots, for a wide range of domains: learning and play, tourism, fashion/retail, cognitive therapy. Technologies include smart phones, Arduino and Raspberry, smart lighting, smart watches, wearables visors, Kinect, bio-sensing devices, conversational technologies (e.g., IBM cognitive computing tools).

CONTENTS

Course lectures will cover 3 main subject areas:

• “Beyond the desktop” interaction paradigms: focusing ontangible interaction (physical manipulation of “smart” interconnected physical objects that are digitally enhanced with sensors and actuators, e.g. using Arduino technology); full body interaction ( enabled by Microsoft Kinect, Leap, Intel Perceptual Computing); wearable interaction (smart watches; virtual/augmented reality headsets such as Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR, or Microsoft Hololens); conversational interaction (using advanced cognitive computing and NLP technologies). Each paradigm is discussed from different perspectives: rationale/vision/design principles; up-to-date implementation technology and off-the shelf development tools

• Development process of interactive application: focusing on the  maintasks involved in the development of interactive applications (and the methods to perform them): requirements elicitation (Goal oriented approaches); design (scenario based approaches); prototyping (sketching approaches); Empowering the user: DIY (Do It Yourself) and End User Development approaches.

• Experimental Research in Human Computer Interaction. User-based experimental research is crucial to understand human needs and requirements for a service-to-be, to generate new design ideas, and to evaluate an interactive artefact (either a prototype or a deployed system) in terms of quality for its intended target. Basic concepts and methods of experimental research are discussed, including: research questions; dependent/independent variables; between v.s. within-group design; qualitative vs. quantitative data; data gathering techniques (observation, surveys; interviews; focus groups; automated data collection); data analysis; reliability and validity

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND TEACHING MATERIAL

 -        Course slides (available on Beep)

 -    Scientific papers of topics related to the selected project (5-10)

 -      Selected chapters of the book “Jonathan Lazar, Jinjuan Heidi Feng, Harry Hochheiser, Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction, Wiley 2009 (pdf available for enrolled students)

 Online material: selected chapters of

 -        Jennifer Preece et al., "Interaction Design". http://www.id-book.com/)

 -        Roberto Polillo, Facile da usare - Una moderna introduzione all'ingegneria della usabilità - selected chapters (http://www.rpolillo.it/index.php/libri/facile-da-usare/)

Prerequisites depend on the chosen project topic, ranging from knowledge of Json, JavaScript, C#, Unity, to basics of electronics. 

Students are evaluated on their project work, which can be performed either individually or (preferred) in group (max 3 students). The project deliverables include the technology developed, one or more video scenarios, a short project presentation, an accurate technical documentation, a user manual and, when applicable, an evaluation report. Examples of students' projects developed in past years can be found here http://i3lab.elet.polimi.it/.

The evaluation criteria include: Effort invested in the project activity; Active participation to the tutoring sessions; Originality, complexity, and richness of the solutions; Methodological and technical correctness of the solutions (including consistency with the requirements); Completeness and communication quality of the documentation