OVERVIEW

The course provides fundamental skills on the development process of non-traditional innovative user interfaces, characterized by full-body multimodal interaction, emotions and non-verbal social signals. Topics addressed include psychoacoustics, haptic perception, multimodal integration, usability, quality of experience, development cycle of full-body, affective and social multimodal interfaces. The teaching will be characterized by examples and exercises within professional contexts with particular reference to technologies for cultural welfare, such as active experience of audiovisual cultural content, participatory interactive applications for social inclusion, therapy and rehabilitation, performing arts.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

To provide fundamental skills on the process of developing non-traditional user interfaces, characterized by multimodal, non-verbal interaction, embodiment, affective computing and non-verbal social signals. Topics addressed include perception (psychophysics of vision, psychoacoustics, haptic perception, multimodal integration), usability, quality of experience, development cycle of full-body, affective and social multimodal interfaces. The teaching will be characterized by examples and exercises within professional contexts: active use of audiovisual cultural contents, interactive experiences for social inclusion, therapy and rehabilitation, participatory experiences in the performing arts.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course provides the student with the methodology, the theory, and the techniques for the design of interactive products to support the way people communicate and interact in their everyday and working lives. This relies on the mastery of the development process for the understanding of the capabilities and desires of people and on the kinds of technology available to interaction designers, together with a knowledge of how to identify requirements and develop them into a suitable design. The course will cover standard techniques as well as an introduction to advanced topics, including embodied interction design, multimodal interfaces, sound and music computing, interactive sonification, haptic interaction, and emotional and social interfaces. Further, students will learn to design and manage motion capture sessions using the Qualisys industry standard motion capture system available at Casa Paganini-InfoMus.

TEACHING METHODS

Lectures (frontal lessons) and lab exercises using the resources of the InfoMus-Casa Paganini research centre, including the Qualisys motion capture system. 

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The curricula ACM on HCI.

Foundations on psychoacoustics, haptics, multimodal interaction in humans. 

Human-centred interactive systems. Usability and User Experience.

Interfaces: command-based, WIMP and GUI, Virtual reality, Mobiles, Multimedia, Speech, Touch, Air-based gesture, Motion Capture, Haptic, Shareable, Tangible, Wearable, AR/MR, Multimodal.

Design, development and evaluation of interfaces: the ID development process. Embodied interaction design.

Design Principles – Usability: learnability, visibility, errors, efficiency.

Design Techniques: Task, User, Domain Analysis, Prototyping, User testing

theories and models to support the design process of multimodal interfaces.

Evaluation and research methods:

Experiment design; Controlled experiments; Data analysis

Sound and Music Computing, Interactive sonification

Emotional and Social Interfaces.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Course slides and suggested readings available online on the Files of the Teams Class of the course.
• Preece, Rogers, Sharp (2023) “Interaction Design – Beyond Human-Computer Interaction”, Wiley, 6th Ed. 

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

LESSONS

LESSONS START

https://easyacademy.unige.it/portalestudenti/

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

Oral exam.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

Oral exam will verify critical reasoning skills, use and mastery of vocabulary and theories and techniques relating to the design of multimodal user interfaces.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Students with disabilities or learning disorders are allowed to use specific modalities and supports that will be determined on a case-by-case basis in agreement with the Delegate of the Engineering courses in the Committee for the Inclusion of Students with Disabilities. Students are invited to contact the teacher of this course and copy the Delegate (https://unige.it/commissioni/comitatoperlinclusionedeglistudenticondisabilita.html).