Instructors: Anke Hirsch, Nina Knieriemen, Frederik Wiehr, Lukas Flohr

 

Description

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) connect physical and virtual components in real-time.
Increasing automation transforms the role of humans in CPS from active operators to relatively passive observants who only perform an oversight task. From a human factors perspective, this results in several challenges, e.g., inappropriate trust of humans in the automated systems, insufficient situational awareness, and loss of skills (Manzey, 2012). Easy-to-understand interactions of humans and automated cyber-physical systems are crucial to counteract those issues. Therefore, it is essential to understand the interrelation between people, systems, and the environment. Human-centred design (e.g., described in ISO 9241-210) provides a straightforward framework for design.

Our topics will be from autonomous mobility-on-demand (AMoD) and mixed-initiative control between a CPS and its users. In the first area, you will create solutions for trustworthy passenger information systems to counteract the acceptance hurdles of future AMoD systems. In the latter area, we will apply scenarios like autonomous drones and highly automated driving (HAD). For example, the UX prototypes are concerned about generating additional multimodal explanations to improve safety for the handover procedure.

In this seminar, you will work in small project groups supervised by one lecturer and apply collaborative UX design methods to create new UI concepts for automated CPS in a human-centered way. Based on a thoroughly conducted analysis, we will iteratively design, prototype, evaluate, and refine the concepts throughout the semester to counteract potential user acceptance hurdles and human factor challenges from early development phases.

The Seminar is planned for a hybrid mode. Regular dates (Wednesdays 14:00 – 16:00) will be conducted remotely and accompanied by two 'in-person' workshops (if the corona situation allows; see timeline).

IMPORTANT: Before signing up to the seminar, please make sure that you will be available on all dates mentioned in the timeline since attendance to both the remote and in-person seminar dates is compulsory.

 

Imporant Dates

Kick-Off: 20 April | 14:00 s.t. – 16:00 (Online via MS Teams) | Download Slides

Progress Presentation (Research & Analysis | Online):
11 May 14:00 – 16:00
18 May 14:00 – 16:00

Ideation Workshop @Ergosign (in person):
25 May 09:00 – 16:00

Progress Presentation (Prototyping & Evaluation Plan | Online):
13 July 14:00 – 16:00
20 July 14:00 – 16:00

Final Presentation @Ergosign (in person):
28 September 09:00 – 16:00

Final Report Submission Deadline:
30 September 23:59

 

Requirements

To participate you should have

• basic knowledge in Human-Computer Interaction (passed core lecture)
• some experience with UI prototyping tools (e.g., Sketch, Figma, Botmock) OR good programming skills in web development, if you prefer to develop your prototype.
• this seminar aims primarily at master students in Computer Science who preferably hold a B.Sc. degree in this or related field.
• be present in Saarbrücken for the dates in the list above

 

Template

 For the report, we require you to use the offical ACM template. You can use either LaTeX offline or directly open it in Overleaf.