The Slovene Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community has been present at the CHI 2024 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems this year as well. Looking at CHI statistics and seeing HCI being ever more popular in Slovenia is exciting.

Four authors from Slovenia were co-authors on full papers submitted and two were successful. Researchers form the University of Maribor published this paper:

Bhattacharya, Aditya, Simone Stumpf, Lucija Gosak, Gregor Stiglic, and Katrien Verbert. “EXMOS: Explanatory Model Steering Through Multifaceted Explanations and Data Configurations.” In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-27. 2024. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642106

In addition, Jordan Aiko Deja from the University of Primorska was a Global Inclusion and Equity co-chair together with Martina Schuß, Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt, Germany, and Aimée Sousa Calepso, University of Stuttgart, Germany.

The 8th HCI SI conference took place on Friday, January 26, 2024, hosted at the University of Maribor, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The program delved into a diverse array of topics within the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). These included investigations into methods for evaluating driver’s situational awareness and enhancing the precision of proximity sensors for vehicle parking assistance, utilising augmented reality for visualizing human anatomy, enhancing digital content with 3D-printed physical counterparts, improving the learning process of piano improvisation, and various other subjects. The keynote address was delivered by Dr. Elisabeth Lex from Graz University of Technology. Her presentation, titled “Trustworthy Recommender Systems,” provided attendees with insights into how recent research and emerging regulations in AI technologies impact ethical considerations such as bias, fairness, and privacy in the development of recommender systems.

See you!

The programme of the HCI SI 2023 is available.

The conference is free to attend. Attendees cover their own expenses to reach the venue.  
Registration is necessary: https://forms.gle/jqbbsnACmoxyeK6q6.

Location:

FERI Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor
Lecture room G2-P01
Address: Koroška cesta 46, 2000 Maribor

PROGRAMME (detailed)

Happy to present the HCI SI 2023 keynote speaker Elizabeth Lex. Elisabeth is a Computer Science professor at Graz University of Technology, where she heads the Recommender Systems and Social Computing Lab. Her main expertise includes machine learning, data science, recommender systems, and natural language processing.

Abstract

Recommender systems play a pivotal role in shaping our digital experiences, influencing the content we see online, the products we consider purchasing, and the entertainment choices we make, such as which movies to watch. The increased adoption of deep learning technologies in recommender systems, while enhancing their effectiveness, has also raised substantial concerns regarding their transparency and trustworthiness. Critical issues such as bias, fairness, and privacy are increasingly coming under scrutiny, both in public discourse and academic research. In response, there’s a growing momentum in developing recommender systems that are not only efficient but also uphold these ethical standards.

In this talk, we will discuss recent work to address concerns of bias, fairness, and user privacy in recommender systems and briefly touch upon recent regulatory frameworks to govern AI technologies.

Call to Action

Mark your calendars and don’t miss this opportunity to gain insights from a leader in AI and recommender systems. Join us to explore how we can shape a more trustworthy digital future.

The CfP for Human-Computer Interaction Slovenia conference 2023 edition (which will take place in 2024 @ University of Maribor) is out and available HERE.

IMPORTANT DATES

• Submission deadline: 22 December 2023 29 December 2023
• Notification to authors: 15 January 2024
• Conference: 26 January 2024

See you in Maribor on Friday 26 January 2024.

The Slovenian HCI community was present at CHI 2023 with the following contributions:

Good Day Manager! Exploring Social Relationships In NFT-based Play-to-Earn Games
Richard Lance Parayno (Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg, Salzburg University of Applied Sciences)
Janna Aika Deja (University of Siegen)
Tyrone Justin Sta. Maria (De La Salle University)
Briane Paul V. Samson (De La Salle University)
Jordan Aiko Deja (De La Salle University, University of Primorska)

Interactive Paper Displays: Enabling Digital Functionalities on Physical Paper
Cuauhtli Campos (University of Primorska, Innorenew CoE)
Matjaž Kljun (University of Primorska, Faculty of Information Studies)
Jakub Sandak (InnoRenew CoE)
Klen Čopič Pucihar (University of Primorska, Faculty of Information Studies)

Jordan was also a Global Inclusion and Equity co-Chair together with Cuauhtémoc Rivera Loaiza, Universidad Michoacana, and Marisol Wong-Villacres, Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral

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Povezava do plakata: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3312986

Članek je nastal v sodelovanju z raziskovalci iz Utrecht univerze (https://www.uu.nl/en), NARA Inštituta za znanost in tehnologijo (http://www.naist.jp/en/) in Aalto univerze (https://www.aalto.fi/en). Povzetek članka je “Augmenting arbitrary physical objects with digital content leads to the missing interface problem, because those objects were never designed to incorporate such digital content and so they lack a user interface. A review of related work reveals that current approaches fail due to limited detection fidelity and spatial resolution. Our proposal, based on Google Soli’s radar sensing technology, is designed to detect micro-gestures on objects with sub-millimeter precision. Preliminary results with a custom gesture set show that Soli’s core features and traditional machine learning models (Random Forest and Support Vector Machine) do not lead to robust recognition accuracy, and so more advanced techniques should be used instead, possibly incorporating additional sensor features.”

Povezava do članka: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3300333

Članek je nastal v sodelovanju z raziskovalci iz Lancaster Univerze (https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/), Univerze v St Andrews (https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/) in Cobourg univerze (https://www.coburg-university.de/) ter creativne industrije. Povzetek članka je: “Digital-augmentation of print-media can provide contextually relevant audio, visual, or haptic content to supplement the static text and images. The design of such augmentation—its medium, quantity, frequency, content, and access technique—can have a significant impact on the reading experience. In the worst case, such as where children are learning to read, the print medium can become a proxy for accessing digital content only, and the textual content is avoided. In this work, we examine how augmented content can change the reader’s behaviour with a comic book. We first report on the usage of a commercially available augmented comic for children, providing evidence that a third of all readers converted to simply viewing the digital media when printed content is duplicated. Second, we explore the design space for digital content augmentation in print media. Third, we report a user study with 136 children that examined the impact of both content length and presentation in a digitally-augmented comic book. From this, we report a series of design guidelines to assist designers and editors in the development of digitally-augmented print media.”

So-organizirali smo prvo delavnico v sklopu ACM CHI na temo “human-drone interaction” (http://hdi.famnit.upr.si/) oz. interakcije človek-dron. V zadnjih leti se je uporaba dronov zelo povečala tako v zasebne kot v komercialne namene.

human drone interaction workshop

Izjemno zanimanje je svojevrstno razburljivo in hkrati grozljivo. Droni prinašajo namreč veliko prednosti kot so na primer dostava na oddaljene lokacije, pomoč ljudem s posebnimi potrebami, športnikom, kmetijstvu in reševanju. Hkrati pa se postavlja vprašanje kaj pomeni imeti drone v svojem okolju iz vidika varnosti, zasebnosti in nadzora. Na delavnici, ki je potekala 5. maja – dan po tem, ko je bila z dronom prvič na svetu dostavljena človeška ledvica, smo se dotaknili teh in drugih tem ter zaključili, da samo sodelovajnje z vladami pri odstranjevanju ovir za uporabo dronov in raziskovalci drugih področij (tehnologi, sociologi, fiziki …), lahko premagamo ovire pri uspešni inegraciji dronov v naša okolja.