After successful completion of the course, students are able to finish an individual project where a prototypical application or an artifact is developed, which is driven by a user-centered design process. The result of this project is the artifact itself as well as the experiences students gain in a user-centered design process.

Students enhance their knowledge on qualitative research methods to obtain design requirements and goals. They learn how to meet these requirements by designing a working computational artifact.

Recent advances in sensing, processing, and machine learning are expected to gradually transition our world into a new era where machines take initiative and proactively approach their users, while gradually fading into sensitive application areas with societal and ethical consequences. This development is propelled by new modalities of interaction, such as voice, virtual/augmented reality, emerging sensing opportunities introspecting users, and new capabilities of predicting user needs and intentions.

The course offers the opportunity to students to

• explore relevant contexts of cooperative human-machine environments in areas as healthcare and sports, manufacturing, architecture and urban planning, industrial shop floors, automated/assisted driving and mobility, or mundane everyday life decision-making,
• develop a conceptual approach,
• implement a physical prototype (access to material/workshop/tools/guidance is part of this course),
• design and plan a user study for evaluating the concept and the prototype.

This course provides continuous mentorship in both individual and group sessions in order to support

• problem finding
• concept development
• prototype implementation
• planning of evaluation
• analysing the evaluation results

How to apply?

Interested students should reach out to the corresponding lecturers by email.

The infection numbers in the Covid-19 pandemic may change this course. This might result in this course being switched to online mode, e.g., the lectures might be held online.

ECTS Breakdown

Total: 150 hours (6 ECTS)

• Analysis, concept, and design: 40 hrs
• Implementation: 70 hrs
• Evaluation: 20 hrs
• Documentation by Text/Video/Poster: 10 hrs  
• Preparing of presentation: 7 hrs
• Presentation/Feedback: 3 hrs 

• The produced artifact and its quality and functionality
• Active participation in the user-centered design process
• Quality of the documentation, presentations, and final report
• Documentation by text, poster, and video