Scientific tours

Scientific tours are guided visits to behavioral research facilities in Eindhoven. There is no extra charge for participation in these scientific tours; keep in mind that only a very limited amount of tickets is available.

Human-Technology Interaction
(Department of Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology)

With the rapid development of modern technology and the many options it has to offer, it becomes more and more important to design technical products, systems, and environments in such a way that they are useful, useable, enjoyable, and accessible to their potential users. It is essential that, besides development of technology itself, knowledge is gained about the way users interact with modern technology. The field of user-system interaction is becoming recognized worldwide as an important research area, also at the TU/e. This interdisciplinary field, in which several TU/e departments are involved in one way or another, is the specific research domain of the subdepartment of Human-Technology Interaction.

The research group of Human-Technology Interaction (HTI) conducts fundamental research to gain knowledge about user-system interaction. It studies questions related to visual perception (e.g., 3D perception), auditory perception (e.g., acoustic scene analysis), decision making (e.g., choices under information overload), persuasive technology (e.g., energy consumption feedback systems), human-robot interaction (e.g., robots for the elderly), gaming (e.g., physiological response in game play). HTI has extensive research facilities.

The tour of HTI labs will include:

• 3D lab
• Use lab: setup of the iCat as persuasive technology
• Psychological lab (cubicles): demo of Nao robot as assistive robot
• Game lab.

For more information, see HTI’s web site: http://w3.ieis.tue.nl/en/groups/hti/.

Philips HomeLab
Homelab is a permanent fully functional home laboratory built to study how people interact with prototypes of intelligent technology in a real-world environment. Through HomeLab, Philips researchers can better understand their needs and motivations to use technology, and bring better products to market in the quickest possible timeframe.

Homelab is also a laboratory where everything that happens can be observed, recorded and learned from. People moving around the HomeLab are watched by an observation leader and a team of behavioral psychologists. As HomeLab inhabitants use the technology, researchers can see what they fi nd comfortable and easy, or diffi cult and confusing.
The researchers use state-of-the-art technology, with a fully digital video observation and recording system. When someone in the HomeLab uses a certain feature, the control-room system records it automatically onto MPEG video. And because it’s digital, every time that feature is used, it can be recalled at the touch of a button.

The HomeLab is built as a two-storey house with a living, a kitchen, two bedrooms, a bathroom and a study. At a fi rst glance, the home does not show anything special, but a closer look reveals the black domes at the ceilings that are hiding cameras and microphones. The observation room adjacent to the Home has direct view into the Home. Signals captured by the cameras can be monitored on any of the four observation stations. Each observation station is equipped with two monitors and one desktop computer to control the cameras and to mark observed events. The marked events are time-stamped and appended to the video data.

When setting up an experiment in HomeLab, the researcher designs a coding scheme for the observation session, listing all prototypical behaviors that are expected to occur during the session. A sophisticated analysis is conducted to fi nd patterns in the data set.
For this analysis we use the software package Theme. An example of the use of Theme is an experimental study on the usability of an universal remote control.

For more information, see http://www.noldus.com/default/philips-homelab.