Page History

• Human Factors and Interaction Design of ICTs
• Usability, Usable Security, User Research, (Participatory) ideation and iterative prototyping
• Social Computing, Technology and the cultural domain - “Culture over IP”
• Ubiquitous and mobile HCI
• Computer Supported Cooperative World - Social Computing/Social Informatics, Cooperative Systems

• Computer Networks --- design, operation, and use
• Internet of Things, Internet of People
• Decentralization
• NEW: Federated Online Social Networks (Fediverse and Mastodon)

If you are interested in "Praktika" or Bachelor/Master-Theses in the Area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), please contact:

Oliver Hödl (oliver.hoedl@univie.ac.at)

Florian Güldenpfennig (florian.gueldenpfennig@univie.ac.at)

Opera.Guru is an application suite to provide subtitles for live opera performances. (see www.opera.guru for details) The existing application contains a web-based frontend and smartphone app (Android/iOS) and a web-based CMS. The task of this thesis is to add new funcionality and improve existing ones. The goal of this extension is to use the Opera.Guru application suite for events other than opera and to access new user groups as well as new application scenarios. Basic programming skills and knowledge with mobile, web and server applications are recommended. The work for this thesis will include a user study to evaluate the web app.

See the project's website for further information and finished theses about opera.guru

Opera.Guru is an application suite to provide subtitles for live opera performances. (see www.opera.guru for details) The existing application contains a smartphone app (Android/iOS) and a web-based CMS. The task of this thesis is to develop a new web app in addition to the existing smartphone app. The goal of this extension is to use the Opera.Guru application suite for events other than opera and to access new user groups as well as new application scenarios. Basic programming skills and knowledge with mobile, web and server applications (Xamarin for Android/iOS apps, IIS) are recommended. The work for this thesis will include a user study to evaluate the web app.

See the project's website for further information and finished theses about opera.guru.

The current prototype of the SANDRA project is implemented as a display mounted inside a real bass drum. The display is powered by a Raspberry Pi mini computer that runs a Python program for the visualization. It is connected to the drum kit controller via an Arduino microcontroller that handles the communication using the MIDI standard. Several “sets” containing different visualizations can be selected using a custom interface that is also showing the current set number to the drummer. The visualizations are hard coded into the software at this point.

Further work will include making the software more modular to enable the drummer to easily create new visualizations and sets. A communication form between the Raspberry Pi and the microcontroller will be needed to update its functionalities without having to flash the ROM for every change in the sets. The hardware may also be updated to be redundant as a measure of fault tolerance.

To work within this project is possible as theses (bachelor or master) or praktika (P1 or P2) which can be discussed with the supervisor. Further information is available on the project's website.

Im Rahmen der Entwicklung hin zu einer "Hochgeschwindigkeitsdemokratie" arbeiten wir an einer eParticipation-Plattform mit, die zur vermehrten Einbindung interessierter BürgerInnen in politische, insbesondere parlamentarische Prozesse führen soll. Das Spektrum reicht dabei von Ideenfindungsprozessen bis hin zur Kommentierung von Gesetzesvorlagen. Besonders interessant sind dabei Konzepte zur nachhaltigen Beteiligung und zur Überwindung der Schwelle zwischen physischer und Online-Diskussion.

The CoConUT project (http://coconut.cosy.wien) features smartphone apps which collect sensor data (location, speed, noise, nearby Bluetooth devices, heart rate, etc.) for each participant during mobile field studies. Result is a time series which shows information about the context and possibly interesting events the field study participants encountered („Why did the participant slow down on the corner?“, „Why were so many people present nearby during this time period?“, etc.). The data sets hereby consist of sensor data collected during a field study on the participants' smartphones. These time series data should be visualized in a web app and enriched by meaningful analyses to enable exploration and potentially reasoning.

Requirements: You have already attended either the Vis and/or the HCI lecture and had good grades. You are fit in Android programming. You don't shy away from statistics.

Die Elektrifizierung der Gitarre und der Synthesizer haben vor hundert bzw. fünfzig Jahren die Musik drastisch verändert. Heute sind es digitale und mobile Technologien aller Art von Smartphones, über Mikrocomputer bis hin zur Sensortechnik und künstlicher Intelligenz, die Musik, das Musikmachen und den Musikkonsum verändern. Dazu gehören neue digitale Musikinstrumente und Klangwelten genauso wie neue Interaktionsformen in der Live-Musik, die das Publikum mit den Musikern "vernetzen". Aufbauend auf unsere Forschungsprojekte Breaking The Wall (https://www.piglab.org/breakingthewall) und Sparkling Instruments (http://www.piglab.org/sparkling-instruments) sowie Music Participation (http://www.musicparticipation.com/) bieten sich viele Möglichkeiten für Bachelor- und Masterarbeiten sowie Praktika (P1 und P2) für alle Musik- und Computer-Interessierten.

Design or method cards are an approach to find inspiration and promote innovation, to think about user needs, behaviour and interaction, to seek for sustainability and to enable gamification and playfulness. The Design Cards To Go Web App (https://designcards.cosy.univie.ac.at/) is a web-based application to provide card sets online. Currently, the app implements the TMAP Design Cards for the design of technology-mediated audience participation in live music. This topic can be done as Bachelor thesis or Praktika (P1, P2)

The CoConUT project (http://coconut.cosy.wien) features smartphone apps which collect sensor data (location, speed, noise, nearby Bluetooth devices, heart rate, etc.) for each participant during mobile field studies. Result is a time series which shows information about the context and possibly interesting events the field study participants encountered („Why did the participant slow down on the corner?“, „Why were so many people present nearby during this time period?“, etc.). The data sets hereby consist of sensor data collected during a field study on the participants' smartphones. These time series data should be visualized in the smartphone app itself and enriched by meaningful analyses to enable exploration and potentially reasoning. Focus hereby lies on the visualization for small device screens (smartphone / tablet).

Requirements: You have already attended either the Vis and/or the HCI lecture and had good grades. You are fit in Android programming. You don't shy away from statistics.

While being on the move the error rate for smartphone usage presumably is higher. But which kinds of errors occur and when do they occur? Do they occur at home, at one's workplace, while being in transit? Is there a difference whether the user is stressed or relaxed? This thesis will explore the aforementioned questions for a specific usage scenario. For example by means of an enhanced Open Source keyboard for Android a deeper look at typing errors on the go could be made. Several other scenarios are possible: mobile security (e.g. while entering the locking pattern), navigation, and so on.

Requirements: You are fit in Android programming. You don't shy away from statistics.

There are several frameworks which try to automatically assess the context and activity of the user (e.g. the Google Activity framework), but automatically detecting current context and activity remain a challenge. One possibility is to ask the user via notifications and obtain contextual data on a subjective basis, which is highly obtrusive, but quite correct. Another way is using Machine Learning or heuristics to determine the circumstances by automatically evaluating data on the smartphone itself.

In this work, you will explore options to assess information about the user's context and activities.

Requirements: You are fit in Android programming. You don't shy away from statistics. This preferably is either a P1/P2 or master thesis topic, but it's also possible to take this as an highly ambitious bachelor thesis topic.

This is an umbrella topic for several works potentially possible in the scope of the CoConUT framework. If you're interested in working on the project, or have some great ideas yourself, please contact Svenja Schröder (Svenja.schroeder@univie.ac.at).

Diese Bachelorarbeit ist eine Zusammenarbeit mit einem Studierenden der klinischen Psychologie. Gegenstand ist die Entwicklung und Evaluation einer Smartphone-Applikation, die mithilfe einer Kombination verschiedener psychologisch erprobter Methoden die mentale Gesundheit bei Jugendlichen und jungen Erwachsenen verbessern soll. Während der klinisch-psychologische Teil der Bachelorarbeit sich mit den klinisch-psychologischen Konzepten und der Durchführung der Evaluation auseinandersetzt, wird der informatische Teil die Entwicklung eines motivationalen Konzeptes (Serious Gaming) und die Umsetzung der App mittels eines User Centered Design Cycles umfassen. In einem iterativen soll die Usability der App schrittweise verbessert werden, sodass am Ende des gemeinsamen Aufwandes ein funktionierender App-Prototyp steht.

Voraussetzungen: HCI-Vorlesung muss besucht worden sein, Kenntnisse in Programmierung für Android erforderlich

In the context of the COSY IoT-Lab, a first prototype of a web application was developed, which enables users to manage Smart-Home devices securely via access policies. Interface and Interaction Design of this prototype is not yet up to the task. As a next step, it is necessary to iterate on this prototype and its ABAC policy concept, enhance its interface and interaction design and conduct a user study to validate it,

For this topic, you will (1) conduct a literature and related work analysis around interfaces for related smart home systems, (2) familiarize yourself with the Smart Home solution currently under development in our research group and the existing web app prototype, (3) develop a novel concept of interface and interaction design that suits both the web interface and the requirements of usable design of security measures, (4) implement your concept as a next interation of the web app prototype and (5) validate your results with a small user study.

Testing and verification will be conducted in the COSY:Lab using existing equipment and development and verification environment.

This topic aims at utilizing a chatbot-type agent to interact with users of a Smart-Home environment. A conversation-based interaction/service design is to be designed to support Smart-Home-related tasks, such as (1) adding and removing IoT-devices to the Smart Home, (2) effective management of access and security policies (ABAC), (3) everyday usage.

Your task is to create a chat-bot interaction/service design with regard to usability-related qualities (simplicity, usable and understandable security features) and meaningful features, and make use of the existing Smart-Home setting of COSY:Lab to develop a chat-bot prototype for this context. A small user trial should then collect feedback and test for conceptual feasibility and usability.

This thesis is about interaction design and prototypical implementation of a chat-bot which supports a healthy lifestyle. A prototype exists already, and your core job is to incorporate motivational design, e.g. by means of gamification, in order to support the user with finding meaningful fitness goals. To achieve this, you can make full use of the existing prototype feature-set (already integrated APIs: Google Calendar, Fitbit, Recipe API, Work-Out API) and extend it if necessary.

This thesis is about usability evaluation of a chat-bot which supports a healthy lifestyle. Your core job is to conduct a usability study on an existing prototype. This will include group discussions with users and a questinaire-based evaluation of usage practice.

Note: This topic is only available as P1/P2.

This thesis is about interaction design and prototyping of a community platform ("Smart Grätzel") that incorporates IoT devices. This thesis comprises (1) defining a social software concept that supports a given community by incorporating software (e.g. a web-platform, a chat-bot) and IoT devices (e.g sensors or displays), (2) creating a prototype, (3) conducting a small user trial to explore/validate meaning from a user perspective.

This topic is about personalized services. With interfaces getting more and more "smart", possibilities for adaptive functionality and adaptive interaction concepts widen, taking into account the users' preferences, current state or overall personality. This points to the question: Can adapting to situative states and/or personal attributes of a user improve the user experience, usability and overall "successful" usage of a software?

This thesis comprises (1) the identification of a suitable setting for a comparative study (e.g. see Grätzelbot topics, Healthy-Living-Bot topics, or your own topic), (2) the enhancement of the respective user-interface to support adaptive behavior/interaction design, (3) the realization of a comparative usability/user experience study.

Note: This topic is only available as P1/P2 or Master's Thesis.

This topic is about computer-supported community building. Social networks emanate from purposeful social mingling and interaction and can bring about significant positive social change, a process that can be specifically supported and nurtured, e.g. as described by Plastrik and Taylor (1). While the authors have created their framework before there were social networks like Facebook on the Internet, it seems clear that today's technology can add a lot to this effort.

This thesis is about (1) creating a social software concept that supports the building of ad-hoc social communities, following Plastrik and Taylors approach, and investigating how the specific network goals defined by them can be supported by ICT, (2) prototyping this concept and (3) conducting a small user trial to test for conceptual feasibility.

(1) https://networkimpact.org/downloads/NetGainsHandbookVersion1.pdf

Note: This topic is only available as P1/P2 or Master's Thesis.

While social networks are very popular among younger people, none of them have been designed from their perspective, putting them first. This topic is about designing a social network from the perspective of youth/young persons. The thesis comprises (1) the participatory design of a social network concept that is based in the interests, wishes and needs of young persons, (2) the prototypical realization of this concept, (3) conducting a small user trial to validate the prototype.

Note: This topic is only available as P1/P2 or Master's Thesis.

This thesis is about designing and creating a smart phone application that supports activities undertaken by the scouts, a worldwide youth movement. The functionality can focus around different areas: (1) An outdoor, location-based gaming application, (2) a social diary aimed at collecting experiences, (3) an application that supports connecting scouts worldwide, ..

The thesis comprises (1) the design of an application concept (2) the prototypical realization of this concept, (3) conducting a small user trial with members of the scout movement to validate the prototype.

Note: This topic is only available as P1/P2 or Master's Thesis.

Die Wiener Ballsaison ist nicht nur einzigartig und ein besonderes Erlebnis für alle Besucher, sondern auch ein wichtiger Faktor für den Tourismus, die Wirtschaft und das Image der Stadt Wien. Egal ob auf großen oder kleinen Bällen, im Vordergrund stehen Musik, Tanz und Unterhaltung in eleganter Atmosphäre. Doch auch in den Ballsaal hat auch nach über hundert Jahren die digitale Technik Einzug gehalten. Seien es die Smartphones der Besucher, große Bildschirme auf den Gängen, komplexe Lichtshows oder Barcode-Scanner am Eingang statt der herkömmlichen Eintrittskarte. Die Ballbesucher tanzen und unterhalten sich nicht mehr ausschließlich, sondern posten die schönsten Eindrücke online in diversen sozialen Medien. Am Charakter eines Balles selbst hat sich nun nicht viel geändert. Aber die Möglichkeiten zur Kommunikation, Interaktion und letztendlich Unterhaltung in diesem Rahmen sind mehr geworden. Das wirft unmittelbar Fragen auf: Wie können digitale Systeme im Rahmen eines Balles genutzt oder weiterentwickelt werden und welchen Bedarf gibt es? Die konkreten Fragestellungen für eine Abschlussarbeit in diesem Themenkomplex sind vielseitig und können sowohl technischer als auch gestalterischer Natur sein.

The objective of this Praktikum or Bachelor's Thesis is to explore how sensor readings, such as energy data, can be displayed on small devices (e.g., 240 x 240 pixels) to offer users interesting information on small gadgets in their daily lives.

The topic may also be expanded into a master's thesis if applicable.

Programming microcontrollers using the Arduino IDE and relevant display libraries will be essential for this project.

When evaluating interactive applications such as web applications, mobile apps, smart IoT gadgets, etc., the interactions of the users play a crucial role. To be able to analyze these within user studies, they must be logged (e.g., by calling a URL on a study server, provided the interactive application is connected to the Internet). Later, this information becomes invaluable in research contexts.

The goal of this work is to develop an interaction logger for user studies as a web application (technology stack of your choice). The project can be conducted as a bachelor’s thesis, master’s thesis, or "Informatik Praktikum". For the latter, a concept should be developed as an interactive prototype. For a bachelor’s or master’s thesis, interviews with (professional) developers and researchers should first be conducted to determine their needs when logging in the context of user studies, and these needs should then be implemented as a prototype.

This work is suitable for students with an interest in user research and web development.

Markdown is a simple text formatting method that translates to HTML and other formats easily. Extensions exist to add table formatting to Markdown as well. In this project, you devise a method to augment Markdown with spreadsheet functionality. That is, your Markdown version should understand simple formulas, cell references etc., much like LibreOffice Calc, Gnumeric, or Excel do, and be able to calculate formula values.

Outcomes of this project may include:

• A syntax definition for Markdown Spreadsheets, both for formulas and formatting, and a simple, user-friendly serialization format which might include a preview of pre-computed values
• A command-line program that takes a Markdown Spreadsheet, calculates all cell values, and outputs the result in a configurable format (e.g. as a Markdown Table)
• An interactive, perhaps web-based editor with live updates

"Manage Access Control policies based on presence of users in the Smart-Home"

Integrate some of the existing technologies for localization and presence detection(RDIF, BLE) with ABAC-enabled Smart-Home management system.

Goal of this thesis is to enable definition and validation of the access policies in Smart-Home that required users' presence events as input and allow/forbid particular actions in Smart-Home based on those events.

"Use blockchain to make services, features and bugs of IoT devices transparent to all users!"

Implement blockchain-based storage for all types of sensors, which are used inside of Smart Home framework.

This storage should contain information on supported functionalities on the devices, combined with firmware versions of sensors. Moreover, this registry should support option of providing client-side feedback on some sensor services and whether they work properly, so that other Smart Home framework users can become more aware of possible malfunctions and/or security breaches inside their Smart Homes.

Ultimate goal is to achieve trust reputation network, which would make perfect match with blochain properties, such as : backward traceability, immutability and transparency.

(For some context of Markdown, see above :-)

The plan for this topic is:

1. Develop a syntax that extends Markdown to allow for a simple, text-based description of questionnaire elements such as checkboxes, lists to choose from, percentage sliders, and free-text fields.
2. Devise a way to render such source files to HTML forms, potentially implemented as a web-based editor with live preview, and
3. Connect them with existing Web survey software such as LimeSurvey.

The topic includes a survey and comparison of existing tools and literature on (online) surveying, a usable implementation, and a qualitative evaluation with prospective users of the technology.

Pure Data is a visual language for multimedia computing. Pure Data programs, usually called "patches", may use various software engineering techniques such as modularization to achieve better readability, reusability, and maintainability. There exist some established patterns. Yet, there is little introductory literature on on them. In this project, you research the existing material such as public patches and libraries, Pure Data's own documentation system and included examples, and your own experience creating programs in this (and other) programming language(s). The outcome of the project is a set of well-documented worked examples of good software engineering practices in Pure Data.

Participation and research intervention in our current course Network-based Communication Ecosystems is possible – you are invited to include our students in your research. We can also connect you with the international community of Pure Data users and developers for further investigation

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Wireshark is a renowned measurement and analysis software for computer networks. Its dissector library is large, yet lower-layer protocols such as GARP and GVRP (protocols for configuration management between switches in LANs) are only partially implemented, do not appear to be tested, lack documentation, etc. Your task in this project is to assess the state of GARP / GVRP / GMRP protocol support in Wireshark through experiments, and extend the implementation and documentation to support the use cases that you identify as most relevant.

For this project, you will work with practical network equipment such as switches and wiretaps, as well as write software in C, and glue code in other languages.

This project proposes to develop and investigate methods that allow for simple, repeatable calibration of smartphone sensors using elementary physics and household items. A method should thus require little or no special hardware, apart from what is typically available on/in one's desk, drawers, and kitchen provide intrinsic (or readily procurable) means for comparison measurements, be repeatable easily so that multiple measurements can be taken, facilitating variations of parameters or devices, and statistical analysis of the results. Needless to say, the device under test should not be damaged by an experiment. Potential experiment techniques include Swings, pendulums with controllable physical dimensions (and thus oscillation periods), Springs ,Free fall, throwing; sliding on inclined planes, Rolling (e.g. inside of a can), Comparison measurements with one device attached to another. More notes: https://github.com/SensibilityTestbed/sensibility-testbed/issues/33

Server hardware includes management interfaces to remote-control the hardware and BIOS of a server even if the main operating system or hypervisor becomes inaccessible through usual means such as ssh. For this, a fully separate embedded system is built into the server. It provides its own firmware and operating system, RAM, storage, a separate physical Ethernet port, and low-level access to the running server hardware (e.g. fan and power supply status) and software (e.g. main memory of the server).

Little is known about the actual software comprising these management interfaces, although (mostly-informal) investigations have been conducted, e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Feel free to research other projects, useful search terms include iLO, IPMI, iDRAC, LOM, OOB, BMC...

In this project, you aim to expand and formalize this knowledge by trying out existing and developing new methods of analyzing and modifying firmware of management interfaces. A distant goal could be a fully free and open-source operating system, e.g. based on OpenWrt, for a management controller. We have multiple HP servers from different generations at our disposal for hardware analysis and hacking.

Academic work includes presenting one's research results to the community at conferences and in printed publications. Unfortunately, the dissemination of conference dates, times, places etc. through calls-for-papers happens in an ad-hoc manner, e.g. by e-mail or on websites.

Your task is to design a metadata system for conference organizers that encodes deadlines, keywords, tracks, formats, roles and so on in a structured, machine- and human-readable form and includes interfaces for both professional conference management systems and end-user calendar software. You design both the format for data exchange, and the distributed, federated system architecture that provides a simple implementation path for interested parties (servers and clients).

Furter reading: https://github.com/rtholmes/conf-data (a system to encode data for use during conferences), http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification, https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5545 (iCal)

Recordings of network traffic play an important role in studying the network behavior of nodes, applications, and users. Unfortunately, these traces also contain quasi-personally identifiable information (PII) which makes sharing or publishing traces problematic. Develop a tool or extend existing ones (libpcap, Wireshark) to anonymize traces to various degrees. For this, identify types of PII found in traces, and evaluate methods to pseudonymize or otherwise scrub the records.

Note: This project is a great start into the world of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS)!

Transmissions over radio may suffer interference both from out-of-band and in-band transmissions. Your task is to choose modulation schemes and develop models for interference for them, both within the same modulation scheme and across schemes. Target metrics focus on the demodulated signal and thus the disturbance that interferences cause in the demodulator: effects on the spectral content, noise floor, transmitter/receiver synchronization, etc. You evaluate your models both in theory and in practice, i.e. mathematically and through an implementation in GNU Radio.

The Smart Home communication protocol environment is heavily fragmented and many standards compete for integration. Thus, interoperability and unified control are not possible in most cases.  

Your task is to:

1. Research the most widely used Smart Home communication standards and the corresponding APIs
2. Design and Develop an API to cover all identified use cases/API calls from all of the aforementioned standard

Your Project should be implemented in a lightweight language such as MicroPython. Experience programming for microcontrollers (Arduino, ESP, NodeMCU) would be a plus.

Design brief in short: Write a RESTful API that outputs data previously stored in a CSV file!

Data is recognized as an essential 'raw material' of the future, and it's no secret that many modern applications are extremely data-intensive. For development purposes and user studies, having access to synthetic data of any kind can be quite beneficial.

The task for the Praktikum, Bachelor's, or Master's Thesis is to develop a web application that primarily fulfills the following requirements:

• The user uploads a CSV file (or a JSON file, XML, etc.) with prepared data into the application. This could include, for example, recordings of stock market data and time-stamps. However, it could be anything like energy consumption, energy costs, or whatever is relevant.
• Through an API, the user should then be able to access and download this data.
• Only data that pertains to the past should be provided. That is, if the CSV file contains stock prices from 2022 to 2025, the API should deliver only those values that correspond to past dates, up to and including the current moment.
• If the topic is treated within the scope of a Master's Thesis, we must conceive of even more meaningful tasks, such as an integrated random data generator.

Motivation: If one wanted to develop another application (not part of the Praktikum/Bachelor's/Master's Thesis) that, for example, deals with stock prices, then the API of the Fake Data Generator should provide the data for this app, thereby enabling tests to determine how well the app functions, etc.

Technology: We prefer Django, but we are flexible.