COSY Research Areas and Current Thesis/Praktikum-Topics

• 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

• Internet of Things / Internet of People
• AAA - Authentication, Authorization, Accounting in IoT ecosystems
• Decentralized security mechanisms (blockchain, trust, transparency, privacy)
• (Computer) Networks --- design, operation, and use

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.

In Zusammenarbeit mit dem Planetarium Wien soll in dieser Arbeit eine Web-Applikation entwickelt werden, die einen kontinuierlichen Live-Stream des Mondes bereitstellt, einschliesslich einer elektro-mechanischen Lösung für die korrekte Ausrichtung und kontinuierliche Nachführung einer Webcam in Abhängigkeit von Mondphase, Auf- und Untergangszeitpunkt etc.

The CoConUT Toolkit ("Context Collection for non-stationary User Testing" - coconut.cosy.wien) is a framework for supporting short-term mobile field studies. It features several apps and wearables which collect quantitative and qualitative data about surrounding context and human behavior directly in the field.

So far the framework is mainly aiming at supporting short-term studies (duration up to 2 hours), but not all potential testing scenarios are covered by that. To enhance CoConUT's functionality to support long-term field study support, several adjustments to the existing concept and of course the implementation have to be made.

Oulasvirta et al. (2005) https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1055101 showed that interaction during mobile web browsing occured in "interaction bursts" of 4 seconds. Although this research happened more than 10 years ago, today mobile interaction in the wild still happens in "bursts" due to contextual factors. In this work a study app will be developed which enables long time measurements of interaction bursts across app types (web browsing, chatting, etc.) and across times of day in the background of the participants' smartphones. This data will be gathered and analyzed in order to show patterns in interaction, e.g. different types of interaction "bursts".

"Allow access to resource #bulb with attribute role=#lightsource if Subject match #parent and action is #turnon" - "Can I turn on the lights now or what?!"

Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) is a new approach to access control in diverse environments which has gained significance over the last years in the light of current IoT frameworks. Its flexible way of specifying, modifying and finally granting entities access to a heterogeneous mixture of devices, spaces and services is perfect for the new smart world. But are the underlying concepts really understandable? How could a usable interface for the end-users look like to be efficient and prevent non-recoverable errors or other serious mistakes?

In this thesis an existing implementation of Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) for a smart-home environment will be tested with real end users how understandable the user interface and its underlying concepts are. Based on those findings the interface will be adapted. This iterative process of testing will be conducted in the COSY:Lab, which could for example involve Wizard of Oz testing techniques (or else, as you like...).

"Develop mobile application that enables control, monitoring and analytics in the Smart-Home secured with ABAC".

Make use of the existing solution Smart-Home in COSY:Lab to develop novel mobile application and improve usability of the already integrated sensors and actuators - DHT, Philips Hue...

This thesis will have two main aspects:

• Security - evaluation and development of mechanisms for successful access control over information during system's lifetime
• HCI - design and development of the intuitive, easy-to-use application for Smart Home management

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 (NodeJS) of a Facebook Messenger Bot which facilitates healthy living. Your jobs comprise (1) the integration of different services (e.g. Fitbit API, Google API, some recipe API, .. - be creative!) as a service composition and (2) the creation of a "Bot persona" which incorporates the resulting functionality. A small user trial should then collect feedback and test for conceptual feasibility.

This thesis is about interaction design and further development of an existing Facebook Messenger Bot which supports newcoming students at the faculty of computer science. Your jobs comprise (1) the integration of location-oriented information and services as well as (2) functionality that supports socialization and collaboration, e.g. support for ad-hoc meetings, learning groups, .. A small user trial should then collect feedback and test for conceptual feasibility.

"Authorize your actions in Smart Home not only using your identity but also your previous behavior and current system's environment"

Bring ABAC and Blockchain together! While ABAC stores information about users' identity and provides fine-granular access-control, blockchain can be used to as a trusted storage for event-based tracking of the system's usage. Use case - a child can't turn on the light in the living room in the night without the presence of the parent in the same room.

In this thesis an existing implementation of the ABAC for Smart-Home based on XACML will be extended and adapted to make use of blockchain and verifying access-rights based on two source of information - users' credentials and latest information in the blockchain, depending on the definition of the access policy.

"Define event-based environment for runtime configuration of the Smart-Home and make Smart-Home smarter"

Make use of the collected data from the sensors in the Smart-Home and define events that could be of interest to define optimal behavior of the Smart-Home appliances.

Use defined events and bind them with script language(JavaScript for example) to trigger proper actions and optimise usage of the Smart-Home sensors( disable temperature readings if there isn't any user present in the system).

This solution will be integrated with already existing Smart-Home management framework, present on COSY:Lab.

"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.

This solution will be integrated with already existing Smart-Home management framework, present on COSY:Lab.

"Provide self-sovereign identity to the users and devices in a Smart-Home"

Implement blockchain-based storage(decentralized PKI) and accompanying clients for successful identity management based on X.509 certificates.

Goals of this thesis is to enable authentication of the entities in the Smart-Home system using certificates and public keys, while marking authentication using passwords as obsolete.

This solution will be integrated with already existing Smart-Home management framework, present on COSY:Lab.

Related information sources :

http://www.weboftrust.info/

https://sovrin.org/

https://www.uport.me/

Excitation with exponentially-swept sines allows for measurements of transfer functions of weakly nonlinear, approximately time-invariant systems. Implement a framework, e.g. in Octave (MATLAB) or NumPy, that streamlines generating the required sweeps, deconvolutions etc., and demonstrate its applicability in a practical study (e.g. room acoustics).

www.nvo.com/winmls/nss-folder/electro1acoustics/Measuring%20impulse%20resp%20and%20distortion%20with%20swept%20sine%201341AES00.pdf

web.uvic.ca/~timperry/ELEC499SurroundSoundImpulseResponse/Elec499-SurroundSoundIR-PreREVA.pdf

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

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)!