Tilman Dingler

CHI’21 Workshop on Technologies to Support Critical Thinking in an Age of Misinformation

2021-05-08T14:00:00+02:00

You’ll find this post in your _posts directory. Go ahead and edit it and re-build the site to see your changes. You can rebuild the site in many different ways, but the most common way is to run jekyll serve, which launches a web server and auto-regenerates your site when a file is updated.

Jekyll requires blog post files to be named according to the following format:

YEAR-MONTH-DAY-title.MARKUP

Where YEAR is a four-digit number, MONTH and DAY are both two-digit numbers, and MARKUP is the file extension representing the format used in the file. After that, include the necessary front matter. Take a look at the source for this post to get an idea about how it works.

Jekyll also offers powerful support for code snippets:

def print_hi(name)
  puts "Hi, #{name}"
end
print_hi('Tom')
#=> prints 'Hi, Tom' to STDOUT.

Check out the Jekyll docs for more info on how to get the most out of Jekyll. File all bugs/feature requests at Jekyll’s GitHub repo. If you have questions, you can ask them on Jekyll Talk.

Springer Volume Published: Technology-Augmented Perception and Cognition

2021-04-01T00:00:00+02:00

I am delighted to finally hold the tangible result of this collaborative, years-long effort in hand! Technology-Augmented Perception and Cognition is a compendium and tribute to the exciting ways technology enriches our capabilities. Published in the Springer Human-Computer Interaction Series, the volume integrates current research efforts, results, and visions from the fields of computer science, neuroscience, and psychology. It provides an overview of the state-of-the-art and future applications of how technologies assist and augment human perception and cognition.

Experts in the field share their research and findings on:

Working memory enhancements
Digitization of memories through lifelog archives
The consequences of technology-induced disruptions and forgetting
The creation and utilization of new human senses
Ethical and security concerns that arise with augmentation technologies.

As technology weaves itself ever deeper into our lives, careful examination of its capabilities, risks and benefits is warranted. While this book focuses on the complementation and augmentation of human capabilities, it serves as a foundation for students, researchers and designers of technologies that push the boundaries of perception and cognition.

We stand on the shoulders of giants, some of which have contributed to this volume. Special thanks to the many contributors! And kudos to the WAHM series (Workshops on Ubiquitous Technologies for Augmenting the Human Mind) and the EU-funded project RECALL.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-30457-7

Berlin-Melbourne University Alliance

2021-02-01T13:00:00+01:00

Digital Technologies to Measure and Promote Sustainable Health Behaviours

I am excited to announce the establishment of the Berlin-Melbourne University Alliance, a brandnew research collaboration between the University of Melbourne, Freie Universität Berlin, and the Charité Universitätsklinik. Our goal is to bring together researchers from the Behavioural Sciences and Computing to develop, deploy, and study technologies that quantify, track, and instill healthy behaviours. Hosted by the University of Melbourne and Freie Uniersität Berlin, the team consists of post-doc and graduate researchers advised by a prominent board of mentors, including experts from the Connected Health Center for Research Excellence.

Research Focus

The foucs of the alliance is to develop methods to quantify, track, and instil healthy behaviours. Everyday behaviours, such as a balanced diet or frequent hand washing can become habitual and impact people’s health by reducing the risk of viral infection and improve the management of chronic conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes. As many individuals do not adhere to recommended behavioural guidelines (e.g., not washing hands in core situations), innovative methods to measure behavioural performance and intervene are needed. Digital technologies provide the means to continuously measure individuals ’behaviours and support them in achieving behavioural goals. To develop such technologies to successfully monitor and achieve sustainable behavioural changes in individuals ’everyday lives requires bringing together medical research, behavioural psychology, and computing science. Team members of the alliance work in an interdisciplinary environment across both locations in Australia and Germany.

Industry Collaborations

Confined by the pandemic, the team conducted a 2-day, cross-continental study hackathon in June to prototype ways to study healthy smartphone behaviours. Partnering with the recently launched smartphone app not less but better, the group designed and launched a pilot study to investigate problematic smartphone activities and devised strategies to support more goal-directed as opposed to mindless technology usage. Over the course of two afternoons and a series of agile work sprints, a research agenda and a technology roadmap were developed, which will build the base for joint collaboration and user studies across Australia and Germany.

Recent Activities

We were successful in securing a second round of funding for the alliance. As a result, we are currently recruiting two PhD students, one with a background in Psychology, another with a background in Computer Science (or related). If this sounds interesting to you and you are keen to spend some time in Berlin and Melbourne, please consider applying here.