Interaction Design Research Group

Our research

Interaction design as a discipline is relatively young and is defined as "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services". Our flavour of interaction design is built upon three main pillars:

• Design thinking mindset,
• Technology as a design material, and
• User experience.

Our team conducts research that is applied across different application domains. Our projects have been focusing on the area of inclusive design, health and wellbeing, education, and governance. However, we are not limited to only those, as we constantly search for bringing innovation through cross sectorial work. 

More about our research

Most of today's challenges require ICT (Information and Communication Technology) approaches to come to a solution. Through the design thinking mindset as a human-centered approach to innovation that meets the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success, we aim to tackle the complexity of the challenges that are faced by societal and industrial actors.

This mindset, combined with an interdisciplinary expertise that the team possesses, brings innovative and efficient solutions to society and industry at large. By using technology as a design material to enact change, we always focus on creating groundbreaking user experiences.

Application areas

Some of the application areas of our research efforts that depict our work are given below.

Accessibility

From people with disabilities to the elderly, we look at (co-)designing and adapting interfaces for increased accessibility and usability by employing accessibility guidelines and the universal design approach. Considering that availability does not necessarily equate accessibility, we investigate various interfaces, communication channels, and modes of interaction to ensure equal access opportunity for marginalized communities. 

Education

As everything else, education needs to also evolve and adapt to academic and market needs. In the range of activities, we look at innovative ways to transform the traditional classroom by inciting student creativity and engagement using technology-enhanced approaches. The digital infrastructure enabling this democratization of education is also within the research focus of the group. Classroom composition has traditionally been male dominated, especially in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education. By investigating gender bias, we look to increase women's interest and participation in STEM fields, especially pre-college cohorts. We additionally utilize makerspaces to incite the interest of youth in STEM education.

Internet of things and artificial intelligence

The penetration of smart devices and sensors into society is creating immense opportunities, but also challenges to make these solutions to the benefit of people. Through design thinking and by adopting co-design approaches, we aim to find new ways to make IoT solutions acceptable and usable for the end users. In this manner, we employ artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches to make sense of these data and direct a positive impact into the betterment of the society, by improving interaction between humans and machines and support decision making.

Health and wellbeing

The increase of life longevity is associated with challenges in health care to ensure continued wellbeing of people, whether as patients in hospital wards or maintaining quality independent living in their homes. Considering the variety of stakeholders involved in the health care sector, we look at holistic approaches to understand and fulfill different layers of human needs and system requirements. We particularly look at aspects of designing and evaluating interfaces and solutions aimed at patients and clinicians to ensure streamlined health care processes for wellbeing.