My early research was greatly influenced by visionaries such as Mark Weiser and his concept of Ubiquitous Computing, as well as Paul Dourish's insightful book "Where the Action Is: The Foundation of Embodied Interaction," and Löwgren and Stolterman's "Thoughtful Interaction Design: A Design Perspective on Information Technology." As my interests evolved, I turned my attention to designing multimodal interactions for the well- being of individuals and enhancing human potential. Calvo and Peter's work on "Positive Computing" served as a significant source of inspiration during this phase.To better comprehend the profound connection between our bodies and our experiences in relation to the environment, I began drawing inspiration from diverse disciplines and fields. Notably, Shusterman's philosophical work on Somaesthetics and Hartmud Rosa's social work on "Resonance Theory" provided valuable insights that shaped my human-centered approach to designing emerging technologies.

My main research is about improving HCI through the study and application of emerging technologies, and one class of important emerging technologies has been machine learning solutions. ML is enabling a new wave of human-centered user interface and experience designs. To this end, I have been studying the realm of highly perceptive, interactive, and emotional AI development.

Recent research publication highlights

Recent publications worth mentioning are the IUI 2022 paper titled "Robust and Deployable Gesture Recognition for Smartwatches" which was a result of a collaboration with Aalto University, where I have been the co-advisor of Utkarsh Kunwar's graduate research (open pdf). The resulting paper is a good example of research combining human centered design methods with state of the art AI techniques to create "usable/useful" smart technology. An extended version of our paper titled "How to Compliment a Human - Designing Affective and Well-being Promoting Conversational Things" has been accepted and apeared early 2024 in the journal for IxD & Architecture(s). The extended journal version is available here: (open pdf) or at the journal´s website https://ixdea.org/table-of-contents-n-58/). The paper describes iterative human centered design research (including a month long exhibition in an architecture museum) to enable artifacts to generate meaningful and positive utterances (i.e. compliments) using machine learning based visual perception (Computer Vision). We also touch the topic of large language models and human-centered prompt engineering. And most recently (spring, 2024) our submission titled "Audio Enhancement for Computer Audition – An Iterative Training Paradigm Using Sample Importance" to the international Journal of Computer Science and Technology has been accepted. The paper describes a novel ML training technique to achieve robustness in various (mostly HCI related) computer audition applications (e.g., emotion recognition, automatic speech recognition, audio scene analysis) which we evaluated in multiple experiments. Here you can access the accepted preprint version of the submission (open pdf)

	Kunwar, U., Borar, S., Berghofer, M., Kylmälä, J., Aslan, I., Leiva, A., & Oulasvirta, A. (2022). Robust and deployable gesture recognition for smartwatches. In Proceedings of 27th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (pp. 277-291).open pdf
	Aslan, I., Neu, D., Neupert, D., Grafberger, S., Weise, N., Pfeil, P., & Kuschewski, M. (2023). How to Compliment a Human – Designing Affective and Well-being Promoting Conversational Things. Interaction Design & Architecture(s) Journal (pp. 157-184). (https://doi.org/10.55612/s-5002-058-007) open pdf
	Milling, M., Liu, S., Triantafyllopoulos, A., Aslan, I., & Schuller, B. (2024). Audio Enhancement for Computer Audition – An Iterative Training Paradigm Using Sample Importance. In Journal of Computer Science and Technology. open pdf (preprint version)

---

Award winning research

The following research papers have been nominated for best paper runner-up. Two papers are about gestures (participative design of gestures, and a proof of concept for using mid-air gestures as a form of "biometric-behavioral" authentication), and the other two are about using AI (interactive ML, and RL) for user behavior adaptive interactions (i.e., personalization of drink activity recognizers on a smartwatch, and adapting the behavior of robots)

	Weber, K., Ritschel, H., Aslan, I., Lingenfelser, F., & André, E. (2018, October). How to shape the humor of a robot-social behavior adaptation based on reinforcement learning. In Proceedings of the 20th ACM international conference on multimodal interaction (pp. 154-162). open pdf
	Aslan, I., Schmidt, T., Woehrle, J., Vogel, L., & André, E. (2018, October). Pen+ mid-air gestures: Eliciting contextual gestures. In Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (pp. 135-144). open pdf
	Flutura, S., Seiderer, A., Aslan, I., Dang, C. T., Schwarz, R., Schiller, D., & André, E. (2018, April). Drinkwatch: A mobile wellbeing application based on interactive and cooperative machine learning. In Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Digital Health (pp. 65-74). open pdf
	Aslan, I., Uhl, A., Meschtscherjakov, A., & Tscheligi, M. (2014, November). Mid-air authentication gestures: An exploration of authentication based on palm and finger motions. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (pp. 311-318). open pdf

---

Joint Lab on Affective Computing

Affective Computing is simply put an extension of the field of HCI, making mainly use of (human-centered) Machine Learning solutions to enable machines to recognize, express/mimic, or stimulate affective user contexts (e.g., emotional states). From beginning of 2020 until mid 2023 I managed the Affective Computing and HCI Joint Innvovation Lab and all sub projects between Augsburg University and Huawei, in the process co-advicing the research work of all the PhDs within the joint-lab projects:

• "Smart Tutor" project, including research on recognizing and adapting to affective learner states, such as engagement and frustration (PhD researchers from Augsburg University: Alina Leidinger, Michael Dietz, Fabio Hellman, Anan Schütt)
• "Emotional TTS" project, including research in Voice Conversion, Speech Emotion Recognition, and Text Emotion Recognition (PhD researchers from Augsburg University: Lukas Christ, Thobias Hübner, Zijiang Yang, Meishu Song, Shuo Liu)
• "Audio Enhancement" project, mainly to enable robust Automatic Speech Recognition (PhD researchers from Augsburg University: Shuo Liu)
• "Affective Multimodal Dataset" project, including reserach in Tool-support for semi-autonomously collecting and labelling Datasets (PhD researchers from Augsburg University: Meishu Song)

While managing the Machine Learning projects I had to follow the white AI rabbit, extending my expertise in ML and AI trough the regular discourses with all the ML PhDs working on the projects. I am thankful for everyone I worked with, including internal colleagues from Huawei who were located all around the world.

Academic Research Examples with Demo Videos

For the following (public) case studies the available video material provide deeper insights to my research activities, especially my human-centered and multimodal interaction design activites and the mixed-methodologies that I typically use.

Tangible Heart Displays

Aslan, I., Seiderer, A., Dang, C. T., Rädler, S., & André, E. (2020, October). PiHearts: Resonating Experiences of Self and Others Enabled by a Tangible Somaesthetic Design. In Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (pp. 433-441). open pdf

The paper was presented at ICMI 2020, which was due to Covid an online only event. The positive is that there is short recording of my 8min presentation of the paper on youtube in which I also touch on the theories which motivates the research and design decisions.

Human-Robot Interaction

Ritschel, H., Aslan, I., Sedlbauer, D., & André, E. Irony Man: Augmenting a Social Robot with the Ability to Use Irony in Multimodal Communication with Humans. Proc. of the 18th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2019). open pdf

Pre-touch Proxemics

Aslan, I., & André, E. (2017, November). Pre-touch proxemics: Moving the design space of touch targets from still graphics towards proxemic behaviors. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (pp. 101-109). open pdf

Aslan, I., Krischkowsky, A., Meschtscherjakov, A., Wuchse, M., & Tscheligi, M. (2015, September). A leap for touch: proximity sensitive touch targets in cars. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications (pp. 39-46). open pdf

Aslan, I., Kraus, J., & André, E. (2016, October). LeapArm-facilitating sensory spaces for mid-air gestural interaction. In Proceedings of the 9th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 1-6). open pdf

IoT plants and implicit interaction design

Bittner, B., Aslan, I., Dang, C. T., & André, E. (2019, March). Of Smarthomes, IoT Plants, and Implicit Interaction Design. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (pp. 145-154). open pdf

Digital Bookshelf

Moser, C., Aslan, I., Neureiter, K., Randelshofer, I., Sundstroem, P., & Tscheligi, M. (2018). Exploring intended and unintended uses of (e) books as design inspiration for ambient displays in the home. open pdf

Gaze interaction in Games

Maurer, B., Aslan, I., Wuchse, M., Neureiter, K., & Tscheligi, M. (2015, October). Gaze-based onlooker integration: exploring the in-between of active player and passive spectator in co-located gaming. In Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (pp. 163-173). open pdf