Human Computer Interaction

Welcome to the home page of the Human Computer Interaction group at Aarhus University, Department of Computer Science.

Historically, this group started in the mid seventies as a systems development and user centered design group, greatly influenced by Guest Professor Kristen Nygaard. At that time, the main focus was on action research with users in trade unions and development of new methods for system development with active user participation (later known as Participatory Design).

Over the years, the group has been the host of many international visitors. It has a long track record of participation and management of large National and EU funded research projects and a strong record in research with industry involvement.

The group has developed its research in several directions, while keeping the participatory design approach in common. Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Hypermedia are two areas of international research that the group has helped shape. With its focus on work that group has had significant impact on second generation HCI in general, and lately it has moved on to face also the challenges of third generation HCI, in terms of life situations, pervasive technologies, and interaction design.

• System Development Methods, empirical and theoretical research in participatory design, object-oriented analysis and design.
• Theoretical HCI, research in theories and methods for user interface design and evaluation.
• CSCW, research in theories, technologies and applications of computer support for collaborative work.
• Hypermedia, research in theories, standards, and technologies for open hypermedia and advanced Web-technology.
• Augmented Reality, research in methods, technologies and applications that integrate physical and digital environments and material.
• Pervasive Computing, research in methods, technologies and applications that embed IT-capabilities in artifacts in our environment.

Courses

Undergraduate:

• Interaction Design
• Experimental Systems Design

Graduate:

• User Experience (Q1)
• Social and Collaborative Computing (Q2)
• Augmented Reality (Q3)
• Designing Interactive Systems (Project - Q4)

Regular courses:

• Project Management
• Hypermedia
• User Interface Technology
• Peer-2-Peer technology
• IT Bachelor: Great IT-Innovations
• Interaction Design
• Physical Design/Pervasive Computing
• Multimedia: Perspectives on Multimedia
• HCI
• Web and Hypermedia