Human-technology Interaction

This track provides valuable insights into the dynamics of our digital relationships.

To what extent are your thoughts and actions shaped by the media that you use? And what does this imply for the design of online platforms and virtual spaces? Want to discover the keys to improving the ways in which we connect and communicate in our increasingly digital world?

Based on insights into social and media psychology, sociology, and data science, Human-Technology Interaction's Behavioral and Social Computing track aims to shed light on how our online and virtual interactions can be understood and enhanced.

The Behavioral and Social Computing track provides answers to such questions by fusing insights from psychology, sociology and data/computer science to delve deep into human behavior and interactions within socio-digital realms, including online social networks and virtual spaces. We use this knowledge to develop design recommendations for online technologies.

If you're curious about the profound impact of ICT on human behavior and how tech design shapes it – from online interactions and gaming to digital friendships, media consumption and activities that were once unimaginable – the Behavioral and Social Computing track is tailor-made for you.

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In the Environmental Psychology track, we examine the interrelationship between people and their physical and social surroundings.

Although humans evolved in nature, most people in the Western world spend more than 90% of their time indoors. These spaces are also growing ever more complex and are augmented by digital layers of media, sensing technologies and smart automated systems. Do intelligent buildings optimally balance sustainability, well-being, health and performance or do they frustrate users by taking away autonomy and control? Perhaps even pampering us into ever more vulnerable, ill-adapted and demanding indoor creatures? Are the spaces we design actually optimal for human functioning? These are the themes that form the core of Human-Technology Interaction's Environmental Psychology track.

Students will learn to leverage elements such as media, tracking and sensing technology, virtual reality (VR) modeling, simulation software, statistical modeling, and machine learning techniques to investigate the impact of our natural, built and social environments on people, as well as to explore ways of designing environments in which occupants can truly thrive.

What if we feel happier and more comfortable in spaces in which we operate the lights, blinds and windows ourselves? What is ...

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HTI's Human-Centered AI track aims to shed light on this based on insights from cognitive psychology, user experience (UX) design, human-AI interaction and the philosophy and ethics of AI.

How can our interactions with AI-driven systems and products be understood and optimally designed? By combining a human-centered perspective and specific technical knowledge (such as machine learning and explainable AI), you will have opportunities to design and evaluate the ways in which people interact with algorithms and automation in various contexts of current and emerging AI applications, including recommender systems, social robotics and creative AI.

You will acquire the knowledge and skills to assess new AI developments in view of human values, goals, constraints and capabilities. In this track, you will be able to learn and integrate such insights with a certain level of technical knowledge about AI methods in order to become a competent engineer of human-AI interaction who considers human values at the core of their work.

How can we make sure that people trust highly automated systems? Will generative models reshape the ways in which creative workers go about their practice? And how can we safeguard the development of AI in all these areas so that it enhances rather than undermines human values? Inspired? Human-centered AI may be the right track for you.

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