Human-Computer Interaction Seminar - Fall semester 2025

This is the main seminar of the HCI group of the Human-IST Institute. The topics will change each semester and will be proposed by Human-IST members. Each participant will be supervised by one Human-IST member.

With the advent of autonomous cars, mobile devices and conversational agents, the question of the interaction with digital devices in everyday life is becoming everyday more relevant. The aim of the HCI seminar is to look at this question over several specific contexts and expose students to state-of-the art research in Human-Computer Interaction.

Through a set of topics for the participants to choose from, the different research fields studied within the Human-IST institute will be reviewed and discussed. Each specific topic is proposed by a member of the Human-IST team who will be available during the semester to follow the work of the student.

Prof. Denis Lalanne

Dr Julien Nembrini (contact person)

The introductory lecture will be held on Monday 22.09 14h in presence in PER21 A420. This session can be attended online, the sessions during the semester are in presence. Please contact Dr Julien Nembrini julien.nembrini@unifr.ch, with copy to Prof. Denis Lalanne denis.lalanne@unifr.ch, if you wish to attend.

Semester topics

TO BE DEFINED

Seminar schedule

TO BE DEFINED

Work to be done

Students will be asked to :

  • Conduct an in-depth review of the state-of-the-art of their chosen topic
  • Discuss their findings with their respective tutor
  • Imagine a user experiment relevant to existing research
  • Write a 4-pages article summarizing their review work
  • Present their article to the seminar participants

Interested computer science students are invited to participate by expressing their interest on two specific topics (preferred, 2nd 3rd choices) among the ones presented on the topics presented above.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the seminar, students will know how to do a bibliographic research and be exercised in writing a scientific article. Further, they will build a general knowledge on the field of HCI and its current techniques and trends, as well as an in-depth understanding on their chosen topic.

Registration

Attend the introductory session and express your interest about both your chosen topics with a short text (3-5 sentences) to Dr Julien Nembrini, mentioning (1) your preferred topic, (2) your second-preferred topic, (3) your third preferred. Each reference person will then contact you if you are chosen for participating to the seminar. Others will receive a notification email.

emails : julien.nembrini@unifr.ch and denis.lalanne@unifr.ch

Registration Process

  1. Participate to the first introductory session on Monday 22.09 14h00 in presence in PER21 A420 or online.
  2. Express your interest for the topics as mentioned above at the latest the 01.10 (first come, first served).
  3. Wait for confirmation of your participation.

Seminar Process

In addition to the first session, there will only be three plenary sessions during the semester, which consist in participants presenting their work. These sessions will be in presence and will happen on Mondays at 14h00. Reference persons will organize additional bilateral meetings during the semester.

The seminar process is as follows:

  1. Select state-of-the-art references relevant to the chosen thematic, synthesize these references to structure the research field, discuss and refine your approach with your topic reference person.
  2. Present the structure developed to the other participants of the seminar for the intermediate presentation.
  3. Synthesize the selected bibliographic references in a written 4 pages article, authored in LaTeX following ACM SIGCHI format.
  4. Define a user experiment within the chosen topic that is relevant with regard to existing research
  5. Discuss and refine your article with your topic reference person.
  6. Present your article in one of the final presentation sessions (end of semester)

Evaluation

The evaluation will be conducted by the topic reference person and the person responsible for the seminar.

The evaluation will be based on the quality of :

  • Your written article: readability, argumentation, English
  • Your review work: reference selection and field structure
  • Your final presentation
  • Your initial draft
  • Your review of a colleague's first draft

If each step described below is not formally marked, each contribute towards producing a good final paper (75% of the grade)

Guidelines

First presentation

link to the literature survey methods slides

  • Introduce your theme
  • Present your methodology for selecting papers
  • Present a selection of at least 3 papers most relevant to your theme, different from the ones provided in the topic description. Don't forget to give author names, journal and date!
  • Look in each paper for:
    • Theme: How does the paper fit in the larger picture of your theme?
    • Main contribution: how does the paper contribute to the field?
    • Methods: what are the methods used? which kind of experimental setup, if any?
    • Outlook: strengths / weaknesses, research opportunities, etc
  • Present: the outcome of your literature survey
  • Presentation time 10'.

First draft

  • Your draft should :
    • present the research context of your topic with relevant publications
    • state a research question and an hypothesis
    • propose an experiment to test the hypothesis, and discuss its expected results
  • Provide a complete draft. Enough content will allow reviewers to give meaningful feedback, although some parts may still be in bullet point style.

Rules:

  1. You MUST use the latex template https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/association-for-computing-machinery-acm-sigchi-proceedings-template/nhjwrrczcyys
  2. Maximum 4 pages excluding references (it is acceptable to concentrate on some sections and leaving one or two others in bullet point style)
  3. Polish your English grammar and orthography

Review

  • Rephrase the content in 1 short paragraph
  • List the positive points
  • List the negative points, provide examples
  • Propose improvements
  • Do not insist on orthograph/grammar unless it is especially disturbing

Provide your review either as comments in the pdf or as a separate document.

Second presentation

Present your first draft.

  • Your presentation should include:
    • Introduction to the topic
    • Structure of your research field (literature review outcome topic-by-topic instead of paper-by-paper)
    • Research questions/hypotheses
    • User experiment proposal and expected outcomes
  • Include details (example papers, shared methods/approaches, experiments conducted by others, etc)
  • Include full references (preferably not at the end)
  • Presentation time 10'

Prepare also an oral feedback of your fellow student's first draft (structure,strengths/weaknesses, English, style, etc.)

Second draft

Your second draft should combine feedback from your supervisor and from your fellow student

Final presentation

Same guidelines as the seocond presentation, with comments addressed

Final draft

Integrate all feedback received and finalize your paper. this final version will be published on the website (habe a look here for previous examples)

Date: Summer 2025