Guest Talk: Jan Gugenheimer from Ulm University

Title: Social HMDs: Designing Mixed Reality Technology to Fit into the Social Fabric of our Daily Lives
Speaker: Jan Gugenheimer
When – Where: Sorbonne Université, Room 304. Tuesday, June 4th.
Abstract:Technological advancements in the fields of optics, display technology and miniaturization have enabled high-quality mixed reality (AR and VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) to be used beyond research labs. This enables a novel interaction scenario where the context of use changes drastically and HMDs aims to become a daily commodity. In this talk, I will argue that the current design of HMDs does not consider the context of use (e.g. physical environment, social factors) and therefore impedes the adoption and acceptance of the technology. I will use the framework of context-aware computing to show that a parallel development happened with the transition from desktop PCs to smartphones and present six use cases, highlighting how a potential future HMD could be designed that fits this upcoming social context.
Bio: Jan Gugenheimer recently submitted his PhD Thesis on “Nomadic Virtual Reality: Overcoming Challenges of Mobile Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Displays” under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Enrico Rukzio (Ulm University). Jan holds a BSc in Media Informatics and MSc in Media Informatics (with a focus on HCI) from Ulm University. During his studies Jan had several stays abroad, visiting research groups at Universities and Industry. Jan wrote his Master thesis in cooperation with Mercedes-Benz Research and Developement North America (MBRDNA) in Palo Alto, spent 3 Months at the MIT Media Lab in the Fluid Interfaces Group under the supervision of Pattie Maes and was a summer intern at Microsoft Research Redmond working with Hrvoje Benko and Eyal Ofek on mobile Virtual Reality. His work is frequently published and awarded at venues such as ACM CHI, UIST, ISMAR and IEEE VR.
Host: Marc Teyssier
Language: English