Department of Computer Science

Dear readers, this is the second interview of our TKTL group leader series. The goal is to provide an open forum for group leaders to present their latest research development, activities in teaching, project work opportunities, and general comments about our department. This time, we interviewed Prof. Giulio Jaccuci, who is leading the Ubiquitous Interaction (UiX) group.

CS Blog Team: What do you do in your group?

Prof. Jacucci: Our group is called Ubiquitous Interaction as we believe that it's most exciting to explore how we can use computing and computers not just with mouse or keyboard or sitting in a chair but thinking of the whole body, gestures, senses, and interacting with other people and with things around us. So we study, for example, how to explore vast information as when finding scientific articles going beyond a simple query field and list, and using exciting visualisations, big screens, gestures, and eye tracking. Or we think of how to communicate through vibrations. In particular we try to contribute to environmental awareness with new interactive application to help people save energy or use more public transport.

CS Blog Team: Who are interesting collaborators in your research?

Prof. Jacucci: We first collaborate with colleagues at the department also in other lines like the algorithmic line. For example, we work together on exploratory search interfaces to find scientific articles, but also with the Aalto University through our joint organisation the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. We work with industry such as Microsoft, Nokia, Electrolux and other smaller innovative companies. We also have contributed to exciting spin-offs of research such as www.multitaction.com. We also collaborate with Cities like the City of Padova or various organisation in Helsinki. We have many Universities as collaborators all around the world including US, Italy, Germany, and the University of Glasgow where Dr Eve Hoggan, the vice leader and winner of last year researcher of the year award, comes from. All of these create great opportunities for researcher and students to visit abroad.

CS Blog Team: What kinds of members do you have in the group?

Prof. Jacucci: We have post doctoral researcher like Dr Antti Jylhä recently joined us from Aalto University after a PhD on "acoustic gestures". But our group is international and our first PhD student Kumaripaba Atukorala comes as far as from Srilanka. We also receive research visits for example from the University of Padova Italy. Also we have a number of great contributions from Master thesis and research assistants.

CS Blog Team: What would you say should attract students to your courses and seminar or to write their thesis?

Prof. Jacucci: Our courses such as Interactive Systems and Interface Technologies provide fun ways to learn how to develop and evaluate interaction. In the past students have achieved great things like

• winning prizes in Helsinki Region Traffic competitions, an adventure location aware game to use public transport (Seutuseikkailu 1st prize HSL competition using API  http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/group/seutu/)
• a mobile augmented reality application to find events in Helsinki using open data from omakaunki of the Sanoma group Ihana Helsinki! awarded Apps4Finalnd (3rd) URL  http://apps4finland.fi/year-2011-winners/  and URL: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/group/ihana/

With thesis projects we did Excellent research with high profile publications and also media coverages in MIT Tech Review and Engadget on how to communicate during phone calls with vibrations! http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429618/squeeze-your-phone-and-send-a-loved-one-a-hug/

CS Blog Team: What are some key recent highlights?

Prof. Jacucci: Last week we won a Best Paper award at a prestigious conference ACM Intelligent User Interfaces in collaboration with other groups at the Department and at Aalto through HIIT on a system to direct interactively users in exploratory search of scientific articles. We also started exciting projects on mobile augmented reality and many of us are involved in organising the ACM Interactive Tabletop and Surfaces. We are doing several interesting experiments on Large displays either with gestures or multitouch interaction. We are presenting at the end of April at the ACM CHI premium conference on human computer interaction an exciting work on how to design web functionality and interface for the home. We developed strange interfaces using lights and moving parts to show on a tangible map where around in your area there is something interesting. Or we printed with a 3D printer different physical RFID tags to attach digital objects as URLS and other web objects around the house helping family members share pictures or plan together a vacation.

CS Blog Team: What excites your group for the future?

Prof. Jacucci: To attract more and more students and researchers to collaborate with us to find fun ways to explore interaction beyond the desktop. Ultimately to explore big data using a variety of modalities including gesture, eye gaze, interactive visualization and vibrotactile feedback.

CS Blog Team: Thank you for sharing your time with us for the interview.

About Professor Giulio Jaccuci

Professor at the Computer Science department, University of Helsinki. His area is Human-Computer Interaction. For more information, please check his homepage:

http://www.hiit.fi/giulio.jacucci