HAII at Mensch und Computer 2026: Research, Volunteering, and the German HCI Community
- Announcement
- Research Highlight
The HAII team was well represented at Mensch und Computer 2026 (MuC26), which took place from August 30 to September 2 at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Under this year’s theme, “Transforming Interactions,” the conference brought together researchers, practitioners, and industry professionals to discuss how interactive technologies are designed, used, and increasingly shape the ways we work, communicate, and interact. For HAII, MuC offered a chance to contribute in several ways: presenting research across different areas of HCI, exchanging ideas with the wider community, and helping to make the conference itself happen.
Behind the Scenes at MuC
For Toan Quoc Nguyen and Aria Kalforian, MuC started not only as conference attendees, but also as student volunteers. Throughout the conference, they took part in helping at the registration desk, preparing rooms and venues, and documenting moments from the event as part of the social media photography team.
Being involved behind the scenes offered a different perspective on the conference. Between volunteer shifts and sessions, there were plenty of opportunities for spontaneous conversations with researchers and practitioners from across the HCI community. For both, it turned into a rewarding mix of community work and academic exchange, and a reminder that some of the most interesting conference conversations happen outside the official program.
Contribution to the design of Smart Glasses
One Work in Progress contribution brought together several members of HAII and the current RC Trust team. In “Co-Designing AI-Powered Smart Glasses for Life-Logging Applications,” Soumik Bhattacharjee, Aria Kalforian, Fiona Mariele Lau, Toan Quoc Nguyen, Sven Mayer, and Jonathan Liebers investigated how people imagine and evaluate AI-powered smart glasses designed for life-logging applications. The project explores how AI-powered smart glasses for life-logging could be designed together with potential users. Through co-design, the work looks at possible applications as well as people's expectations and concerns around technology that could capture and interpret moments from everyday life. The work was presented as a poster at MuC, giving us the chance to discuss the project directly with other conference participants and hear different perspectives on the opportunities and challenges of AI-powered wearable technologies.
HAII Research Across the MuC Program
From a standing desk that moves on its own to a framework for experimenting with intelligent robotic environments, research involving Prof. Dr. Sven Mayer appeared across very different parts of the MuC program.
All contributions from HAII:
Standtroller: The Autonomous Standing Desk Controller. Luke Haliburton, Teodora Mitrevska, Johannes Kleine, Sven Mayer.
AIKitchen: A Rapid Prototyping Framework for Exploring Dynamic In-context Behavior of Smart Robotic Environments. Carl Oechsner, Jan Leusmann, Xuedong Zhang, Thomas Weber, Andreas Martin Butz, Sven Mayer.
3D Dreams Are Made of This – Comparing Sketching on XR and Tablet Devices as Input Modalities for 3D Model Generation. Niklas Pfützenreuter, Jonathan Liebers, Roman Heger, Henning Maly, Steven Tischer, Anh Duy Dao, David Goedicke, Stefan Schneegass.
Towards Adjacency-Aware Categorical Color Palettes: Algorithm, Evaluation, and User Preferences. Kathrin Schnizer, Dominik Fuchs, Sven Mayer.
What Makes Usability Smells Detectable? On the Role of Representation in Interaction Log Analysis. Michelle Xiao-Lin Foo, Sven Mayer.
EEG Components as an Implicit Channel for Perceptual Similarity Evaluation. Teodora Mitrevska, Baiyu Chen, Sven Mayer.
Track-Anything-3D: Integrating the Tracking Electronics of the Meta Quest 3 Touch Controllers into Arbitrary 3D-Fabricated Objects. Florian Rademaker, Roman Heger, Marvin Strauss, Jonathan Liebers.
Four days at MuC gave us a closer look at the German HCI community, right here in Duisburg and not far from home. It was great to meet, exchange ideas, and see what others in the community are working on.
Until next time, MuC!