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Sven Mayer

Publications and source records attributed to Sven Mayer.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

DynaContext: Self-Improving Dynamic Contextualization of Optimized Prompts for Heterogeneous Parameter Extraction

Automated prompt and skill optimization typically produces a single static instruction that is reused across inference instances until the next optimization cycle. However, this approach cannot adapt when the required context, constraints, and evidence vary from one instance to another. For instance, parameter extraction from electronic component descriptions breaks this assumption: resistors, capacitors, transistors, and connectors require different fields, unit constraints, and demonstrations, and each input provides a different evidence state. We introduce DynaContext, a framework that combines an offline-optimized extraction core, learned with GEPA or SkillOpt, with inference-time contextual adaptation and validation-gated self-improvement. DynaContext routes each item through internal, external, or fallback evidence paths and composes an item-specific prompt from the core, schema, evidence, unresolved fields, and validated demonstrations. Deterministic validation and an LLM judge gate every output, uncertain cases go to human review, and only human-verified corrections enter the demonstration memory. On a single-category benchmark, average accuracy increases from 86.6% for the base prompt to 96.9% for standalone SkillOpt and 98.6% for the best DynaContext configuration. Across 850 heterogeneous gold parameter facts, average field-level F1 increases from 51.8% for an unoptimized, demonstration-free control to 59.2% with dynamic demonstrations alone, 66.9% with the optimized core alone, and 71.0% with both. Holding the model fixed, the full configuration outperforms the deployed static-prompting pipeline by 17.3 F1 points on average.

cs.AI

CoGen3D: An Agentic Human-AI Co-Design Pipeline for 3D Asset Generation for Virtual Reality

Creating 3D assets for virtual reality requires modeling expertise, which restricts the authorship of immersive experiences. Existing generative AI tools rely on unconstrained, command-driven prompting, lacking the conversational scaffolding needed for users to articulate their intent and validate designs prior to rendering. To address this, we introduce CoGen3D, an agentic human-AI co-design pipeline that proactively guides users through conversational intent elicitation, a concept image confirmation, and image-to-3D generation that directly deploys to immersive scenes. We evaluated this system through a user study (N=120) across six affectively diverse immersive scenes, observing 60 Design group participants who co-created 3D assets for the scenes, and 60 Validation group participants who experienced the scenes with generated assets. Our findings show that co-designed assets are associated with higher scene engagement and shifted affective responses, while participants generally preferred concept images over the final 3D assets, with no increased leniency toward degradation in their own creations. Analysis of the human-AI conversations further shows that target environments shape users' conversational patterns. Our results suggest that our staged, intent-based co-design can democratize virtual reality authoring and shift immersive content creation from technical execution toward collaborative spatial design.

cs.HC

Toward a Unified Framework for Collaborative Design of Human-AI Interaction

Human computer interaction is shifting from screen-based systems to multimodal interfaces where artificial intelligence powered systems increasingly interpret user intent through speech, gesture, and gaze. Yet users rarely understand how these interpretations are made, compromising trust and control. Existing approaches treat multimodal alignment, explainability, and human agency as separate concerns, leaving critical gaps in transparency and user oversight. We propose a Human Artificial Intelligence collaboration framework integrating these three principles as interdependent design requirements: 1) multimodal alignment for accurate intent interpretation, 2) interaction centric explainability delivering real time visual, textual, and audio feedback, and 3) agency preserving mechanisms enabling users to accept, reject, or modify artificial intelligence suggestions at any time. We presented the framework through two scenarios, collaborative design and extended reality warehouse robot collaboration, chosen to span differences in time pressure and error reversibility, with the latter situated in a domain where misinterpretation carries documented safety consequences. This approach reframes collaboration as a continuous interaction property, benefiting designers, researchers, and end users by ensuring that as artificial intelligence systems grow more proactive, user understanding and control remain first class design properties.

cs.HC

Non-urgent Messages Do Not Jump into My Headset Suddenly! Adaptive Notification Design in Mixed Reality

Mixed reality (MR) notification systems currently display all messages in fixed central locations regardless of urgency, leading to unnecessary interruptions and cognitive overload. Drawing from previous MR/Virtual Reality (VR) notification design work and calm technology principles, we developed an adaptive notification system that adjusts spatial placement based on urgency levels: non-urgent notifications appear as peripheral icons accessible via head movement, moderately urgent messages anchor to the user's hand, and very urgent notifications transition progressively from peripheral to central view. Through a within-subjects study (N=18), we evaluated our adaptive system against the default centralised approach. Results demonstrate that the adaptive system significantly reduces mental workload (p=0.041), temporal workload (p=0.008), and frustration (p=0.004) while maintaining comparable notification awareness. Logistic regression analysis reveals that users prefer the adaptive system even with classification errors, provided the combined misclassification rate (disruptiveness + omission errors) remains below a determinable threshold. Our findings establish the first empirical evidence that urgency-based spatial notification distribution effectively addresses core MR usability challenges, offering practical design guidelines for immersive notification systems that balance user attention management with information accessibility.

cs.HC

Understanding the Effects of Interaction on Emotional Experiences in VR

Virtual reality has been effectively used for eliciting emotions, yet most research focuses on the intensity of affective responses rather than on how interaction influences those experiences. To address this gap, we advance a validated VR emotion-elicitation dataset through two key extensions. First, we add a new high-arousal, high-valence scene and validate its effectiveness in a within-subject study (N=24). Second, we incorporate interactive elements into each scene, creating both interactive and non-interactive versions to examine the impact of interaction on emotional responses. We evaluate interaction through a multimodal approach combining subjective ratings and physiological signals to capture both conscious and unconscious affective responses. Our evaluation study (N=84) shows that interaction not only amplifies emotions but modulates them in context, supporting coping in negative scenes and enhancing enjoyment in positive scenes. These findings highlight the potential of scene-tailored interaction for different applications, where regulating emotions is as important as eliciting them.

cs.HC

Anticipation Before Action: EEG-Based Implicit Intent Detection for Adaptive Gaze Interaction in Mixed Reality

Mixed Reality (MR) interfaces increasingly rely on gaze for interaction , yet distinguishing visual attention from intentional action remains difficult, leading to the Midas Touch problem. Existing solutions require explicit confirmations, while brain-computer interfaces may provide an implicit marker of intention using Stimulus-Preceding Negativity (SPN). We investigated how Intention (Select vs. Observe) and Feedback (With vs. Without) modulate SPN during gaze-based MR interactions. During realistic selection tasks, we acquired EEG and eye-tracking data from 28 participants. SPN was robustly elicited and sensitive to both factors: observation without feedback produced the strongest amplitudes, while intention to select and expectation of feedback reduced activity, suggesting SPN reflects anticipatory uncertainty rather than motor preparation. Complementary decoding with deep learning models achieved reliable person-dependent classification of user intention, with accuracies ranging from 75% to 97% across participants. These findings identify SPN as an implicit marker for building intention-aware MR interfaces that mitigate the Midas Touch.

cs.HC

Evaluating Generative AI in the Lab: Methodological Challenges and Guidelines

Generative AI (GenAI) systems are inherently non-deterministic, producing varied outputs even for identical inputs. While this variability is central to their appeal, it challenges established HCI evaluation practices that typically assume consistent and predictable system behavior. Designing controlled lab studies under such conditions therefore remains a key methodological challenge. We present a reflective multi-case analysis of four lab-based user studies with GenAI-integrated prototypes, spanning conversational in-car assistant systems and image generation tools for design workflows. Through cross-case reflection and thematic analysis across all study phases, we identify five methodological challenges and propose eighteen practice-oriented recommendations, organized into five guidelines. These challenges represent methodological constructs that are either amplified, redefined, or newly introduced by GenAI's stochastic nature: (C1) reliance on familiar interaction patterns, (C2) fidelity-control trade-offs, (C3) feedback and trust, (C4) gaps in usability evaluation, and (C5) interpretive ambiguity between interface and system issues. Our guidelines address these challenges through strategies such as reframing onboarding to help participants manage unpredictability, extending evaluation with constructs such as trust and intent alignment, and logging system events, including hallucinations and latency, to support transparent analysis. This work contributes (1) a methodological reflection on how GenAI's stochastic nature unsettles lab-based HCI evaluation and (2) eighteen recommendations that help researchers design more transparent, robust, and comparable studies of GenAI systems in controlled settings.

cs.HC

PersoNo: Personalised Notification Urgency Classifier in Mixed Reality

Mixed Reality (MR) is increasingly integrated into daily life, providing enhanced capabilities across various domains. However, users face growing notification streams that disrupt their immersive experience. We present PersoNo, a personalised notification urgency classifier for MR that intelligently classifies notifications based on individual user preferences. Through a user study (N=18), we created the first MR notification dataset containing both self-labelled and interaction-based data across activities with varying cognitive demands. Our thematic analysis revealed that, unlike in mobiles, the activity context is equally important as the content and the sender in determining notification urgency in MR. Leveraging these insights, we developed PersoNo using large language models that analyse users replying behaviour patterns. Our multi-agent approach achieved 81.5% accuracy and significantly reduced false negative rates (0.381) compared to baseline models. PersoNo has the potential not only to reduce unnecessary interruptions but also to offer users understanding and control of the system, adhering to Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence design principles.

cs.HC

User-Centered AI for Data Exploration: Rethinking GenAI's Role in Visualization

Recent advances in GenAI have enabled automation in data visualization, allowing users to generate visual representations using natural language. However, existing systems primarily focus on automation, overlooking users' varying expertise levels and analytical needs. In this position paper, we advocate for a shift toward adaptive GenAI-driven visualization tools that tailor interactions, reasoning, and visualizations to individual users. We first review existing automation-focused approaches and highlight their limitations. We then introduce methods for assessing user expertise, as well as key open challenges and research questions that must be addressed to allow for an adaptive approach. Finally, we present our vision for a user-centered system that leverages GenAI not only for automation but as an intelligent collaborator in visual data exploration. Our perspective contributes to the broader discussion on designing GenAI-based systems that enhance human cognition by dynamically adapting to the user, ultimately advancing toward systems that promote augmented cognition.

cs.HC

Eliciting Understandable Architectonic Gestures for Robotic Furniture through Co-Design Improvisation

The vision of adaptive architecture proposes that robotic technologies could enable interior spaces to physically transform in a bidirectional interaction with occupants. Yet, it is still unknown how this interaction could unfold in an understandable way. Inspired by HRI studies where robotic furniture gestured intents to occupants by deliberately positioning or moving in space, we hypothesise that adaptive architecture could also convey intents through gestures performed by a mobile robotic partition. To explore this design space, we invited 15 multidisciplinary experts to join co-design improvisation sessions, where they manually manoeuvred a deactivated robotic partition to design gestures conveying six architectural intents that varied in purpose and urgency. Using a gesture elicitation method alongside motion-tracking data, a Laban-based questionnaire, and thematic analysis, we identified 20 unique gestural strategies. Through categorisation, we introduced architectonic gestures as a novel strategy for robotic furniture to convey intent by indexically leveraging its spatial impact, complementing the established deictic and emblematic gestures. Our study thus represents an exploratory step toward making the autonomous gestures of adaptive architecture more legible. By understanding how robotic gestures are interpreted based not only on their motion but also on their spatial impact, we contribute to bridging HRI with Human-Building Interaction research.

cs.HC

An Approach to Elicit Human-Understandable Robot Expressions to Support Human-Robot Interaction

Understanding the intentions of robots is essential for natural and seamless human-robot collaboration. Ensuring that robots have means for non-verbal communication is a basis for intuitive and implicit interaction. For this, we contribute an approach to elicit and design human-understandable robot expressions. We outline the approach in the context of non-humanoid robots. We paired human mimicking and enactment with research from gesture elicitation in two phases: first, to elicit expressions, and second, to ensure they are understandable. We present an example application through two studies (N=16 \& N=260) of our approach to elicit expressions for a simple 6-DoF robotic arm. We show that it enabled us to design robot expressions that signal curiosity and interest in getting attention. Our main contribution is an approach to generate and validate understandable expressions for robots, enabling more natural human-robot interaction.

cs.RO

From Computational to Conversational Notebooks

Today, we see a drastic increase in LLM-based user interfaces to support users in various tasks. Also, in programming, we witness a productivity boost with features like LLM-supported code completion and conversational agents to generate code. In this work, we look at the future of computational notebooks by enriching them with LLM support. We propose a spectrum of support, from simple inline code completion to executable code that was the output of a conversation. We showcase five concrete examples for potential user interface designs and discuss their benefits and drawbacks. With this, we hope to inspire the future development of LLM-supported computational notebooks.

cs.HC

Putting Language into Context Using Smartphone-Based Keyboard Logging

While the study of language as typed on smartphones offers valuable insights, existing data collection methods often fall short in providing contextual information and ensuring user privacy. We present a privacy-respectful approach - context-enriched keyboard logging - that allows for the extraction of contextual information on the user's input motive, which is meaningful for linguistics, psychology, and behavioral sciences. In particular, with our approach, we enable distinguishing language contents by their channel (i.e., comments, messaging, search inputs). Filtering by channel allows for better pre-selection of data, which is in the interest of researchers and improves users' privacy. We demonstrate our approach on a large-scale six-month user study (N=624) of language use in smartphone interactions in the wild. Finally, we highlight the implications for research on language use in human-computer interaction and interdisciplinary contexts.

cs.HC

PhysioCHI: Towards Best Practices for Integrating Physiological Signals in HCI

Recently, we saw a trend toward using physiological signals in interactive systems. These signals, offering deep insights into users' internal states and health, herald a new era for HCI. However, as this is an interdisciplinary approach, many challenges arise for HCI researchers, such as merging diverse disciplines, from understanding physiological functions to design expertise. Also, isolated research endeavors limit the scope and reach of findings. This workshop aims to bridge these gaps, fostering cross-disciplinary discussions on usability, open science, and ethics tied to physiological data in HCI. In this workshop, we will discuss best practices for embedding physiological signals in interactive systems. Through collective efforts, we seek to craft a guiding document for best practices in physiological HCI research, ensuring that it remains grounded in shared principles and methodologies as the field advances.

cs.HC

Designing and Evaluating an Adaptive Virtual Reality System using EEG Frequencies to Balance Internal and External Attention States

Virtual reality finds various applications in productivity, entertainment, and training scenarios requiring working memory and attentional resources. Working memory relies on prioritizing relevant information and suppressing irrelevant information through internal attention, which is fundamental for successful task performance and training. Today, virtual reality systems do not account for the impact of working memory loads resulting in over or under-stimulation. In this work, we designed an adaptive system based on EEG correlates of external and internal attention to support working memory task performance. Here, participants engaged in a visual working memory N-Back task, and we adapted the visual complexity of distracting surrounding elements. Our study first demonstrated the feasibility of EEG frontal theta and parietal alpha frequency bands for dynamic visual complexity adjustments. Second, our adaptive system showed improved task performance and diminished perceived workload compared to a reverse adaptation. Our results show the effectiveness of the proposed adaptive system, allowing for the optimization of distracting elements in high-demanding conditions. Adaptive systems based on alpha and theta frequency bands allow for the regulation of attentional and executive resources to keep users engaged in a task without resulting in cognitive overload.

cs.HC

Usability and Adoption of Graphical Data-Driven Development Tools

Software development of modern, data-driven applications still relies on tools that use interaction paradigms that have remained mostly unchanged for decades. While rich forms of interactions exist as an alternative to textual command input, they find little adoption in professional software creation. In this work, we compare graphical programming using direct manipulation to the traditional, textual way of creating data-driven applications to determine the benefits and drawbacks of each. In a between-subjects user study (N=18), we compared developing a machine learning architecture with a graphical editor to traditional code-based development. While qualitative and quantitative measures show general benefits of graphical direct manipulation, the user's subjective perception does not always match this. Participants were aware of the possible benefits of such tools but were still biased in their perception. Our findings highlight that alternative software creation tools cannot just rely on good usability but must emphasize the demands of their specific target group, e.g. user control and flexibility, if they want long-term benefits and adoption.

cs.HC

How Can Mixed Reality Benefit From Physiologically-Adaptive Systems? Challenges and Opportunities for Human Factors Applications

Mixed Reality (MR) allows users to interact with digital objects in a physical environment, but several limitations have hampered widespread adoption. Physiologically adaptive systems detecting user's states can drive interaction and address these limitations. Here, we highlight potential usability and interaction limitations in MR and how physiologically adaptive systems can benefit MR experiences and applications. We specifically address potential applications for human factors and operational settings such as healthcare, education, and entertainment. We further discuss benefits and applications in light of ethical and privacy concerns. The use of physiologically adaptive systems in MR has the potential to revolutionize human-computer interactions and provide users with a more personalized and engaging experience.

cs.HC

Leveraging Mobile Sensing Technology for Societal Change Towards more Sustainable Behavior

A pro-environmental attitude in the general population is essential to combat climate change. Society as a whole has the power to change economic processes through market demands and to exert pressure on policymakers - both are key social factors that currently undermine the goals of decarbonization. Creating long-lasting, sustainable attitudes is challenging and behavior change technologies do hard to overcome their limitations. Environmental psychology proposes social factors to be relevant, a.o. creating a global identity feeling and widening one's view beyond the own bubble. From our experience in the field of mobile sensing and psychometric data inferences, we see strong potential in mobile sensing technologies to implement the aforementioned goals. We present concrete ideas in this paper, aiming to refine and extend them with the workshop and evaluate them afterward.

cs.HC