Posted on August 1, 2014 at. August 1, 2014 by Drea Fekety

As I mentioned in a previous post, the IRES students (including myself) were lucky enough to visit two HCI research labs in the same day during our trip to Munich. This current post will chronicle my experience of the LMU IFI as we were hosted and guided by Dr. Florian Alt.

Most of the work we were shown in Florian’s lab dealt with the topic of interactive public displays. Researchers at LMU IFI are working with eye-tracking and gesture-tracking technologies in order to change the information presented on a public display (e.g., billboards, posters) to target the user in a more specific way. For example, a public display can become clearer or angled to the viewer as they approach the display to see what it’s showing to them. Much of this work is still in progress so I’ll refrain from sharing any more about it, but I’ve got to say it was impressive.

I also had the chance to see a custom smartphone application developed by this lab, designed to offer alternative ways of unlocking your phone with a password. Most phones allow you to enter a PIN number, or swipe a pattern within a 9-target display to unlock your phone but the downside of this is that it leaves visible,oily streak marks on your device’s screen which may allow someone else to see your password pattern. Instead, this app shows a photograph of your choosing every time you unlock your phone, and you touch specific areas of the photo to unlock. However, the picture is slightly different every time (i.e,. zoomed in, upsidedown, mirrored, etc.) so that you never leave a consistent pattern of finger movement on your screen.

I’m very thankful that Florian and his colleagues were able to show us their working space, especially on such short notice. They even took us out to lunch at a very nice Korean restaurant in downtown Munich, which was great. I’ll look forward to seeing what other kind of work this lab produces in the future.