Linda Hirsch

University of California, Santa Cruz | UCSC · Department of Computer Engineering

In construction, defect management represents a crucial yet manually intensive task, demanding meticulous documentation. Our work introduces an Augmented Reality (AR) application enhancing defect management through digital documentation and real-time comparison with the construction site's digital twin. We collected the requirements for our app in...

Augmented Reality (AR) is evolving to become the next frontier in social media, merging physical and virtual reality into a living metaverse, a Social MediARverse. With this transition, we must understand how different contexts (public, semi-public, and private) affect user engagement with AR content. We address this gap in current research by cond...

Today's social and political movements against dominant Western narratives call for a re-contextualization of cultural heritage (CH) toward inclusivity, multiperspectivity, and sensemaking. Our work approaches this challenge from a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) perspective, questioning how HCI approaches, tools and methods can contribute to CH r...

Social games benefit from social connectedness between players because it improves the gaming experience and increases enjoyment. In virtual reality (VR), various approaches, such as avatars, are developed for multi- player games to increase social connectedness. However, these approaches are lacking in single-player games. To increase social conne...

Many historical buildings are challenged to comply with their dual purpose of being society’s living memory and being used for everyday activities, such as a place to work or study. Direct interactions with such buildings could counteract this challenge and integrate their historical significance with contemporary needs. However, there is a lack of...

Cultural heritage is often questioned for its relevance or criticized for representing an incomplete picture of the past. Interactive technologies can bring up new viewpoints, and alternative narratives, or intensify or provoke the user experience when cultural heritage is accessed. They can be utilized in contextualized built environments, which f...

Thermal signals have been explored in HCI for emotion-elicitation and enhancing two-person communication, showing that temperature invokes social and emotional signals in individuals. Yet, extending these findings to group communication is missing. We investigated how thermal signals can be used to communicate group affective states in a hybrid mee...

Thermal signals have been explored in HCI for emotion-elicitation and enhancing two-person communication, showing that temperature invokes social and emotional signals in individuals. Yet, extending these findings to group communication is missing. We investigated how thermal signals can be used to communicate group affective states in a hybrid mee...

Historical cemeteries are interesting design spaces within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), due to their cultural and personal significance, and that they also serve multi-purposes within an urban community. However, contemporary usage of such places and technological developments partly interfere with preserving such places’ significance. To eval...

Creating social Virtual Environments (VEs) is an ongoing challenge. Traces of prior human interactions, or traces of use, are used in Physical Environments (PEs) to create more meaningful relationships with the PE and the people within it. In this paper, we explore how the concept of traces of use can be transferred from PEs to VEs to increase know...

Historical cemeteries are under-explored design spaces within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), even though they are visited for many reasons nowadays. We present our strategy to embed interfaces into this sensitive environment and report on interim results and the potential of such interfaces to support these places’ preservation. We followed an i...

Risk areas for smear infections in public transport stay generally unnoticeable for passengers. However, touching a handrail can be similar to shaking hands with a thousand people. Although prior research looked into self-cleaning materials to tackle such issues, little has been done to make touched areas more transparent to passengers. In this wor...

Fig. 1. Left: Multiple non-interactive plaster busts. Middle: Turning a plaster bust into a tangible interface by means of capacitive sensing. Right: User interacting with the final prototype. Plaster busts are common exhibition pieces in museums, but they usually are off-limits for touch. While modern exhibition concepts increasingly involve inter...

The augmentation of the built and urban environment with digital media has evolved and matured over recent years. Cities are seeing a rapid rise of various technologies; a trend also accelerated by global crises. Consequently, new urban interfaces are emerging that integrate next-generation technologies, such as sustainable interface materials and...

People visit public places with different intentions and motivations. While some explore it carefully, others may just want to pass or are otherwise engaged. We investigate how to exploit the inattentional blindness (IB) of indirect users in the design of public interfaces to apply to such diverse needs. Beginning with a structured literature study...

The urban realm is currently undergoing a transformation in which cities are being laced with sensors and networks of ever-connected devices. At the same time, more and more novel and advanced materials are finding their way into interaction design and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research, offering us new interaction possibilities. In this hal...

Concrete is a ubiquitous material in urban environments and increasingly used by industry and the maker movement. However, there is little research about its affordance and its potential for embedded User Interfaces (UI). In our ongoing work, we investigate different manufacturing processes and design strategies to change and adapt the affordances...

Urban interfaces play an important role in the field of media architecture and smart cities. They enable citizens to access the digital layer of the city, to interact with urban applications, and to make more informed decisions about how they utilize the urban infrastructure. As the field of media architecture is diversifying, urban interfaces can...

Traces of use in public environments show the behaviour patterns of the masses. Taking advantage of this quality, we want to use such traces as design tool to indicate pos-sible interactions in e.g. newly built areas while keeping a natural and calm environment. Due to current lacking knowledge about such traces, this work aims at understand-ing th...

Natural, public places in cities serve often as a place for recreation and relaxation. Additionally, such places often signify historic and social importance about which visitors would like to know more. Screens and other currently existing technology would, however, destroy the natural beauty of such a place. Attention-aware and unobtrusive interf...

Most currently existing tools for cognitive memory therapy require physical interaction or at least the presence of another person. The goal of this paper is to investigate whether a social robot might be an acceptable solution for a more inclusive therapy for people with memory disorder and severe physical limitations. Applying a user-centered des...