Matthias Wölfel

Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences · Department of Computer Science

The human body is designed for regular movement. Many humans, however, spend the bulk of their day sitting still instead. On average, for instance an adult spends approximately 10 hours each day sitting-in Asia, Europe as well as US. While a brief period of sitting here and there is natural, long periods of sitting day-in and day-out can seriously...

This paper discusses how different physically existing materials can be mapped on virtual textures in mixed reality environments by carrying out an explorative user study (n=101). For physical materials-in form of 3d trackable and moveable cubes-acrylic, wood and aluminum have been used. The virtual textures convey the impression of ceramic, fabric...

In virtual reality different demands on the user interface have to be addressed than on classic screen applications. That's why established strategies from other digital media cannot be transferred unreflected and at least adaptation is required. So one of the leading questions is: which form of interface is preferable for virtual reality? Are 2D i...

The promise of artificial intelligence (AI), in particular its latest developments in deep learning, has been influencing all kinds of disciplines such as engineering, business, agriculture, and humanities. More recently it also includes disciplines that were exclusively reserved for humans such as art and design. While there is a strong debate goi...

Location-based virtual reality (LBVR) is promising to offer the full potential of virtual reality (VR) becauseit is not completely virtual, as in space independent VR, which usually relies on a head-worn display andhand-held controllers only. Therefore, LBVR can include and arrange the physical surrounding according to aparticular application or in...

In addition to the health risks posed by advancing age, the elderly population faces additional challenges in global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting both themselves and their caregivers. This case study addresses the co-creation process for an AI-based care assistant-a hybrid multimodal interaction system-to assist in low-contact on...

Information and communication technologies are ubiquitous in today’s society. They have the potential to enhance the life of its users in various areas, especially the life of people with intellectual disabilities (ID). Unfortunately, natural user interfaces are often too complicated to use and not adapted to the varying needs of every user group....

In the broader field of human behavior studies, there are several trade-offs for on-site experiments. To be tied to a specific location can limit both the availability and diversity of participants. However, current and future technological advances make it possible to replicate real-world scenarios in a virtual environment up to a certain level of...

It has become a challenge in recent years to raise interest in museum visits, especially among younger visitors, as the range of alternative entertainment options has become overwhelming and increasingly attractive, interactive, and playful. To re-engage a wide audience with art and cultural heritage, we propose to use artificial intelligence to ma...

More and more educational institutions are making lecture videos available online. Since 100+ empirical studies document that captioning a video improves comprehension of, attention to, and memory for the video [1], it makes sense to provide those lecture videos with captions. However, studies also show that the words themselves contribute only 7%...

With the increasing prevalence of immersive virtual reality (VR) systems in educational contexts, it is important to understand how the use of VR impacts cognitive, affective, and psychomotor learning processes and learning outcomes. Proponents argue that VR can improve the quality of learning by stimulating individual learning processes to generat...

Educational chatbots promise to be valuable tools for educational learning scenarios. However their use is not common yet. Therefore, an onboarding process is required. We compare two onboarding processes for our self-developed educational chatbot system which supports students in knowledge acquisition and review using lecture slides as content inp...

Humans communicate on three levels: words, paralanguage, and nonverbal. While conversational agents focus mainly on the interpretation of words that are being spoken, recently the focus has also shifted to how we say those words with our tone, pace, and intonation. Nonverbal communication, including facial expression, eye contact, posture, and prox...

The visual representation of human-like entities in virtual worlds is becoming a very important aspect as virtual reality becomes more and more “social”. The visual representation of a character’s resemblance to a real person and the emotional response to it, as well as the expectations raised, have been a topic of discussion for several decades an...

We introduce the concept of asymmetric normalization, which refers to decoupling sensory self-perception from the perception of others in a shared virtual environment to present each user with a normalized version of the other users. This concept can be applied to various avatar-related elements such as appearance, location, or non-verbal communica...

Real-time recognition of human facial expressions and their transfer and use in software is now established and can be found in a variety of computer applications. Most solutions, however, do not focus on facial recognition to be used in combination with wearing a head-mounted display. In these cases, the face is partially obscured, and approaches...

The way a system in a virtual environment interacts with the user through an agent-mediated interface could potentially influence the overall perception of the system or certain aspects of it. To investigate which type of visualization influences presence, attractiveness, and sense of agency, we designed four different visualizations of agent-media...

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings the 10th EAI International Conference on ArtsIT, Interactivity and Game Creation, ArtsIT 2021 which was held in December 2021. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held virtually. The 31 revised full papers presented were carefully selected from 57 submissions. The papers are the...

The replication crisis is real, and awareness of its existence is growing across disciplines. We argue that research in human-computer interaction (HCI), and especially virtual reality (VR), is vulnerable to similar challenges due to many shared methodologies, theories, and incentive structures. For this reason, in this work, we transfer establishe...

Virtual reality becomes a medium to be explored for itself, to study human factors and human behavior within these worlds, and to infer possible behavior in the real world. Among many advantages, building test routines in virtual environments remains a challenge due to the lack of established procedures and toolkits. To encourage research in this d...

Although corresponding technological and didactical models have been known for decades, the digitization of teaching has hardly advanced beyond simple non-interactive formats (e.g. downloadable slides are provided within a learning management system). The COVID-19 crisis is changing this situation dramatically, creating a high demand for highly int...

Immersive Technologien heben die Kluft zwischen der digitalen und der analogen Welt auf. Diese eröffnen zahlreiche neue Möglichkeiten in der Umsetzung von Lernanwendungen. Jedoch fördert der Einsatz von diesen Technologien den Lernerfolg nicht automatisch. Um zu identifizieren, welche Faktoren und Strategien für den Lernerfolg entscheidend sind, is...

The uncanny valley describes a relationship between the degree of the emotional response with respect to a character’s resemblance to an actual human being. It has been a topic for several decades and has been discussed by scholars of different disciplines and in various aspects such as robotics, 3D computer animations, interactive applications, an...

Digital technologies have many advantages for users, such as virtually unlimited access to information, entertainment , and communication. Most modern human-computer interfaces are developed under the assumption that they will be used by a person with typical physical, intellectual, and perceptual abilities. Although some operating systems already...

Diversification of fonts in video captions based on the voice characteristics, namely loudness, speed and pauses, can affect the viewer receiving the content. This study evaluates a new method, WaveFont, which visualizes the voice characteristics for captions in an intuitive way. The study was specifically designed to test captions, which aims to a...

As virtual reality becomes more popular to be used in semi-public spaces such as museums and other exhibition venues, the question on how to optimally stage such an experience arises. To foster interaction between participants and bystanders, to lower the primary threshold in regards to participation and to moderate the transition between real and...

The promise of artificial intelligence (AI), in particular its latest developments in deep learning, has been influencing all kinds of disciplines such as engineering, business, agriculture, and humanities. More recently it also includes disciplines that were “reserved” to humans such as art and design. While there is a strong debate going on if cr...

The promise of artificial intelligence (AI), in particular its latest developments in deep learning, has been influencing all kinds of disciplines such as engineering, business, agriculture, and humanities. More recently it also includes disciplines that were exclusively reserved for humans such as art and design. While there is a strong debate goi...

The introduction of sensory information into computer-supported learning results in a manifold of available data to be collected. In this publication we investigate how this “more in data” does not inevitably lead to a “more in distraction” at the interface. This becomes possible by analyzing intentional and non-intentional actions of the user or t...

As virtual reality becomes more popular to be used in semi-public spaces such as museums and other exhibition venues, the question on how to optimally stage such an experience arises. To foster interaction between participants and bystanders, to lower the primary threshold in regards to participation and to moderate the transition between real and...

The promise of artificial intelligence (AI), in particular its latest developments in deep learning, has been influencing all kinds of disciplines such as engineering, business, agriculture, and humanities. More recently it also includes disciplines that were "reserved" to humans such as art and design. While there is a strong debate going on if cr...

This paper investigates the current state of hand-held augmented reality (AR) gaming apps available on the App Store (iOS) and the Play Store (Android). To be able to directly compare the differences between games played with and without AR, only games in which the AR mode can be switched on/off were investigated. Because the main scope of this pap...

Recent developments in human machine interaction offer three principal different approaches to interact with 3D environments, namely: 2D overlays using icons, 3D interfaces resembling interactions of the real world and speech interfaces which matured in the last years and are becoming more and more popular in other context such as smartphones or sm...

The promise of artificial intelligence (AI), in particular its latest developments in deep learning, has been influencing all kinds of disciplines such as engineering, business, agriculture, and humanities. More recently it also includes disciplines that were “reserved” to humans such as art and design. While there is a strong debate going on if cr...

Virtual reality is currently experiencing a renaissance, with more and more fields of application emerging and more and more users spending an increasing amount of time using head mounted displays (HMD). While technical parameters such as field of view or pixel density are heavily researched, some fundamental aspects of perception and in particular...

Mixed Reality is gaining popularity in more and more areas. One of such application, which has gained recent interest, is the enhancement of shopping experiences by presenting virtual goods in a real or virtual surrounding. While product representation (e.g. quantity, placement, size, surrounding) in brick-and-mortar retail stores is naturally cons...

Artists often try to open up new experiences for people, challenging them to extend horizons and perception. This becomes particularly relevant when thinking about experiencing built environments: Here, technologies like Cave Automatic Virtual Environments (CAVE) or Head-Mounted Displays (HMD) can be used as a tool to offer richer experiences to th...

Mobiltelefon, PC, AV-Player, Radio, Webbrowser - im Smartphone konvergieren vielfältige Medieninhalte und -phänomene. Zwangsläufig bilden medientechnologische Produktionsformen die Basis hierfür. Hinzu kommen gestalterische Implikationen, die im Umgang mit der vorgeschalteten, »unsichtbaren« Technik deren Optik hervorbringen: etwa das User Interfac...

The ultimate goal of virtual realty is to create a simulated world around us which is indistinguishable from the physical world as we know it. In such an environment our actions could lead to severe effects on our body. What would happen if one gets hit by a bullet, car or lightning? How would the felt pain change our perception of the virtual envi...

Recently virtual reality (VR) applications are shifting from professional use cases to more entertainment-centered approaches. Therefore aesthetic aspects in virtual environments gain in relevance. This paper examines the influence of different color determining parameters on user perception habits between head mounted displays (HMD) and computer s...

Virtuelle Realität erlebt gerade eine Renaissance: Mit Vorreitern wie Oculus mit Rift und HTC mit Vive zeigt diese Technologie, welche disruptiven Potentiale noch nicht ausgeschöpft wurden. Durch bezahlbare Hardware und vor allem durch verbesserte Technik soll sich VR nun weg von Spezialanwendungen (wie Maschinenbau und Medizintechnik) mitten hinei...

The way we store, distribute and access textural information has undergone a dramatic change starting by the introduction of movable type around the 1450s. The way, however, we present and perceive written information has not changed much since then. But why is that? Technology has been a key driver in what is now called digital media. It provides...

The use of smart devices has become an integrated part of our everyday life. Communication is now possible any place and any time. The distraction caused by these devices, however, can lead to potentially dangerous situations. To mitigate these situations, various researchers have proposed and developed solutions to analyze the environment and to a...

Im Rahmen von Karlsruhe.digital hatte die Hochschule Karlsruhe – Technik und Wirtschaft die Gelegenheit auf dem größten internationalen Innovationsevent in Deutschland auszustellen. Mit „Super Nubibus“ bekamen die Besucher des CODE_n new.New Festivals vom 8. bis 10. Oktober 2018 in der Hanns-Martin-Schleyer-Halle in Stuttgart die Möglichkeit, die e...

In this paper, the effectiveness of vibrotactile stimuli for pedestrian navigation will be examined by comparing the detection rate of three different types of stimuli applied to the wrist. We developed a prototype of a watch strap with vibration motors to examine how the amount of vibrations motors affects the users' recognition rate and time. Res...

With the introduction of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift in 2016 the old technology (Sutherland 1965) of Virtual Reality (VR) has experienced quite a boost: it seems foreseeable that the once " geek and nerd " (Mizer 2013) technology will attract a growing consumer audience and is going to find its place within the universe of entertainment. However,...

The way we present written information has not been essentially changed since the introduction of movable types in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg around 1450s. While industrialization was necessitating standardization of type, digitalization offers a liberation of these stringent constrains. Various input parameters can now have an influence on the o...

The use of smart devices has become an integrated part of our everyday life. Communication is now possible everywhere at any time. The distraction caused by these devices, however, can lead to potentially dangerous situations. To mitigate these situations various researchers have proposed and developed solutions to analyze the environment and to al...

As dementia will seemingly become one of the most common conditions in our aging world and no viable cure is on the horizon, novel forms of care focusing on the quality of life and well-being of people with dementia are needed. In order to create such novel interventions, the Furtwangen University initiated an interdisciplinary student design cours...

Today public or semi-public spaces are becoming less and less a place for non-digital communication, collaboration or social exchange. This change might be mainly caused by novel handheld devices which allow us to be physically present but not mentally. This behavior is not only unsocial, it can also lead to potential dangerous situations (Haga 201...

Reminiscence Therapy can act as an effective and conducive method for increasing the Quality of Life (QoL) of people with dementia (PwD) when implemented properly. In addition to non-digital approaches, digitally enhanced systems can be built to elicit positive memories as well as emotions using multimodal interaction and digital content. In the sa...

“Home is where WiFi automatically connects.” Our sense of place has changed from a fixed, manifested location to rather a concept or idea of space. Although this development seems to be triggered by technologies like the WWW or the more recent hype on virtual reality it was first described in the 1960ies by urban planners. They defined home as the...

In Kooperation mit der Ideal Spaces Working Group präsentierten Studenten der Hochschule Furtwangen auf der Architekturbiennale eine interaktive Installation, die sich damit auseinandersetzte, wie das Zusammenleben in Zukunft funktionieren könnte. Dabei referenzierten sie einerseits historische Überlegungen zur »idealen Stadt«, eröffneten jedoch au...

Virtual words, independent of their realizations, let us experience a person's sense of Being There, a form of spatial immersion dubbed presence. Where we are and even who we are is the result of living in the real world as well as a multitude of virtual worlds. This visceral feeling depends on several technical dimensions, which have been widely d...

In this publication we introduced a radical new concept of perceiving information in written form: Until today, after the layout process has finished, the shape of a single typographic character is treated as an unchangeable property. But due to current sensor and display technologies this does not have to be necessary anymore. We propose, to chang...

Although digital revolution has pervaded almost every part of daily life, cities remained seemingly analogue and furthermore inhabitants are mostly excluded from the digital layer. By replacing timeworn light bulbs with a projector linked with an intelligent sensor array we expect to increase social interaction within open spaces by creating a more...

With voice driven type design (VDTD), we introduce a novel concept to present written information in the digital age. While the shape of a single typographical character has been treated as an unchangeable property until today, we present an innovative method to adjust the shape of each single character according to particular acoustic features in...

With voice driven type design (VDTD), we introduce a novel concept to present written information in the digital age. While the shape of a single typographic character has been treated as an unchangeable property until today, we present an innovative method to adjust the shape of each single character according to particular acoustic features in th...

Zusammenfassung Erstmals in der Geschichte der Menschheit befähigt der Monitor die Ausgabe von variablen Inhalten. Die Entwicklung der Schrift und ihrer Zeichenformen entstammt jedoch aus dem statischen, analogen Medium. Digitale Ausgabegeräte in Verbindung mit Sensorik rücken das Individuum in den Focus und eröffnen die Möglichkeit, das Schriftzei...

Although digital revolution has pervaded almost every part of daily life, cities remained seemingly analogue and furthermore inhabitants are mostly excluded from the digital layer. Considering the increasing wish for safety as well as present accident statistics, society faces the necessity to support the needs of their weakest traffic participants...

With voice driven type design (VDTD), we introduce a novel concept to present written in-formation in the digital age. While the shape of a single typographic character has been treated as an unchangeable property until today, we present an innovative method to adjust the shape of each single character according to particular acoustic features in t...

We propose the thesis that the evolution of information technology, which promises nearly unlimited possibilities, is actually not leading to an increase of individual freedom, but to the very opposite. Since a seemingly increase in individual user-freedom is accompanied by a de facto-increase in preformatted devices for achieving it, and hence, do...

We propose the thesis that the evolution of information technology, which promises nearly unlimited possibilities, is actually not leading to an increase of individual freedom, but to the very opposite. Since a seemingly increase in individual user-freedom is accompanied by a de facto-increase in preformatted devices for achieving it, and hence, do...

In stark contrast to online advertising campaigns, advertisement in the urban space has lost attention and seems to be stuck in the Gutenberg era. The emergence of hybrid urban spaces, however, allows for novel possibilities to bring back customers' attention and interest. In this publication we review current interactive advertisement campaigns, i...

Online advertising campaigns are gaining customers' attention in comparison to advertisement campaigns in the urban space. How to bring back users' attention to advertisement in the urban space by using implicit and explicit interactions of the user is investigated in this publication. We have used age, gender and position estimates to automaticall...

In stark contrast to online advertising campaigns, advertisement in the urban space has lost attention and seems to be stuck in the Gutenberg era. The emergence of hybrid urban spaces, however, allows for novel possibilities to bring back customers’ attention and interest. In this publication we review current interactive advertisement campaigns, i...

The contribution tries to sketch the development of a certain kind of technology, namely user-specific computational technologies which promise an increase in gaining individual freedom. It was a promise that increasingly led to a predominance of managed 'freedoms' and hence, to an increased formatization of technical tools and individual perceptio...