Summer internships with the HCI leaders in Portugal

A VR Exergame was built to increase older adults’ health and well-being by promoting a more active lifestyle. This game is single-player and has no connectivity or social aspects. The students’ work involves building Web Services to support the VR Exergame by storing gaming data and providing sorted scoreboards and other social information. The student will also be involved in users’ testing sessions in a controlled environment (laboratory) and in the real environment (local gym facilities providing exercise sessions to community-dwelling older adults). 

Student profile: Candidate with experience in Web Services and/or REST-API. MySQL (or similar Databases) experience is also advised.

A VR Exergame was built to increase older adults’ health and well-being by promoting a more active lifestyle. The game is composed of several mini-games with a central theme. The student will help expand the base game by designing the 2D and 3D assets for two other themes. 

Student profile: Candidate with experience designing 2D and 3D assets, preferably with some experience in game design.

Robot teleoperation requires effective teleoperation interfaces to ensure overall task success. These must be carefully designed to provide appropriate options awareness and effective interaction with the robot in the remote environment. The work plan includes the development of an affordance-based prototype to improve options awareness.

Student profile: Knowledge in robotics, good programming skills and interest in Human-Robot Interaction.

Stress relief is essential in today’s fast-paced world as it helps maintain mental and physical health. Chronic stress can lead to various health issues, including heart disease, depression, and anxiety. Moreover, it can negatively impact productivity and social relationships.

This project aims to investigate whether digital games can be used to relieve stress and anxiety. The student will directly collaborate with the Infinity game company and evaluate one of their products. We will design and conduct a controlled laboratory study to assess the efficiency of digital games and their features in reducing anxiety.

Student profile: interest in human-computer interaction, digital games, and user studies.

Portuguese Sign Language (Língua Gestual Portuguesa – LGP) is very young relative to other languages, officially recognised as a language in 1997. Often, deaf individuals, communities, or professionals decide on what signs to use locally or temporarily. Thus, multiple signs for the same term are often created, used, and/or lost. Such lack of standardization creates obstacles to language growth and learning, communication, and collaboration between LGP signers. This is especially relevant when new vocabulary arises due to social events (e.g., covid) or technological advances (e.g., generative AI). In the case of LGP, the signers’ small size and geographic dispersion present major obstacles to this sort of natural language growth.

In this project, we want to empower Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing communities to take ownership of LGP through a community-based web platform. This work will build on an existing web dictionary and augment its crowdsourcing features for proposal, discussion, and deliberation about new signs. Users can post videos of signs, participate in discussions, and reach a consensus about the most appropriate sign of a given term. Results will be added to the existing dictionary. 

There will be an opportunity to continue this work on a follow-up one-year scholarship. The student will be supported by a multidisciplinary team that includes designers, linguists, developers, and LGP signers.

Student profile: front-end developer, web technologies.

Zoop.earth is a novel organization model that contributes to ecological regeneration by including the interests of other-than-human life in collective deliberation adopted in projects like the Bauhaus of the Seas (bauhaus-seas.eu). We seek a highly motivated student interested in exploring the potential of LLMs to generate non-human voices in our quest for an ecologically regenerative and inclusive Zoönomy. This project will help bridge the communication gap between humans and other-than-human life, contributing to more sustainable solutions for our living space.

The work plan includes: i) Investigate the application of LLMs and other AI technologies in generating the voice of non-human entities, such as plants, animals, and ecosystems, to represent their interests in organizational decision-making processes; ii) Collaborate with interdisciplinary teams of technologists, designers, and ecologists to design and implement novel AI systems that effectively communicate the needs and perspectives of other-than-human life in the context of the Bauhaus of the Seas; iii) Evaluate the success and impact of the AI-generated non-human voices on organizational decision-making, and provide recommendations for improvements and further research.

Student profile: undergrad or master’s computer science and engineering student interested in AI and HCI, including using chatGPT and other LLMs.

We seek a dedicated and enthusiastic research intern to join our team, focusing on using LLMs to give voice to non-humans in the context of nature interactions. This internship offers an excellent opportunity for undergraduate or graduate students interested in human-computer interaction, and design to support ongoing PhD research projects. As a research intern, you will gain hands-on experience in using AI techniques to support storytelling with non-humans in the context of nature interactions. 

The work plan includes: i) Investigate the application of LLMs and other AI technologies in generating the voice of non-human entities, such as plants, animals, and ecosystems, to represent their interests in organizational decision-making processes; ii) Collaborate with interdisciplinary teams of technologists, designers, and ecologists to design and implement novel AI systems that effectively communicate the needs and perspectives of other-than-human life in the context of the Bauhaus of the Seas; iii) Evaluate the success and impact of the AI-generated non-human voices on organizational decision-making, and provide recommendations for improvements and further research.

Student profile: undergrad or master’s computer science and engineering student interested in AI and HCI, including using chatGPT and other LLMs.

We seek a dedicated and enthusiastic research intern to join our team, focusing on “User Research in the Museum.” This internship offers an excellent opportunity for undergraduate or graduate students interested in user research, human-computer interaction, and design to support ongoing PhD research projects. As a research intern, you will gain hands-on experience conducting user studies and analyzing data to inform the design and development of innovative technologies.

The work plan includes: i) Assist PhD students in planning, designing, and conducting user studies in real-world settings, such as public spaces and other relevant environments; ii) Collect and analyze qualitative and quantitative data from user research activities, such as interviews, observations, surveys, and usability testing;  iii) Help prepare research findings for presentations, reports, and publications.

Student profile: Undergrad or master’s student in psychology or social sciences with experience in conducting user research.

Typically defined as an understanding of the ocean’s influence on humans and humans’ influence on the ocean – is a novel and growing body of knowledge on structured marine education and a tool for policy action (https://oceanliteracy.unesco.org/). Given its increasing complexity and community of involved practitioners and learners, visualising Ocean Literacy in an engaging, interactive, comprehensive yet intuitive way would be of great benefit to its diverse beneficiaries, from students to teachers and experts. Hence the value of looking at it from the dual lens of Human-Computer Interaction and Knowledge Visualization.

Goal: This project will exemplify how HCI and Knowledge Visualisation (KV) can contribute to making Ocean Literacy (and similar education frameworks) more engaging and accessible for a wide variety of users/beneficiaries

Student profile: We seek a highly motivated student interested in exploring the potential of web-based visualisations like [ Observables ] to produce an innovative piece of ‘knowledge visualization’ on Ocean Literacy, named ‘OL-in-One compass’

We seek a dedicated and enthusiastic research intern to join our team, focusing on “Designing Nature: Culture Interactions.” This internship offers an excellent opportunity for undergraduate or graduate students interested in user research, human-computer interaction, and design to support ongoing PhD research projects. As a research intern, you will gain hands-on experience in designing interactive technologies supporting meaningful interactions with nature.

The work plan includes: i) Assist PhD students in planning, designing, and collecting data in real-world settings, such as nature treks or urban parks; ii) Collect and analyse qualitative and quantitative data from user research activities, such as interviews, observations, and surveys;  iii) Help design and prototype novel interactions in these nature: culture contexts.

Student profile: Undergrad or master’s student in architecture or design with experience in nature and cultural heritage.

In this internship, you will work with a PhD student and our partners at Fundação Altice to implement various hands-free interaction techniques for spatial computing. The goal is for users with limited mobility and upper-limb limitations to benefit from gaming experiences in spatial computing devices such as the Apple Vision Pro. You will leverage and learn about brain-computer interfaces (BCI), eye-tracking, and facial gesture recognition.

Student profile: The candidate should be proficient in one programming language (C#, Java, Swift, etc.) and be willing to learn how to develop in Unity, Godot, Xcode, or the Unreal Engine.

In this internship, you will implement a discrete interaction technique for eXtended Reality (XR) that combines subtle input on a smartwatch and output on XR smart glasses. The objective is to allow users to interact with XR smart glasses in mobile and public settings (e.g., while on the bus) without drawing too much attention to themselves and being too cumbersome. That interaction technique does not rely on mid-air gestures, controllers, or speech. You will start by adapting the technique for smartphones you see here: https://youtu.be/ZQg70bXqh8M and you will be using an Android smartwatch and the Meta Quest Pro XR device.

Student profile: The candidate should be proficient in one programming language (C#, Java, Swift, etc.) and be willing to learn how to develop in Unity, Godot, Xcode, or the Unreal Engine.

The global shift towards sustainability has sparked new ideas for reorganizing daily life in a more eco-friendly way. One concept is that of “energy communities,” where local communities are imagined to be more closely connected to renewable energy projects in their area. This conceptualization engages citizens in thinking about energy ownership, participation, and sharing through a prosocial lens. As this vision becomes a reality, we want to engage participants in how future energy communities will be enacted and lived in. For that matter, we seek a highly motivated student interested in exploring the potential of advanced AI technologies by creating a serious game about energy communities. Our game prototype takes advantage of recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) to allow interactive and dynamic play centered around challenges and opportunities of living within a community. Based on an existing game design document and assets, the interns will use Unity to develop a game prototype in collaboration with other artists and researchers. Interns will work in person at the Interactive Technologies Institute in Funchal under the supervision of Dr. Lucas Pereira and Dr. Paulo Bala.

Student profile: Students with Computer Engineering degrees interested in Games and LLMs. The candidate should be proficient in programming (C#) and willing to learn to develop a game in an engine such as Unity.

Digital consumption understood as our reliance on always-on, Internet-connected devices and services, plays a central role in our modern way of life. Our current research looks at this consumption through the lens of environmental sustainability and the urgency to shape our digital consumption habits to better account for it. 

We are developing a digital tool to monitor users’ online behavior to achieve this goal. The tool considers the availability of ecological resources and attempts to promote an understanding of the factors that may motivate their use, thus enabling more informed decision-making. 

Our tool, Bettery, is a browser extension that keeps the user informed about the ecological footprint caused by their digital routine and raises awareness of the environmental impact associated with Internet use. Additionally, it enables modulating the interaction design of a Web site according to the availability of energy resources, thus adapting the users’ digital carbon footprint to their objectives, without compromising user experience and agency.
Currently, we have completed the UI/UX prototyping for this tool and are seeking a student researcher to work on its implementation. The functional prototype is openly accessible and available at the following link:

https://www.figma.com/proto/gToPaoDlCU7IlyaOcezQZN/Bettery-Plugin?node-id=236-1670&scaling=scale-down&page-id=0%3A1&starting-point-node-id=236%3A1670&show-proto-sidebar=1

Student profile: We are looking for a student with a background in Computer Science and Engineering, or similar. The student should be fluent in the fundamental Web technology standards (HTML, CSS and JavaScript), and, ideally, should be familiar with the implementation of rich user interfaces and interactive data visualizations. Knowledge of the Web Extensions API and of reactive UI libraries is a plus.

How can technology create new methods of communication that enhance human experience, bodily and mental awareness, and interpersonal connections?

This question led us to conceptualize an interactive experience where the basic premise is to convert user biometric data into sound and image — for this, a measuring band is the starting point for the subsequent system. The individual’s data translation will then merge with the data of other participants in the experience, with said data being transferred from the band to a central system that will coordinate everything. By creating average values with the various inputs received, the system will then create collective, captivating audio-visualizations, through generative design and a well structured algorithm.

Thus, the construction of the collective emerges: a shared experience of sound and image, an alternative communication where the body is the only language. The participant can then freely walk around and explore the audio-visualizations as they change according to the participant’s movements. This experience is also devised to be made possible in any wide room of any cultural space/museum interested in hosting, turning the whole project into a global and itinerant experience. 

ATMOS’ presentation is openly accessible and available at the following link:

ATMOS — Presentation

Additionally, a document outlining the theoretical component of the project is attached below.

Student profile: We are looking for a student with a background in Computer Science and Engineering, or similar, with a strong interest in interactive and generative technology, as well as human-computer interaction. This student should be comfortable with data sorting and have the technical skills to develop and refine the system that collects and processes this information. He/she should, therefore, be proficient in programming, capable of creating software that can translate biometric signals into audiovisual outputs. Having an interest in the intersection of technology with art and design is a plus.

This project aims to build a robotic platform called PAPERINO (see Sec.2 in the following paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.12544), composed of two twin robots. Both robots have 2 degrees of freedom and allow simple and expressive animations. The project will include craft work, such as laser cutting and motor assembling, and programming the Raspberry pis and the MQTT servers. A small pilot experiment is expected by the end of the internship, in which 10 participants will be invited as robotic animators to use the PAPERINO system.

Student profile: Students with Engineering degrees (preference for Electrical or Informatics) with an interest in hardware and Raspberry Pi programming.

The Bauhaus of the Seas is a research project that puts the world’s oceans centre stage and proposes sustainable, inclusive, and aesthetic responses to improve our relationship with the planet’s diverse waters and ensure the planet’s wellbeing. As part of the project, several creatives have been invited to reimagine communities’ relationship with the oceans, seas, and other bodies of water. Their practices and approaches will be investigated to understand how desirable water futures are imagined and created.

The work plan includes: i) Assist Post-Doc researcher in planning, designing, and conducting studies in the Greater Lisbon Area; ii) Collect and analyse qualitative data from research activities, such as interviews and observations iii) Help prepare research findings for presentations and publications. 

Student profile: We seek motivated undergrad or master students with backgrounds in the Humanities, Social Sciences, or related fields. Students should be familiar with cultural analysis and curious about using creative research methods. Theoretical knowledge of feminist theory or post-humanism will be considered an asset to this application.

The Bauhaus of the Seas is a research project that puts the world’s oceans centre stage and proposes sustainable, inclusive, and aesthetic responses to improve our relationship with the planet’s diverse waters and ensure the wellbeing of the planet. As part of the project, several creatives have been invited to reimagine communities’ relationship with the oceans, seas, and other bodies of water. Their practices and approaches will be investigated to understand how desirable water futures are imagined and created.

The work plan includes: i) Assist Post-Doc researcher in planning, designing, and conducting studies in the Greater Lisbon Area; ii) Collect and analyse qualitative data from research activities, such as interviews and observations iii) Help prepare research findings for presentations and publications.

Student profile: We seek motivated undergrad or master students with backgrounds in Visual Anthropology, Cinematography, Photography, or related fields. Students should be familiar with documentary photography or film-making and be curious about using creative research methods. Theoretical knowledge of feminist theory or post-humanism will be considered an asset to this application.

The Bauhaus of the Seas is a research project that puts the world’s oceans centre stage and proposes sustainable, inclusive, and aesthetic responses to improve our relationship with the planet’s diverse waters and ensure the wellbeing of the planet. As part of the project, several creatives have been invited to reimagine communities’ relationship with the oceans, seas, and other bodies of water. Their practices and approaches will be investigated to understand how desirable water futures are imagined and created.

The work plan includes: i) Assist Post-Doc researcher in planning, designing, and conducting studies in the Greater Lisbon Area; ii) Collect and analyse qualitative data from research activities, such as interviews and observations iii) Help prepare research findings for presentations and publications.

Student profile: We seek motivated undergrad or master students with backgrounds in Sound Studies, Music, Anthropology, or related fields. Students should be familiar with sonic ethnography and be curious about using creative research methods. Theoretical knowledge of feminist theory or post-humanism will be considered an asset to this application.

The main goals of this project consist of designing and developing several Augmented Reality (AR) spice drawing spaces. The CinniBird will be the main drawing device and rice pudding will be the target dessert although other dishes may be considered. This project proposal intends to be the food equivalent of the SketchAR app, in this case, drawing on top of desserts and beverages. Several vector drawings need to be either created from scratch (e.g., inspired by traditional Portuguese recipe books) and imported from online repositories, where each vector drawing corresponds to a pattern capable of being drawn with spice. The candidate will compare manual, mobile AR (handheld and docked smartphone), and Optical-See Through AR spice drawing. AR apps will be developed in Lens Studio, Aryzon SDK and WebXR (Three.js, JavaScript) or Unity 3D (C#). Besides user performance (e.g., task accuracy and completion time) and perception of the drawing space (e.g., perceived usability and ease-of-use), the candidate will measure levels of creativity, expressiveness, and aesthetics for each task performed in the different drawing spaces. The main goal is to understand which drawing space allows the user to extract more potential from CinniBird.

Student profile: Candidate must have a background in computer science plus object-oriented programming skills. Know-how on Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, C#, JavaScript, Three.js, Lens Studio or Unity are welcome but not mandatory.

The goal of this proposal is to capture and acquire motion capture data (i.e., kinematic data such as position and orientation) from Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) headsets, controllers or stick-figure representations. The collected data will then be processed by colleagues at the Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma to find, to what extent, is it possible to detect imperceptible biosignals (e.g., respiratory rate and heartbeat). Using magnification filters, preliminary results reveal the possibility of extracting the respiratory rate from the temporal signal of the HoloLens 2’s position. However, we aim to expand the range of AR and VR devices (e.g., Meta Quest, HTC Vive, Google Cardboard, ZED camera) as well as the types of biosignals to also detect tongue movements, oral clicks, and low-intensity voice.

Student profile: Candidate must have a background in biomedical engineering, computer science or equivalent plus object-oriented programming skills. Know-how on Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, C#, JavaScript, MATLAB, Lens Studio or Unity are welcome but not mandatory.

The main goals of this proposal to rewrite and organize a library of functions that compute the collision state between bounding volumes or convex shapes such as circles, ellipses, spheres, ellipsoids, cylinders, etc. Most techniques have already been implemented, which allow calculating the minimum distance (i.e., closest distance) or collision state (i.e., proximity queries) between convex objects. The library’s code will be posted on GitHub and forked on popular collision detection libraries such as Box2D (widely used for the Angry Birds’ game physics). We are also finishing the library’s user manual, i.e., a document about the implemented collision detection analytical techniques. In addition, a few extra collision detection techniques will also need to be implemented for calculating the minimum distance between objects and verifying the collision state between ellipses/ellipsoids.

Student profile: Candidate must have a background in computer science plus object-oriented programming skills. Know-how on C#, JavaScript, or Unity is mandatory.

Eye tracking is a promising technique to augment users’ experience (e.g., identifying reading difficulties leading to pronouncing words), to understand user’s experience (e.g., analytics) or make content accessible to all (e.g., motor-impaired or low vision). Eye tracking has also been applied to gaming (also known as gaze play or eye play), creating novel eye-enabled game mechanics. Recent advances of AI technologies (like Large Language Models) highlight the potential of aligning these to eye tracking to create playful interactions. For that matter, we are interested in researching how eye tracking and LLMs can be used to create meaningful and playful interactions. We are seeking a highly motivated student interested in designing and creating games and interactive media experiences. The work plan includes: 1) literature review on related work and solutions in aligning eye tracking and LLMs; 2) in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team, design and implement a game prototype exploring the convergence of gaze and LLMs. The intern will carry out the work at the Interactive Technologies Institute, in Funchal, under the supervision of Prof. Mara Dionisio and Dr. Paulo Bala.

Student profile: Students with Computer Engineering or Interactive Media Design degrees with an interest in Games, Eye Tracking Technologies and LLMs. The candidate should be proficient in programming (C#) and be willing to learn how to develop a game in an engine such as Unity.

Gardening is a transformative activity with various health benefits, contributing to immediate and long-term mental and physical health improvements. Home gardens contribute to biodiversity maintenance, identity and community preservation, and food production. They also serve as an efficient platform for the transmission of collective memory related to gardening practices, although they are vulnerable to periods of turbulence or crisis. The disappearance of local and tacit knowledge related to agriculture within urban landscapes has led to an ’extinction of experience’ in human-nature interaction. This collective ’forgetting’ poses a significant threat, especially in times of major crises, contributing to potential urban food shortages. To address this issue, interactive media tools emerge as powerful educational platforms capable of fostering knowledge sharing and learning about sustainable food production, nutrition, and ecological systems. With this internship, we want to study and prototype how an interactive media tool can support the dissemination of sustainable farming practices. We will explore how we can leverage the engagement with such tools to enable relationship-building with the natural world, contributing with a set of guidelines for the design of interactive media tools for gardening within a post-human context. The intern will carry out the work at the Interactive Technologies Institute, in Funchal, under the supervision of Prof. Mara Dionisio and Dr. Paulo Bala.

Student profile: Students with Computer Engineering or Interactive Media Design degrees with a background and interest in Human-Computer Interaction, Participatory Design Methods, and Interface and Interaction Design.

The proposed research focuses on applying speculative design to explore potential advancements in democracy in light of emerging technologies, particularly generative artificial intelligence. The aim is to identify future developments in the design of digital public services by speculating on solutions that empower communities and redefine citizen participation in democratic decision-making. In this context, the practical research draws inspiration from the historical and mythical function of the oracle as a reliable source of knowledge for public deliberation. By speculating on the role of intelligent assistants for citizen engagement, the project intends to offer new creative avenues for inclusive digital storytelling and speculative design practices.

Student profile: We are seeking a communication designer specializing in speculative design and digital storytelling. The ideal candidate should have expertise in developing speculative scenarios (world building) and visual narrative strategies. Additionally, it is important for the candidate to have knowledge of Generative AI tools (text-to-text, text-to-image), product design, UX/UI, and prototype concept design.