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News
07 June 2017
Our Air Safety World app launches successfully
Air Safety World provides passengers with the world's first interactive airline safety briefings and lots of gamified flight safety experiences. Its user base is growing very rapidly (over 100,000 users just in the first 4 weeks), and the app is being covered by general media such as The Independent and Travel+Leisure as well as specialized aviation media.
[Try the app!]
19 May 2017
Our Motorbrain article is nominated Editor's Choice by a prestigious journal
In a collaboration with neurophysiologists, we created the MotorBrain app to measure neuromotor performance with a smartphone. Our published study, nominated Editor's Choice by Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, shows that the app is able to detect performance differences due to aging.
[Download full paper]
03 April 2017
Our lab carries out the world's first study of Terror Management Theory in Virtual Reality
In a paper just published by the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, we study exposure to mortality cues in virtual reality experiences, showing that it has an effect on users' attitudes towards risk. A full copy of the paper can be downloaded from our web site.
[Download full paper]
23 February 2017
Neuroanatomical study of VR users
A multi-disciplinary collaboration with our lab showed that users of a virtual reality world who behaved altruistically towards virtual characters had a larger insula in the brain. The study has been published today by the Neuropsychologia journal.
[Read the full paper here]
02 January 2017
Our Prepare for Impact app surpasses ONE MILLION downloads in first 9 months!
Prepare for Impact is a serious game that reproduces the experience of real-world aircraft emergencies from the passenger's viewpoint. It was published for Android and iOS in March 2016 and has surpassed 1 million downloads in its first 9 months. The app was also covered by news sources such as TIME and Popular Mechanics.
[Download Prepare for Impact]
14 November 2016
Using a mobile mindfulness app for mitigating worry
In our latest study on mindfulness apps, we carried out a qualitative analysis with users over a 5-weeks usage period. The study, just published on the Interacting with Computers journal, indicates that several participants experienced decentering from their worries when using the app, and identifies new design opportunities for mindfulness apps.
[Download full paper]
17 May 2016
How are mindfulness meditators affected by Virtual Reality?
Our lab has carried out the first study about how mindfulness meditators differ from non-meditators in perceiving virtual reality experiences. The results, published by the Computers in Human Behavior journal, show that midfulness meditators are much less affected by virtual reality: physiological measurements as well as their questionnaires after exposure to scary virtual experiences indicate an emotional deactivation that was not found instead in non-meditators.
[Read the full paper]
19 April 2016
HCI Lab releases the source code of its Unity Virtual Camera Computation library
HCI Lab releases the Unity source code for its automatic viewpoint computation library, described in this IEEE TVCG paper, and employed in one of our aviation safety applications. The library is available at this Github repository.
[Download library]
04 March 2016
Special issue on Interactive Persuasive Systems
Head of our lab is co-editor of the special issue on "Interactive Persuasive Systems" of the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction. The special issue focuses on design and evaluation aspects, with a special emphasis on the ways persuasion concepts and theories are exploited, adapted or augmented in interactive systems.
[See the table of contents]
25 January 2016
Learn more about our aviation safety projects
Today, we published a web site that illustrates our research on safety for aircraft passengers. The web site also includes demos and videos of some of the apps we developed.
[Visit the web site]