The HCI Lab

The HCI Lab is a hub for HCI research in the School of Computer Science at the University of Auckland and serves HCI, computing education and graphics research groups with its specialised equipment. Drs Danielle Lottridge and Gerald Weber direct their HCI research groups through the HCI Lab. Lottridge leads the University of Auckland HCI Research Group.

The HCI Lab

The HCI Lab is a hub for HCI research in the School of Computer Science at the University of Auckland and serves HCI, computing education and graphics research groups with its specialised equipment. Drs Danielle Lottridge and Gerald Weber direct their HCI research groups through the HCI Lab. Lottridge leads the University of Auckland HCI Research Group.

About

OUR STORY & VISION

To design great software and devices, we have to understand the people using them. Lottridge’s group pursues this by prototyping new technologies, conducting experiments with people under laboratory conditions, and studying how people use tech in the real world.

The HCI Lab in the School of Computer Science was founded in 2008 and since then has been a centre for HCI research at the University of Auckland. The HCI Lab houses biometric equipment including various skin conductance sensors, eye tracking and a 20 channel EEG cap; interactive surfaces including a wall size display and table top; AR/VR headsets with combined inputs such as depth and radar sensors. In its early years, the HCI Lab grew with award-winning research on tangibles and sketching by Dr. Beryl Plimmer, with collaboration and support from Microsoft. The HCI Lab continues to engage closely with industry collaborators: Lottridge conducted several research projects with Yahoo and currently works with Google and local NZ video game companies including ARA Journeys. Lottridge conducts research in AR/VR serious games and multitasking, which won a CHI honourable mention award. Weber recently won a CHI best paper for research on gaze-controlled interaction and also focuses documents and modelling.

Dr Danielle Lottridge’s HCI Research Group @ The HCI Lab

Current

Sijie Zhuo | PhD

Vin Allen | PhD (with FMHS)

Qin Wu | PhD (with AHLab)

Devi Indriasari | PhD

Lucas Betts | PhD

Michaela Dodd | PhD

Zian (Annie) Xu | PhD

Jessica Lorelei Villegas (Honours)

Emily Liu (Honours)

 

Alumni

Jacinda Murphy | Masters

Anuradha Singh | Masters Info Tech

Gayoung Lee | Masters Info Tech

Yuchen Deng | Masters Info Tech

Jasper Li | Masters

Paniz Savad | Masters Info Tech

Stephen Brough | Masters Info Tech

Yiyu Yang | Masters Info Tech 

Chunyi Xian | Masters Info Tech 

Marylyn Alex | PhD

Gabriel Materu | Masters Prof. Stud. 


Maya Gibson (Honours, 2022)
Lance Zhang (Honours, 2022)
Dylan Jung (Honours, 2022)
Luxman Jeyarajah (Honours, 2022)
Wayne Yao (Honours, 2022)
Scott Ferguson (Honours, 2022)
Aaron Song (Honours, 2022)
James You (Honours, 2022)
Songyan Teng (Honours, 2022)
Daniel Adams (Honours, 2021)
Shih-Hao (Sam) Chen (Honours, 2021)
Laura Huijser (Honours, 2021)
Denise Jarry (Honours, 2021)
Jenna Kumar (Honours, 2021)
Francis Lee (Honours, 2021)
Eva-Rae McLean (Honours, 2021)
Charles Paterson (Honours, 2021)
Justin Rojos (Honours, 2021)
Hazel Williams (Honours, 2021)
Zian (Annie) Xu (Honours, 2021)
Wiliam Li (Honours, 2020)
Liam Caldwell (Honours, 2020)
Raghav Garg (Honours, 2020)
George McErlean (Honours, 2020)
Vanessa Ciputra (Honours, 2020)
Allen Nian (Honours, 2020)
Jiaqiu Zhao (Honours, 2020)
Guangya Zhu (Honours, 2020)
Rowan Hart (Honours, 2020)
Vincent Tunnell (Honours, 2020)
Madeleine Beagley (Honours, 2019)
Emilie Pearce (Honours, 2019)
Rebekah Berriman (Honours, 2019)
Tina Chen (Honours, 2019)
Lucas Sherlock (Honours, 2019)
Sijie Zhuo (Honours, 2019)
Jessica Alcantara (Honours, 2019)
Holly Hagenson (Honours, 2019)
Dion Balmforth (Honours, 2019)
Liam Brand (Honours, 2019)
Dylan Boyd (Honours, 2018)
Warren Yeu  (Honours, 2018)
Gillon Manalastas  (Honours, 2018)
Alex Yoo  (Honours, 2018)
Karim Cisse  (Honours, 2018)
Aprajit Gandhi  (Honours, 2018)
William Chao  (Honours, 2018)
Leighton Jonker  (Honours, 2018)
Samule Li  (Honours, 2018)
Harry Lim  (Honours, 2018)

Research

Research Approach

There are two sets of goals in Lottridge’s research. First is basic science: To observe casual relationships of how machines affect us. Second is applying those insights to develop new technologies that support health and productivity. This research reveals what’s happening at precisely the moments of contact between human and machine, drawing on the fields of human computer interaction and human factors engineering to better understand who we are today and to design the technologies of tomorrow.

Supporting Mental Health

People today spend so much time on mobile phones and other computing devices, to understand people today we have to understand the technologies shaping our lives. One thread of research studies multitasking and how our cognitive control is affected by our digital behaviour and environment. Another thread is using smartphone sensor data to predict distraction. A third thread is on using technology to support mental health counselling and therapy—this research is recipient of the 2020 Ember Wellbeing Trust.

XR for Rehabilitation

We are working on transformative applications of AR/VR for stroke rehabilitation, dementia, and physical activity. Lottridge’s group is combining elements of art and dance/movement therapy with embodied, creative interactions in virtual environments. We are collaborating with the Māori-owned game company ARA Journeys to codesign cross device applications that engage families in exercise rehabilitation.

User Experience (UX)

Lottridge trains students in the latest industry methods for ideation, usability testing, statistical analysis of user analytics. Lottridge spent several years in industry conducting research on digital products include Yahoo News, Tumblr and the teen videochat app Cabana which was featured by the Apple App Store as “New apps we love”. Lottridge engages with her colleagues at companies including Facebook and Google to keep abreast of the latest industry practices.

Selected Publications

Marylyn Alex, Burkhard Wünsche, and Danielle Lottridge. (2021). Virtual reality art-making for stroke rehabilitation: Field study and technology probe. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 145, 102481.

Frank Bentley, Kathleen O’Neill, Katie Quehl, and Danielle Lottridge. 2020. Exploring the Quality, Efficiency, and Representative Nature of Responses Across Multiple Survey Panels. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–12. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376671

Shyamli Sindhwani, Christof Lutteroth, and Gerald Weber. 2019. ReType: Quick Text Editing with Keyboard and Gaze. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 203, 1–13. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300433 CHI Best Paper Award

Danielle Lottridge, Nazanin Andalibi, Joy Kim, and Jofish Kaye. 2019. “Giving a little ‘ayyy, I feel ya’ to someone’s personal post”: Performing Support on Social Media. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 3(CSCW), 1-22.

Paul Denny, Fiona McDonald, Ruth Empson, Philip Kelly, and Andrew Petersen. 2018. Empirical Support for a Causal Relationship Between Gamification and Learning Outcomes. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 311, 1–13. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173885 CHI Honorable Mention Award

Minhyang (Mia) Suh, Frank Bentley, and Danielle Lottridge. 2018. “It’s Kind of Boring Looking at Just the Face”: How Teens Multitask During Mobile Videochat. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 2, CSCW, Article 167 (November 2018), 23 pages. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3274436

Danielle Lottridge, Frank Bentley, Matt Wheeler, Jason Lee, Janet Cheung, Katherine Ong, and Cristy Rowley. 2017. Third-wave livestreaming: teens’ long form selfie. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI ’17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 20, 1–12. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3098279.3098540

Danielle Lottridge, Christine Rosakranse, Catherine S. Oh, Sean J. Westwood, Katherine A. Baldoni, Abrey S. Mann, and Clifford I. Nass. 2015. The Effects of Chronic Multitasking on Analytical Writing. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’15). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2967–2970. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702367 CHI Honorable Mention Award

News

Lottridge joins the IJHCS editorial board

Danielle is delighted to join the editorial board of the International Journal of Human Computer Studies. https://www.journals.elsevier.com/international-journal-of-human-computer-studies/editorial-board

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Is that chatbot ‘for real’??

Is that chatbot ‘for real’??

We are thrilled to have released our article Visual Design and Anthropomorphism in a Mobile Pulmonary Rehabilitation Support Intervention with Cindy Chong, Jim Warren, Danielle Lottridge and Rosie Dobson. One of the most fascinating parts of the research was finding...

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Dr Danielle Lottridge presents at XR Summit

Dr Danielle Lottridge presents at XR Summit

Dr Danielle Lottride presents Research on AR/R for Health at the NZ XR Summit, a conference designed to showcase New Zealand’s capability as well as strengthen relationships within the Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Extended Reality (XR) industry and...

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OzCHI 2020 Conference

OzCHI 2020 Conference

OzCHI 2020 | Marylyn Alex, Danielle Lottridge, Jisu Lee, Stefan Marks, and Burkhard Wuensche Discrete versus Continuous Colour Pickers Impact Colour Selection in Virtual Reality Art-Making Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor...

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The HCI LAB
City Campus 303-521 
Level 5, 38 Princes Street
Auckland CBD, Auckland 1010