Master Student Position in (Co-)Developing and Evaluating an Interaction Scheme for Mobile Devices

We offer a full-time master thesis worker position, starting right away, with great flexibility in focus. The general topic is Mobile Interaction with the core area Text Entry. There is an opportunity to combine this with a paid research assistant job. The project is carried out in HIIT, a collaboration between Aalto University and the University of Helsinki. We can provide working space and equipment in the new Open Innovation House (OIH) building in Otaniemi.

Description
Backside interaction is at the doorstep to relieve some of the pain in mobile computing, like occluded screens, and inefficient and unergonomic interaction. Text entry, at the same time, is still one of the most aggravating bottlenecks in mobile HCI. Our group has developed a mobile text entry method that is very efficient for touch-typists. We want to extend this method to be accessible for typing novices. To that end, a way has to be invented that systematically trains students of the method to mastery.

You will design and develop a tutoring software for touch interaction techniques on tablets and smartphones, based on a JAVA framework for "sandwich tablets" which sport multitouch sensors in the backside. You will carry out a user study evaluating text entry based on these techniques.

Based on your interests and the project's needs, you will extend or port the framework, create a game to demo the interaction, optimise the recognition software, integrate the method as a proper Android IME, or even get your hands wet with hardware prototyping (e.g. Arduino). Our project covers some nice and "en vogue" topics. Especially mobile text entry is highly regarded at top conferences like SIGCHI. We will support publishing ambitions, but we do not require them. There is opportunity to combine this with a paid research assistant job.

Requirements
You are a savvy and creative programmer who is interested in mobile HCI (esp. text entry) and linguistics. You speak English, and you can start right away or very soon as a full-time team member. As a bonus, you could be interested or experienced in one or more of the following:  machine learning, statistics, user studies, mobile gaming frameworks (e.g. Unity), networking (e.g. UDP, OSS).

Make sure to check out our other master thesis position: Machine Learning for Multitouch Typing.

How to Apply
If you are interested or have questions, please write an e-mail (in English) to Oliver Schoenleben (oliver.schoenleben@hiit.fi), so that we can arrange a meeting.

The application deadline is the 28.02.2013