Special Topics: Computational Methods for Interactive Systems (CMIS)

Generative algorithms are becoming increasingly powerful. This course is designed for students who are interested in the integration of generative approaches with real-world interactions. Understanding users’ current context (e.g., their activity, pose, task, etc.) allows us to adapt digital interfaces to user needs in real time. Beyond digital interfaces, we will generate adaptive physical interfaces to accommodate users’ needs in the real world. This course focuses on understanding the complexity of these interactions and equipping students with the skills to model and predict user behavior and generate adaptive interfaces for digital and physical interactions. Given a desired interaction, students will learn to identify suitable computational methods (e.g., multi-objective optimization, machine learning approaches), formulate interaction problems as computational problems, and establish their data input, models, constraints, and objectives. The goal is to provide students with hands-on experience to generate interactive experiences. Structured as a combination of lectures, discussions, and project-based learning, this course is designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate students and requires very strong programming skills.