Prof. Alexander Meschtscherjakov

User Experience in Automated Contexts – From Factory to Automobiles

Digitization and industry 4.0 automation plays an increasingly important role in working environments. Whether we want it or not, employees’ labor and lives will change tremendously. This transformation raises new questions for research, some of which Alexander Meschtscherjakov will tackle from a human-computer interaction perspective. He will report on several projects he was involved in and provides a look behind the scenes of working environments such as semi-conductor factories. He will report on problems that arise when inquiring working routines with the goal of automation in mind and the skepticism of observed and interviewed workers. He will discuss the effects of automation on user experience, user acceptance and trust. How do ethical standards and legislation need to change to manage the transformation from an analog working environment to a digitised one? Alexander will bridge the findings from the emerging field of automated vehicles to working environments and discuss their implications.

Alexander Meschtscherjakov is Assistant Professor at the Center for Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Science Department of Salzburg University. He is Deputy Director of the Center for HCI, leading the Car Interaction Lab and member of the senat of Salzburg University. His background is in Computer Sciences. Currently, he is focusing on persuasive interaction technologies, automotive user interfaces, contextual user experience and challenges of automation for HCI. In particular, Alexander is interested in how different kinds of modalities can be blended to help people to change their attitudes and behavior to achieve their goals. His focus within automotive interaction lies in driver persuasion by means of ambient light, driver distraction research, and UX in autonomous vehicles. With the increasing automation in different contexts (e.g. industry 4.0 or automated driving) Alexander is researching how user experience is affected by automation and who to design interaction for an automated world.