A little bit of history

TAUCHI carries out multidisciplinary research in human-technology interaction. It was founded in 1997 and by the time, HCI-related teaching and research at UTA had been going on for a decade. The major steps of success were:
 
- 1995 The first HCI project funded by the Academy of Finland
- 1998 The first EU project co-ordinated by TAUCHI
- 1998 The number of staff exceeded 20
- 2001 The activities were divided into 4 research groups
- 2002 The number of staff exceeded 50

The growth has been enabled by vigorous activity in obtaining funding for and carrying out research projects. The backbone is the steady stream of national funding for both basic research projects and for applied co-operation projects with the industry, accounting for about 25 and 35 percents of the yearly budget of more than 3 M€. Success on the national level has led to numerous projects in the framework programs of the EU, where TAUCHI has coordinated a Network of Excellence, several STREPs, and participated in many more projects. The next step has been world-level co-operation in projects, which include long-term funded collaboration with Stanford University in the field of haptics, and several partners from the USA and Japan in the COGAIN Network of Excellence and other projects.

Our aims

Through constructive and experimental research, TAUCHI aims

• to obtain a profound understanding of the phenomena that affect and regulate human-technology interaction,
• to apply this knowledge in creating better ways of interaction, particularly utilizing less used modalities, and
• to improve the quality of life and inclusion of select user groups (including mobile users, physically challenged users, visually impaired, children and elderly people), enabling their use of information and communication technology.

Examples of results

Examples of our results include public transportation route information services that are accessible on mobile phones using spoken dialogue; the services are in public use in Tampere. Similarly, our basic research produces results that are applicable in general, when developing mainstream applications. For instance, we have developed methods that can utilize signals extracted from the human body for predicting emotional experiences. At the other end of the spectrum are prototypes developed for special user communities, such as children and users with severe disabilities. A novel multimodal media center application has been produced for physically and visually impaired users. Using eye tracking technology we have developed an application that more than doubled the text entry rate achievable for users with motor neuron disabilities. Haptics (feedback based on touch) are currently studied extensively to provide a communication mechanism for users with vision impairments – and for all users that are faced with communication in busy environments.