EngD position within the HSI (Designing Human-System Interaction) Program

The department of Industrial Design of the TU/e is offering a fully funded 2-year position to master graduates leading to the award of an EngD (Engineering Doctorate) degree in Designing Human-System Interaction. The appointment is for two years starting in March 2023.

The project

This project is part of a NWO research project that has the overall aim to establish a sustainable open-source community around room acoustics modelling software, i.e. the modelling of sound propagation in indoor spaces. A short project summary can be found below. Research in the project is conducted by a PhD student and a postdoc on room acoustics modelling and a PhD student on the open source community. The purpose of this EngD project is to develop a user interface of the developed room acoustics software that can be used by the users in the project, which consist of room acoustics consultants (engineers) and students from other universities. The project contains two loops of feedback from the users to the researchers, meaning that the user interface will be iteratively improved.

About the NWO project: To avoid noise induced health effects indoors and to promote or limit indoor speech and music transmission, suitable room acoustic modelling methods are needed. The methods available to acoustic consultants via commercial software are limited and closed. In this project, two complementary room acoustics modelling methods will be further developed and ecologically validated such that they become ready for consultancy practice. At the same time, research is conducted towards a sustainable software community around open source software, where scientists and practitioners meet to use and contribute to room acoustic prediction methods. The involvement of end users is crucial in this project. They will help to benchmark the developed modelling methods and test the prototype software of the community platform.

Tasks of the EngD project:

• Understanding of the current research software in the project as written in Matlab/Python
• Familiarisation with the existing software packages used by acoustic consultants, their functionality and UI
• Designing a Wizard-of-Oz experiment to identify the ways prospective users (acoustic consultants) would like to interact with the system
• A GenderMag cognitive walkthrough session intended to identify inclusivity bugs in the proposed user interface 
• Based on the insights from the experiment a first version of the user interface will be designed
• A series of "field" and "lab" user studies to evaluate the software developed and its user interface. Designing such a user study will also require designing appropriate training materials/workshop.
• This activity will be synchronised with updates from developments of the research software by the project researchers will be incorporated in the new version of the interface

We are looking for candidates with:

• An interest and skills in developing user interface software
• An interest in open-source software
• The ability to easily communicate with experts across scientific fields and in different sectors
• The capacity to function well as a team

Supervision/coaching

• The candidate will be supervised by prof. Regina Bernhaupt from the HSI program on the UX and UI aspects of the project and on training activities of the HSI program.
• Coaching will also be provided by prof. Alexander Serebrenik and prof. Maarten Hornikx, while the EngD trainee is part of the project team consisting of two PhD students and a postdoc and will closely collaborate with them

The HSI program is for people who

• are passionate in designing with AI and data, with a focus on business model innovation,
• wish to improve the interaction between people and systems,
• wish to make technology truly accessible and beneficial,
• are interested in technological development and its impact on people,
• like to lead and work in multidisciplinary teams in an international context,
• like to be at the forefront of enabling technologies and want to exploit those technologies from the perspective of end-users, stakeholders, and business,
• are challenged by societal impact, engineering problems and real-world constraints.

Eligible candidates shall have a relevant Master degree with a keen interest in human-machine interaction, the use of exponential technology for impact, and business innovation. Practical experience is an asset. We require that trainees in our program have excellent social and communicative competencies, including sufficient proficiency in reading, writing, speaking and comprehension of English.

A meaningful job in a dynamic and ambitious university, in an international setting with a close relationship to industry. You will work on a beautiful, green campus within walking distance of the central train station. In addition, we offer you:

• Full-time employment for two years.
• A gross monthly salary of € 2089 and benefits (such as a pension scheme, paid pregnancy and maternity leave, partially paid parental leave) in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities.
• A year-end bonus of 8.3% and annual vacation pay of 8%.
• To support you during your EngD and to prepare you for the rest of your career, you will have free access to a personal development program for EngD trainees.
• An excellent technical infrastructure, on-campus children's day care and sports facilities.
• An allowance for commuting, working from home and internet costs.
• A Staff Immigration Team and a tax compensation scheme (the 30% facility) for international candidates.