Study-Unit Description

Study-Unit Description


CODE ICS3211

 
TITLE Intelligent Interfaces

 
UM LEVEL 03 - Years 2, 3, 4 in Modular Undergraduate Course

 
MQF LEVEL 6

 
ECTS CREDITS 5

 
DEPARTMENT Artificial Intelligence

 
DESCRIPTION This study-unit builds on the ICS2208 in an attempt to further combine design principles and technology advancements for effective human-computer interaction in a number of areas like mobile technologies, gaming, augmented reality, tangible user interaction, multi-modal technologies, user modelling and any other areas that involve graphic user interfaces.

Common to all these domains is the application of intelligence that varies over time intelligent technique will vary over time but which will still have techniques like: User Adaptivity, User Modelling, Natural Language Technology, Dialogue Modelling, and Explanation Generation.

Many modern computing systems explicitly represent the user's needs, interests, preferences, and requirements to adapt their behaviour to individual users. Computing devices are no longer passive tools that are used by people, but are becoming active participants in assisting the user to achieve goals/tasks.

Study-unit Aims:

The aim of this study-unit is to ensure that students understand and appreciate techniques that allow:

- The construction of explicit and implicit user models, reason about them, take into consideration ethical issues, and evaluate them;
- The user/system interaction to be adapted to different users and different usage situations;
- A system to maintain knowledge about a user;
- A system to interpret or generate natural language utterances, in text or in speech;
- A system to maintain a natural language dialogue with a user, possible in combination with other interaction means (multi-modal dialogue);
- A system to explain its results to a user.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Knowledge & Understanding:
By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to:

- Understand different types of user models, explain the difference, apply and justify which user model to apply according to the problem at hand, explain related ethical issues, and describe their evaluation;
- Appreciate the contribution of artificial intelligence to the human/computer interaction process;
- Understand how to apply artificial intelligent techniques to optimise the interaction between humans and computer devices and applications;
- Recognise the benefits of modelling user behaviour to optimise the interaction;
- Apprehend the notion of how natural language generation and interpretation helps create more fruitful interactions.

2. Skills:
By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to:

- Design simple user models, a corresponding evaluation plan, and apply ethical data gathering technique for populating them;
- Apply the knowledge acquired to develop better computer systems due to their optimised user interface;
- Apply their understanding of what and how artificial intelligence can truly inject added value in computer hardware/software;
- Apply both the acquired knowledge and understanding about intelligent interfaces to other areas like:
   • intelligent tutoring;
   • intelligent help/assistance;
   • information filtering;
   • gaming;
   • mobile technology;
   • multi-modal applications.

Main Text/s and any supplementary readings:

No particular text will be used due to the research nature of the topic and the latest technology being involved. Notes over VLE and publicly available research papers will mainly be employed.

 
STUDY-UNIT TYPE Lecture & Independent Online Learning

 
METHOD OF ASSESSMENT
Assessment Component/s Assessment Due Sept. Asst Session Weighting
Presentation (30 Minutes) SEM1 Yes 10%
Online Moderated Discussions and Postings SEM1 Yes 30%
Project SEM1 Yes 60%

 
LECTURER/S Vanessa Camilleri

 

 
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Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice.
It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2023/4. It may be subject to change in subsequent years.

https://www.um.edu.mt/course/studyunit