Jean Vanderdonckt
Addressing Philosophical, Physical, and Technological Questions in the Creation of Micro-gestures
In Human-Computer Interaction, micro-gestures are often referred to as small, subtle, and rapid physical movements (usually of the fingers or hand) used to control devices, that can be executed in the range of 1 to 4 seconds. Micro-gestures are part of micro-interactions, which are assumed to be short-time interruptions of a primary interactive task to accomplish an auxiliary action. As micro-gestures have become a full area of research and a first-class citizen for gestural interaction, we reflect on three philosophical, physical, and technological questions in their creation and usage as an example of general questions for any interaction. Our philosophical question is: if micro-gestures become a primary means of interaction, to what extent do they blur the boundary between intentional human action and micro-gesture recognition, and how might this reshape our understanding of agency and autonomy? Our physical question is: what are the biomechanical and perceptual limits of micro-gestures, and how can we distinguish micro-gestures from involuntary movements? Our technological question is: how can sensing technologies and recognition algorithms be designed to accurately detect and recognize micro-gestures in real time while ensuring robustness across diverse contexts of use?
Jean Vanderdonckt is a Full Professor of Computer Science at Université catholique de Louvain (UCL, Belgium), where he is Head of the Louvain Interaction Laboratory (LiLab) since 1998. He holds a Master and an aggregation in Mathematics, a Master in Computer Science and a PhD in Sciences from the University of Namur. He has been Visiting Associate Professor at Stanford University (2000), invited professor at Univ. of Fortaleza (2001), and permanent invited prof. at Polytechnic Univ. of Valencia. He has over 25 years of experience in research and development. Being ACM member since 1987, he is currently ACM and IEEE Senior Member, and member of ACM SIGCHI. He received several awards (e.g., the IBM Belgium Award in Computer Science in 1998, the ACM Service Award for Contributions to ACM in 2004, 2006, and 2010, the Brian Shackel Award in HCI in 2007, the ITEA Research Excellence Award in 2013) and fellowships (e.g., Fulbright-Hayes fellowship in 2000, NATO Advanced Fellowship in 2001). In 2000, he co-created and led BelCHI, the Belgian chapter of ACM SIGCHI (Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction). He is the current tenure holder of the IBM-UCL Chair in Strategic Management of Information Systems. He is currently co-editor-in-chief of Springer HCI Series.
Adrian Iftene
From Interfaces to Intelligent Partners: Rethinking Human-Computer Interaction in the Age of AI
For decades, Human-Computer Interaction has been largely based on a simple paradigm: users express their intentions through an interface, and computer systems respond. Artificial Intelligence is fundamentally changing this relationship. Modern systems can understand natural language, combine multiple modalities, generate content, learn from interaction, recommend actions, and increasingly act autonomously on behalf of their users. As a result, we are moving from interfaces that users operate toward intelligent systems with which users collaborate. Drawing on research spanning natural language processing, question answering, multimodal interaction, augmented and virtual reality, intelligent decision support, and AI applications in healthcare and education, this keynote explores how this transformation is reshaping the relationship between humans and computer systems. As AI becomes increasingly proactive and autonomous, interaction is no longer limited to users issuing commands and systems producing responses. Initiative can belong to both sides, while decision-making and action may increasingly emerge from a continuous collaboration between humans and intelligent systems. This evolution creates significant opportunities, but also introduces new challenges for Human-Computer Interaction. Intelligent interfaces need to preserve meaningful human control and responsibility while taking advantage of AI capabilities. They need to communicate uncertainty, provide appropriate explanations, adapt to different users and contexts, and support trust without encouraging overreliance. From conversational agents and immersive environments to healthcare and educational applications, the next challenge for HCI is therefore not simply to make systems more intelligent, but to design better, trustworthy, and responsible partnerships between humans and artificial intelligence.
Adrian Iftene is a Professor of Computer Science at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, Romania, where he currently serves as Vice-Rector and previously served as Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science from 2012 to 2024. He holds a PhD in Computer Science, with a thesis on Textual Entailment, and has more than two decades of research and teaching experience spanning natural language processing, question answering, Human-Computer Interaction, software engineering, augmented and virtual reality, and Artificial Intelligence. His research has progressively explored how intelligent technologies can understand human intentions and support increasingly natural and effective forms of interaction, with recent work focusing particularly on AI applications in healthcare, education, multimodal environments, and intelligent decision-support systems. He has participated in numerous national and European research projects, including REVERT, MetaNet4U, ALEAR, MUCKE, IRSmart, MEDIMAG-AI, and Digital Innovation Zone, and currently coordinates or contributes to projects involving Artificial Intelligence, smart health, and autonomous systems. He is also MedTech Coordinator of the Imago-Mol Cluster and has been actively involved in interdisciplinary collaborations connecting computer science with medicine, education, law, industry, and society. His work combines a long-standing interest in intelligent systems with a human-centered perspective on how emerging technologies can move from research prototypes to useful, trustworthy, and responsible real-world solutions.