Research Field Usability (evaluation) of spoken and multimodal dialogue systems.

Research Topics - dialog management and machine learning - automatic usability prediction - multimodal human computer interaction - modelling and simulation of user behaviour

Research Projects Since December 2018: Optimization of conversational user interface using reinforcement learning. Since April 2013: Employment in the project Universal Home Control Interface@Connected Usability. The project includes research on methods for the usability evaluation of multimodal and adaptive services in smart home environments. Stefan’s main task is the conception and implementation of the dialogue management for an adaptive spoken dialogue system.

January 2010 until July 2011: Employment in the project DFG project User Model. This project was focused on research on the automatic usability evaluation of spoken dialogue systems using methods of sociological technology studies.

Background He did his diploma in computer studies (Diplom-Informatiker) in 2006. Afterwards, he worked in a promotional program for innovative start-ups (hosted at Freie Universität Berlin). From year 2007 until end of 2009 he was employed as software developer at Novedia AG. Since 2010, he is an PhD student at the Quality and Usability Lab in the position of a research assistant. 

Contact E-Mail: stefan.hillmann@tu-berlin.de (encryption: public gpg key)

Teaching activities
Coordination MOOC Communication Acoustics

• WS 2017/18, WS 2018/19, WS 2019/20, WS 2020/21 (with Tanja Kojic): edX courses Fundamentals of Communication Acoustics and Applications in Communication Acoustics
• WS 2016/17 (with Christoph Hohnerlein): edX course Communication Acoustics

Seminar Quality and Usability

• Modellbasierte Usability-Evaluierung: SS 2012 (with Klaus-Peter Engelbrecht), SS 2013 (with Klaus-Peter Engelbrecht, Matthias Schulz), SS 2014 (with Klaus-Peter Engelbrecht, Marc Halbrügge, Matthias Schulz), SS 2015 (with Klaus-Peter Engelbrecht, Marc Halbrügge)
• Sprachdialogsysteme und Dialogsteuerung: WS 2012/2013, WS 2013/2014, WS 2014/2015 (all with Benjamin Weiss)
• Neuronale Netze in der Sprachtechnologie: SS 2016 (with Benjamin Weiss, Marc Halbrügge)

Exercise Multimodal Interaction

• SS 2012 (with Stefan Schaffer, Julia Seebode), SS 2013 (with Stefan Schaffer, Julia Seebode), SS 2014 (with Maija Poikela, Patrick Ehrenbrink), SS 2015 (with Robert Walter, Patrick Ehrenbrink), SS 2016 (with Patrick Ehrenbrink), SS 2017 (with Patrick Ehrenbrink)

Study projects

• Smart Picture Frame (face recognition): WS 2014/2015
• Put-That-There (parallel multimodal interaction): WS 2016/2017
• Visualisierung von Richtungshören und binauralem Hören: SS 2017
• TU Walking (Fußgängnernavigation an der TU Berlin): SS 2017, WS 2017/18
• BC Stories (virtual reality environment, bcstories.ca)