Oliver Nowak

Research Assistant & Startup Advisor

Room 2205
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+49 241 80-21074

I'm a research assistant at the Media Computing Group. I'm interested in a wide range of topics in the field of HCI including any kinds of interaction techniques for mobile devices, improving the usage of smart home devices, and the investigation of productivity tools in research.

I'm also a startup advisor for RWTH Innovation in the field of computer science. If you have an idea for a start-up or already started to do the first steps to found a company, you can write me an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or come to my consultation hours on Tuesdays from 8:30 am to 11:30 am.

Research Projects

ARPen: Mid-Air Object Manipulation Techniques for a Bimanual AR System with Pen and Smartphone

CHI 2019

RIME: Rich Interactive Materials for Everyday Objects in the Home

Software Projects

Centre Charlemagne App

Museum Guide

The Centre Guide is a mobile app for iOS and Android that guides you through the permanent and temporary exhibitions of the Centre Charlemagne, Aachen's city museum. I develop and maintain the Android version.

FLApp

The Future Lab Aachen App

This mobile tourist guide showcases scientific activities in the city center with multimedia and AR content. I develop and maintain the Android version of the app.

Teaching

Semester	Course
Winter 2020	Designing Interactive Systems I Lecture teaching assistant and Lab tutor, with Marcel Lahaye
Summer 2020	Seminar: Post-Desktop User Interfaces Organizer
Winter 2019	Designing Interactive Systems I Lecture teaching assistant and Lab tutor, with Krishna Subramanian
Summer 2019	Current Topics in Media Computing and HCI Lecture teaching assistant and Lab tutor, with Marcel Lahaye

Thesis Supervisions

Name	Topic	Thesis Type	Year
René Schäfer	Redesigning ARPen: Evaluating Different Marker Placements for Mid-Air Pen Interaction	Master's Thesis	Winter 2019
Georg Röhl	Tilt-Watch: Inclination-Based Smartwatch Input in Relation to the Forearm	Master's Thesis	Summer 2020
Maurice Schwarze	Non-Linear Menus: A Comparison of Linear and Non-Linear Menus on Mobile Devices	Bachelor's Thesis	Summer 2020
Markus Horlemann	PaperOrganizer: A Visual Bibliography to Support Structuring Scientific Literature	Bachelor's Thesis	Winter 2020
Mahsa Mansouri	A Classification of Textile User Interfaces	Bachelor's Thesis	Summer 2021
Mathis Beck	Pneumatic Shape Changing Display	Bachelor's Thesis	Summer 2021
Yeganeh Hajimiri	Discoverability of Multi-modal Interaction Techniques	Master's Thesis	Summer 2021
Kevin Fiedler	A WYSIWYG content editor for the Centre Charlemagne App	Bachelor's Thesis	Summer 2021

Publications

2020

Philipp Wacker, Oliver Nowak, Simon Voelker and Jan Borchers. Evaluating Menu Techniques for Handheld AR with a Smartphone & Mid-Air Pen. In Proceedings of 22nd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, MobileHCI '20, pages 10, ACM, New York, NY, USA, October 2020.

2019

Philipp Wacker, Oliver Nowak, Simon Voelker and Jan Borchers. ARPen: Mid-Air Object Manipulation Techniques for a Bimanual AR System with Pen & Smartphone. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI '19, pages 619:1–619:10, ACM, New York, NY, USA, May 2019.

Oliver Nowak. ARMenus: An Evaluation of Menu Interfaces in Pen-based AR Applications on Smartphones. Master's Thesis, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, February 2019.