Professor Constantine Stephanidis - More detailed CV

Contact details:

Institute of Computer Science (ICS)
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH)
N. Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton
GR - 70013 Heraklion, Crete, Greece

Tel. : +30-2810-391741
Fax: +30-2810-391799
Mobile Phone : +30-6947-000176
E-mail: cs@ics.forth.gr

Constantine Stephanidis is Professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Crete. He is also Director of the Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas, and Head of its Human - Computer Interaction Laboratory and Centre for Universal Access and Assistive Technologies, and Ambient Intelligence Program. For more than twenty five years, he has been engaged as Prime Investigator in pioneering research work in the fields of Human-Computer Interaction and Universal Access. He has published more than 550 articles in scientific archival journals, proceedings of international conferences and workshops.

Prof. Stephanidis received his BSc (Honors) in Electronics in 1981, and his PhD in Electronic Engineering in 1987, both from the University of Kent (Canterbury, UK).

His research work has focused on the development of new methodologies and tools for the design, development and evaluation of user interfaces, with particular emphasis on Universal Access and Design for All in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). In this context, he introduced the new paradigm of “User Interfaces for All” in the international literature in 1995, as a new and highly multidisciplinary perspective in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), fostering systematic and proactive approaches to the development of accessible and usable user interfaces. This involves ensuring accessibility at design time, rather than after development. This perspective is based on the fusion of new requirements and concepts with pre-existing concepts in the domains of HCI (e.g., user-centered interface development) and Assistive Technologies (e.g., specific interaction techniques and devices for disabled user groups), and constitutes a major breakthrough with respect to previous approaches and practices in accessibility.

The research work of Prof. Stephanidis, mainly conducted in the context of a series of landmark R&D projects funded by the European Commission, has established knowledge, instruments and building blocks towards introducing profound methodological and technological innovations in the user interface development lifecycle. To support the development of “User Interfaces for All”, the Unified User Interfaces methodology was developed, along with the related technological solutions, including all the necessary accompanying architectural and technological frames of reference. Unified User Interfaces provide a new principled and systematic approach towards coping with diversity through automatic adaptation of user interfaces. A Unified User Interface is a single (unified) interface that realizes user- and context-adapted behavior, i.e., capable of automatically selecting interaction patterns appropriate to an individual user in a specific physical and technological environment. Innovative interaction technologies addressing the requirements of disabled users have also been developed, focusing on non-visual interaction for blind users and switch-based interaction for motor impaired users.

The created methods and tools have been applied in practice in the development of applications and services that exhibit automatic adaptation, personalization and intelligent interface behavior, in a variety of application domains, such as web access, word processing, audio electronic books, interpersonal communication, vocational training, games, and ubiquitous computing applications and services. These applications constitute test-beds for the demonstration and validation of the principles and methods of unified user interfaces. An example is the AVANTI browser, which was the first, and to date the only, web browser specifically developed to support universal access. Work on access to the World Wide Web also concerns the accessibility of web portals and on-line communities.

Design recommendations and technical guidelines have also been developed to enable developers of future interactive applications and services to take practically into account requirements of people with disabilities. Work has been conducted towards identifying examples and case studies of good practice in Universal Access, through consolidating and validating related methods and techniques in the context of specific application domains (e.g. Health Telematics), and collecting and elaborating principles and guidelines, design techniques and evaluation methods.

Prof. Stephanidis also devoted significant efforts to a range of non-technological issues pertaining to the management of technology and innovation. Existing practices have been profoundly influenced by the outcomes of the above research achievements. The international academic and research community, the Information Technology and Telecommunications industry, non-market institutions and research policy makers, particularly in Europe, expressed active interest in the results of these efforts.

Since 2004, as Founder and Head of the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) Programme of ICS-FORTH, he is coordinating the multidisciplinary activities involving all the Laboratories of the Institute of Computer Science of FORTH with the aim of conceptualizing, designing and developing in vitro, and deploying in vivo, pioneering, innovative technologies and applications for Smart Environments, capable of “understanding” and proactively addressing individual human needs, following a human-centred approach. He is currently leading the efforts of the Institute to construct a 3,000 square meter building (to be completed in 2011) of simulated smart space environments, in a variety of application domains (smart home, smart classroom, smart office, smart medical centre, smart museum, smart entertaining room) to provide a test bed for pioneering multidisciplinary and cross-thematic R&D activities. This facility is envisioned to be used eventually as a national and international research infrastructure.

Prof. Stephanidis was the Scientific Coordinator of the European Commission Coordination Action InterLink (2006-2009), which addressed world-scale, basic research problems in 'software intensive systems and new computing paradigms', 'ambient computing and communication environments' and 'intelligent and cognitive systems', under a human-centered perspective, and defined joint basic research agendas for world-wide cooperation in these domains.

Prof. Stephanidis is the Editor-in-Chief of the Springer international journal "Universal Access in the Information Society". He is the Editor and (co-)author of 14 out of the 30 chapters of the book "User Interfaces for All - concepts, methods and tools" published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (2001), where the above mentioned research work is comprehensively reported. He is also Editor and (co-)author of many chapters of “The Universal Access Handbook” that was published in June 2009 by CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group. This handbook highlights the significant progress towards consolidating the theoretical approaches, scientific methods and technologies introduced in the field of Universal Access, as well as exploring new application domains.

During the period 1995 - 2006, he was the Founding Chair of the ERCIM Working Group "User Interfaces for All" and General Chair of its 9 international Workshops. During the period 1997 - 2000, he was the Founding Chair of the International Scientific Forum "Towards an Information Society for All", in the context of which he edited two White Papers concerning the roadmap and R&D agenda towards an Information Society for All. Since 2001 he is the Founding Chair of the Thematic International Conference "Universal Access in Human - Computer Interaction". Since 2007 he is the General Chair of the HCI International Conference that takes place every two years with around 2,000 participants.

On 23 April 1999, Prof. Stephanidis gave the Michael J. Ellis Distinguished Annual Lecture on Disability Science and Practice, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign, USA, in recognition of his pioneering work in Universal Access. He received the ERCIM Information and Communication Science and Technology Award (ICST 1999) for his own research report on "Designing for all in the Information Society: Challenges towards universal access in the information age", and in 2000 he received the ERCIM Working Group Award for his achievements as the Founding Chair of the ERCIM Working Group “User Interfaces for All”. On 23 March 2001, Prof. Stephanidis gave a Distinguished Lecture in the Distinguished Speaker Series, Institute for Software Research, University of California, Irvine, USA.

Since the 80s, Prof. Stephanidis has been actively contributing to the European Commission R&D Policy on Information Society. During the period 2002 - 2006, he was member of the Management Committee of the Information Society Technologies Programme of the 6th Framework Programme of the European Commission. During the period 2002 - 2005, he was member of the EC eAccessibility Expert Group, from 2006 to 2010 he was member of the eInclusion Group of the i2010 Initiative, and from 2006 to 2012 he was also member of the Management Board of the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA), having worked constantly for the hosting of the European Agency in Crete since 2002. During the period 2002 – 2004, he was the Coordinator of the Task Force on “Universal Access and Usability in the Information Society by all citizens, including people with disabilities and other disadvantaged groups”(Secretariat for the Information Society, Hellenic Ministry of Economy and Finance). He is one of the co-founders of the European Design for All e-Accessibility Network (EDeAN) and founder of the GR-DeAN corresponding National Network. He is also the senior editor of the EDeAN “White Paper: promoting design for all and e-accessibility in Europe”, outlining a roadmap for future European initiatives in Design for All, e-Accessibility and e-Inclusion, published in 2006.

In 2010, Prof. Stephanidis was elected member of the Informatics Section of the Academia Europaea, a functioning European Academy of Humanities, Letters and Sciences.

Scientific and technical achievements

Over the past 25 years, Prof. Stephanidis has been engaged as the Prime Investigator in more than 50 European Commission and nationally funded projects, which were targeted to providing accessibility and usability in the context of user interaction with electronic application and services, as well as to the optimisation of the development lifecycle of user interfaces.

Prof. Stephanidis has supervised to date 15 PhD theses on topics related to HCI and Universal Access / Design for All / accessibility, user interface adaptation methods and tools, and Ambient Intelligence.

The results of the research activities that Prof. Stephanidis has initiated, performed and supervised include methodologies, software components and tools for the design and development of interaction-intensive applications and services that optimally suit the requirements of diverse users, platforms, and environments. These methods and tools have been adopted and used in a number of European Commission funded R&D projects. In these projects, designers and developers from academic and research institutions, as well as industry, from around Europe, conduct the development of user interfaces of interactive applications and services for a wide range of target user populations using the methods and tools that have been created under the supervision of Prof. Stephanidis, with significant potential for impact and market exploitation. The developed user interfaces are adaptable to different user and platform characteristics without requiring extensive efforts from the developers, and offer built-in accessibility provisions to end users.

Some of the developed methods and tools, including design tools, adaptable widget toolkits and prototyping tools, are used for educational and training purposes in HCI and accessibility courses at graduate and postgraduate level in some European Universities. “The Universal Access Handbook”, edited by Prof. Stephanidis and published in 2009, has been adopted as a coursebook in several university courses on related topics in Europe.

The Unified User Interface development platform and the AVANTI browser have influenced mainstream industry approaches to inclusive user interface design and development. Mainstream industry, including IBM Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Sun Microsystems and Hitachi have shown active interest in these outcomes.

Many accessible portals and web services which have been implemented using the developed methods and tools are available on line and are used on a daily basis by a wide user community, including people with various disabilities. UA-Chess, the first universally accessible computer game worldwide, was nominated for the final jury decision of the European Design for All Awards in 2004. Accessible multimedia textbooks for blind children developed using the Starlight platform have been evaluated and approved by Ministry of Education of Greece for purchase and use by all Greek primary and secondary schools.

In the context of HCI standardization efforts, specific research work and contributions include:
(a) the introduction of a new work item within ISO 9241 TC 159 / WG 5 / SC 4 (Software Ergonomics) pertaining to the issue of accessibility of interactive applications and telematic services by user groups with different abilities and requirements (e.g., people with disabilities);
(b) in the late 90s, the contribution to early international efforts for standardisation (i.e., World Wide Web Consortium - W3C) aiming to provide accessibility guidelines for the Web (i.e., W3C Web Accessibility Initiative - WAI).

At a research policy level, research roadmaps and agendas elaborated in the context of international initiatives and projects led by Prof. Stephanidis, such as, for example, the ERCIM Working Group “User Interfaces for All”, the International Scientific Forum "Towards an Information Society for All" and the InterLink project, have profoundly influenced the international research scene and funding programmes of the European Commission.

The following is a brief overview of the main scientific and technical outcomes of the research activities of Prof. Stephanidis:

HCI design. In this domain, the research work and contributions of Prof. Stephanidis have addressed new HCI design methodologies targeted to Universal Access, novel techniques to guide HCI design activities for Universal Access, evaluation instruments to provide appropriate and direct feedback into the early stages of HCI design, computer-aided HCI design tools which embody and substantiate the above, and novel HCI interaction techniques for diverse target user groups. Methodological approaches to HCI design have led to the development of structured methods for capturing and addressing users’ and context’ diversity and supporting intelligent user interface adaptation. Novel design techniques have also been proposed to provide structured and principled means for realising such methodologies. These include task decomposition techniques for user interface adaptation, qualitative and quantitative models for user interface adaptation, structured support for incremental and evolving design, theories of media and modality allocation, and dialogue models for non graphical interaction techniques. Additionally, process-oriented guidelines have been elaborated for universal access design allowing designers to capture and organise large design spaces comprising artefacts suitable, for different user groups, along with a collection of “essential” and “recommended” requirements that user interface development tools need to support in order to support Universal Access. The methodological approach described above has also driven research efforts for the development of new tools, which either implement specific methodologies or specify requirements for computational environments for HCI design. Research work in the area of HCI interaction techniques has concerned the design of new interaction methods and techniques, exhibiting distinctive dialogue characteristics that enable users with diverse characteristics and abilities to experience higher-quality of interaction. The underlying design goals are to support accessibility and increase usability for disabled users, to enhance user satisfaction, to provide better feedback methods, and to support user mobility. Various novel interaction techniques have been integrated in innovative user interface development toolkits. Indicative related publications are [1], [2], [3], [4], [6], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [21], [22] and [23] in the publications list below.
User Interface Software & Technology (UIST). In this context, the research work of Prof. Stephanidis has addressed the need for automatically adapted interactions, providing a new and much broader perspective on how self-adapting interfaces can be theoretically grounded and technically developed. The specific investigations into the "self-adapting interaction" paradigm have given birth to new functional requirements in the UIST field. Examples of such new requirements and the corresponding technical issues include: the capability to address the requirements of diverse user groups, the capability to integrate different interaction technologies, as well as methods to support abstraction-based development for managing alternative dialogue patterns, etc. Systematic investigation and developments have taken place, leading to a new development framework for constructing self-adapting interfaces, new UIST methods for implementing interactive behaviours, and new UIST tools, which embody the methods and support the framework. In particular, novel contributions in this area include the Unified User Interface Development methodology for user interfaces capable of intelligent self-adaptation. Additionally, tools have been developed supporting the conduct and practice of the unified user interface design methodology, as well as instantiating novel interaction techniques for accessibility, mainly in the areas of non-visual and switch-based interaction. Indicative related publications are [1], [3], [7], [8], [10], [11], [12], [19] and [20] in the publications list below.
Universally accessible applications and services. The methods and tools outlined above have been applied in practice in the development of applications and services that exhibit user and context-based automatic adaptation, personalisation and intelligent interface behaviour. Applications include the AVANTI browser, which was the first, and to date the only, web browser specifically developed to support universal access. Work on access to the World Wide Web also concerns the accessibility of web portals and on-line communities. Another important application domain where the methods and tools have been applied is computer games. Interaction design has been also investigated in a variety of application domains, such word processing, audio electronic books, interpersonal communication and vocational training of people with disabilities, supporting accessible interaction and user-oriented interface adaptation. Indicative related publications are [4], [5], [9], and [18] in the publications list below.
Ambient interaction in intelligent environments. Since 2004, as Founder and Head of the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) Programme of ICS-FORTH, Prof. Stephanidis is coordinating multidisciplinary activities involving all the Laboratories of the Institute of Computer Science of FORTH with the aim of conceptualizing, designing and developing in vitro, and deploying in vivo, pioneering, innovative technologies and applications for Smart Environments, capable of “understanding” and proactively addressing individual human needs, following a human-centred approach. Some of the outcomes of this research work are shown deployed in vivo at the Archeological Museum of Thessaloniki. Indicative related publications are [2], [11] in the publications list below.

Professor Constantine Stephanidis - More detailed CV

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Scientific and technical achievements

Indicative publication list with papers for download

Full publication list