Cognitive Load

The full title is Assessing the Users' Cognitive Load based on Eye Tracking and other data in various privacy-sensitive multimodal and monomodal approaches.

Description

The project Cognitive Load aims at developing innovative, sophisticated concepts and tools to assess the users' cognitive load in real-time towards a better understanding of their current needs and requirements in single-user and distributed collaborative scenarios.

Approach

The approach is both theoretical and practical. We develop cognitive-load-based solutions for interruption management, team coordination, time management, and truth detection. We then validate those concepts and tools through multi-day in-situ studies under real workplace conditions to prove theoretical feasibility and practical efficacy. We furthermore derive design guidelines for designers and developers of future systems.

Partners

• University of Bamberg

People

Prof. Dr. Tom Gross, Principal Investigator
Moritz Maleck, Senior Researcher
Marius Lang, Student Researcher

Funding

The project is partly funded the University of Bamberg; it started in 2023.

Further Information

Awards

We received the Best Paper Award for the CLBoundaryManager approach at the International Conference on Social Computing and Social Media - SCSM 2025.

Publications

Please note: the PDFs of our publications can be found in Publications.

Lang, M. and Gross, T. Availability as a Service. In Proceedings of the 24th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work - ECSCW 2026 (June 29-July 3, Munich, Germany). European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (EUSSET), Siegen, Germany, 2026. pp. 1-7. (ISSN: 2510-2591). doi:doi.org/10.48340/ecscw2026_121.

Maleck, M. and Gross, T. From Lab to Field: Facilitating Cooperative Work with Interruption Management Systems in Praxis. In Proceedings of the 24th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work - ECSCW 2026 (June 29-July 3, Munich, Germany). European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (EUSSET), Siegen, Germany, 2026. pp. 1-8. (ISSN: 2510-2591). doi:doi.org/10.48340/ecscw2026_124.

Maleck, M. and Gross, T. CL-PPIIMS: A Cognitive Load-Based Privacy-Preserving Intelligent Interruption Management System. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Soft Computing and its Engineering Applications - icSoftComp 2025 (Dec. 9-11, Hanoi, Vietnam). Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 2025. pp. 405-417. (ISBN: 978-3-032-22061-5). doi:doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-22062-2.

Maleck, M. and Gross, T. CLBoundaryManager: A System Facilitating Boundary Management and Border Crossing Between Life Domains. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Social Computing and Social Media - SCSM 2025 (June 22-27, Gothenburg, Sweden). Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 2025. pp. 335-350. (ISBN: 978-3-031-93538-1). doi:doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-93539-8_22.

Maleck, M. and Gross, T. InterpretableTruthDetection: Interpretable Bimodal Within-Subject Truth and Deception Detection Models. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Soft Computing and its Engineering Applications - icSoftComp 2024 (Dec. 10-12, Bagkok, Thailand). Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 2024. pp. 332-344. (ISBN: 978-3-031-88041-4). doi:doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-88042-1_26.

Maleck, Moritz and Gross, Tom. TeamMeetingArranger: A Less Disruptive Way of "Do you have a minute?". In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Intelligent Human-Computer Interaction - IHCI 2024 (Nov. 13-15, Enschede, NL). Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 2024. pp. 54-65. (ISBN: 978-3-031-88880-9). doi:doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-88881-6_5.

Maleck, M. and Gross, T. CoLoTiMa: A Cognitive-Load Based Time Management Tool. In Mensch & Computer - 24. Fachuebergreifende Konferenz fuer interaktive und kooperative Medien - M&C 2024 (Sept. 1-4, Karlsruhe, Germany). ACM, N.Y., 2024. pp. 690-694. (ISBN: 979-8-4007-0998-2). doi:doi.org/10.1145/3670653.3677485.

Maleck, M. und Gross, T. AnswerTruthDetector: A Combined Cognitive Load Approach for Separating Truthful from Deceptive Answers in Computer-Administered Questionnaires. i-com - Journal of Interactive Media 22, 3 (Nov. 2023). pp. 241-251. (ISSN: 2196-6826). doi:doi.org/10.1515/icom-2023-0023.