Sylvain Malacria, ANR Young Researchers (JCJC) laureate

You recently won an ANR Young Researchers award, could you tell us a bit about this program? 

The ANR's "Young Female Researchers and Young Researchers" program is an individual-focused funding program that helps a young researcher address scientific or technological barriers with innovative approaches. The funding helps in particular to recruit student researchers (doctoral students), post-doctoral fellows and engineers.

What is your research project?

This four-year human computer interaction (HCI) project proposes to establish new fundamental knowledge for the design and development of interactive systems that will foster the discovery of their interaction methods (how the user can interact with the system) and associated functionalities (the commands that the user can use). Research results show that only 5% of the population in OECD countries know how to use a computer effectively. Indeed, users are unaware of many of the features offered by interactive systems. The Discovery project will study how graphical interfaces and interactions with interactive systems could be redesigned to help users discover more easily what they can do with a computer, and how to achieve their goals. Our ambition is to create strong interest and new academic and industrial standards for interactive systems to be designed and built with the aim of promoting the discovery of their functionalities while offering optimal performance.

What is your research project?

This funding will help me take responsibility by helping me to acquire scientific autonomy and develop my own research theme within the Loki team.