Hyungil Kim named program vice chair of HFES technical group
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Assistant Professor Hyungil Kim was elected as the vice program chair of the Extended Reality Technical Group (XRTG) of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES).
HFES is the world’s largest scientific association for human factors and ergonomics professionals. Its extended reality technical group, made up of international experts in the field and led by elected officers, aims to promote research, applications, and education on the emerging topics of human factors in virtual, augmented, and mixed reality.
“Being elected as the vice program chair of the XRTG is honorable as it recognizes my research as well as my contributions to the research community by the international experts in the field,” he said.
As an officer of this technical group, Kim will contribute to expanding the fast-growing professional community of researchers, practitioners, and educators dedicated to industrial applications of extended reality by developing various programs such as annual technical paper presentations, symposia, panel discussions, technology demonstrations, and outreach activities.
In addition to expanding the professional community in this area of research, his participation will bring more attention to UIC.
“This role will help enhance the visibility of the research activities being conducted in the Human-Centered Engineering Lab at UIC, particularly the impactful research on human factors in extended reality,” he said.
Extended reality (XR) is the umbrella term encompassing virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, and it is expected to become more popular and affordable soon at various workplaces.
“To realize the full potential of this novel technology, XR must be more usable and useful than it is currently, and in this area, human factors research can have unique and significant contributions,” Kim said. “Human factors research would make XR technology more usable by addressing challenges in human perception, attention, and cognition while interacting with XR applications.”
Human factors research would also make XR technology more useful by identifying promising use cases that can benefit from AR and designing interfaces that support the user’s situation awareness, decision-making, and task performance at various workplaces.
“Research on human factors in XR would greatly contribute to the human-machine symbiosis at future workplaces as smart interfaces between human and machines that facilitate human-machine collaboration,” he said.