Carolin Reichherzer, PhD
Hi, I'm Carolin! I'm a Research Scientist and UX Researcher. I am passionate about delivering novel and meaningful user experiences for everyone.
Understanding user needs to shape research-driven insights and guide impactful solutions
I believe technology’s future lies in understanding how people interact with new technology and uncovering insights that drive meaningful experiences. My goal is to explore new research approaches that improve experiences for users and apply my enthusiasm for learning to create impactful solutions.
My areas of expertise are in emerging technologies, with a primary focus on immersive systems and a growing focus on AI and how people perceive and interact with it. In particular, I am highly excited about the intersection of Vision Language Models and XR, and strongly believe this will enable new ways to engage more effectively with complex information and provide new avenues for human-AI collaboration.
Have a look at some past and ongoing work
Key Skills
Emerging Technologies
- Extensive experience gathering insights in broad areas to improve immersive experiences, such as social presence, visual quality for 3D representations, data visualisation, and body-tracking.
- In-depth expertise in analysing the impact of avatar interaction and perception of varying visual representations to improve user experience.
- Currently expanding into human-AI interaction projects to explore novel areas for user experience, particularly using VLMs and Augmented Reality.
- Prototyping innovative user-centered scenarios and experiences that merge science, design, and development.
Human-Centred Research
- Generating user insights on perception, decision-making and user experience integrating mixed methods, physiological sensing, and interpreting behavioral data.
- Communicating actionable insights to cross-functional teams and guiding development to deliver engaging user experiences that users enjoy and want to come back to.
- Collaborating effectively and contributing to strategic decisions with a strong focus on user advocacy.
Education
PhD in Computer Science, Adelaide University
MSc in Digital Media, University of Bremen
BA in Design, University of Applied Sciences Mainz
Awards and Achievements
- Nominee Best Paper IEEE VR 2022
- Honourable Mention Award Best of CHI – CHI Conference 2021
- Finalist UniSA Research Excellence Awards 2020 (Research degree candidate)
- Highly Commended Academic Excellence in Postgraduate Research 2019 awarded by His Excellency the Honourable Hieu Van Le AC, Governor of South Australia
- 1st Place Winner Retail Game Changer Challenge 2019: $25.000 AUD
- Club of the Year 2019 Women in STEM UniSA Club
- Shortlisted Google Women Techmaker APAC 2019
- Division Finalist 3 Minute Thesis 2018
- Winner :output Design award: Design of an interactive application
- Winner Global Game Jam Bremen 2012: „Most creative game“ and „Best concept“
- Winner :output Design award: Branding for a design conference
In the Media
- ABC News: Virtual reality and its potential in crime scene tours - Law report with Damien Carrick. (July 2021)
- The Advertiser: University of SA study finds VR headsets allow juries to deliver fairer verdicts in complex crime trials. (July 2021)
- Mashable: Jurors could use VR to visit crime scenes, and help them reach a verdict. (July 2021)
- Daily Mail: Jurors using virtual reality headsets to see the crime scene are nearly 87% more likely to agree on a unanimous verdict than those who only see photographs. (July 2021)
- The Advertiser: University of SA investigates using virtual reality to walk trial juries through crime scenes. (March 2019)
- UniSA News: The technology to take a jury into a 3D crime scene. (March 2019)
- SA Lead: Virtual Reality more reliable than photographs for jurors. (March 2019)
- Futurithmic: How VR is changing the game beyond consumer value. (May 2019)
Example Publications
Best Paper Nominee C. Reichherzer, A. Cunningham, J. Barr, T. Coleman, K. McManus, D. Sheppard, S. Coussens, M. Kohler, B. H. Thomas. 2022. Supporting Jury Understanding of Expert Evidence in a Virtual Environment. IEEE VR 2022
Honourable Mention Award C. Reichherzer, A. Cunningham, T. Coleman, R. Cao, K. McManus, D. Sheppard, M. Kohler, M. Billinghurst, and B. H. Thomas. 2021. Bringing the Jury to the Scene of the Crime: Memory and Decision-Making in a Simulated Crime Scene. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’21), May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 12 pages.
C. Reichherzer, J. Fraser and M. Billinghurst. 2021. SecondSight: Demonstrating Cross-Device Augmented Reality. In Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques Conference Immersive Pavilion (SIGGRAPH ‘21 Immersive Pavilion), August 09-13, 2021, Virtual Event, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3 Pages.
C. Reichherzer, J. Fraser, D. Constantine Rompapas, and M. Billinghurst. 2021. SecondSight: A Framework for Cross-Device Augmented Reality Interfaces. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI ‘21 Extended Abstracts), May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 6 pages
C. Reichherzer, A. Cunningham, J. Walsh, M. Kohler, M. Billinghurst and B. H. Thomas, “Narrative and Spatial Memory for Jury Viewings in a Reconstructed Virtual Environment,” in IEEE Transactions on Visualization & Computer Graphics, vol. 24, no. 11, pp. 2917-2926, 2018.
C. Reichherzer, A. Nassani and M. Billinghurst, “[Poster] Social panoramas using wearable computers,” 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), Munich, Germany, 2014, pp. 303-304.
Teaching and Volunteering
Teaching assistant at the University of South Australia
- Programming Fundamentals: Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming with Java
- Interface Design, Interaction and Experience: Introduction to human centered design, app development with JavaFX
- Virtual Reality: Introduction to Unity3D and HTC Vive
- Data Structures: Lists, Stacks, Queues, Maps and Sets
Guest lecturer at Adelaide University
- Augmented Reality Interaction
Service
- CHI 2022-2026: Associate Chair and Best Paper (Specific Applications Areas)
- Women in STEM Club UniSA: Co-Founder of the first club for women in STEM. I defined the groups core vision of Innovation, Inclusion and Inspiration and acquired funding to run workshops on these topics for our members.
- Code like a girl: Event volunteer and panelist
Research Grants
- Data to Decisions CRC Applied Research Grant 2019
- Data to Decisions CRC Applied Research Grant 2018
- Equipment Grant (UniSA): $73.900 AUD
- Women in Stem Club: $10.000 AUD