Media Informatics

This summarized version of our German language website is intended to give you a rough overview of our recent activities (degree programs, courses and lectures, research).

More detailed information about media informatics at the Universität Regensburg is available on our German language website.

About media informatics

Media informatics deals with all aspects of digital media and information technology, with a particularly strong interest in the interaction of humans with computers. Media informatics may be best described as an applied computer science with a strong focus on the design and implementation of software systems. Such systems are, however, not only designed from a functional engineering perspective, but also in a way to ensure an optimal human-computer interaction. 

Degree programs in media informatics

Students who decide to study media informatics in the Bachelor’s degree (B. A.) need to choose another main subject or two minor subjects. Almost any subjects from the curriculum of the Universität Regensburg can be picked as main or minor subjects for the combination with media informatics studies.

The standard time to the Bachelor’s degree is 6 semesters. Having obtained the Bachelor’s degree, students may opt to enroll for a consecutive Master’s degree (M. Sc.) in media informatics (no additional major or minor subjects needed). The standard time to M. Sc. Degree is 4 semesters.

A degree in media informatics allows for various career opportunities, including

• freelance work in the field of web design and web programming,
• working as a designer or developer in the gaming and entertainment industry,
• or working as a developer or consultant in the research or IT department for larger enterprises.

Media informatics curriculum

An essential part of the media informatics curriculum is a comprehensive introduction to the theoretical building blocks of informatics as well as to practical aspects of informatics, which include programming, software engineering, and database design. During the course of their studies, students will learn how to design and implement desktop, online and mobile applications.

At the same time, students learn how to design and evaluate software with regard to good usability and user experience. In our Future Interaction Lab, students can study practical aspects of human-computer interaction and experiment with recent interaction techniques and modalities, including touch, gesture, and gaze.

In research-focused seminars and through reading relevant research literature throughout their studies, students are not only introduced to recent findings in the broad field of media informatics, but also encouraged to contribute to the scientific community by conducting studies and research projects of their own.

Research topics

As media informatics deals with all aspects of digital media and information technology, a number of research questions emerge. At the Universität Regensburg, media informatics research is focused on the following topics:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Usability Engineering and User Experience Design
• InteractionTechnologies and Future Interaction (Touch, Gesture, Gaze, etc.)
• Game Design / Entertainment Computing
• Digital Humanities
• Social Media Analytics
• Mobile Computing

Media informatics is an interdisciplinary field, with various industrial cooperations (emz-Hanauer: “moDino”; MEK Media: “Second Screen Project”) as well as cooperations with neighboring disciplines (examples: BMWi project: “eKulturportal”; DFG project: “PaLaFra”)

For additional information on our research, please refer to our German language website.

Contact

For questions concerning recent media informatics research please contact:

Prof. Dr. Christian Wolff
Phone: +49 941 943-3386
Email: christian.wolff@ur.de

For questions concerning the media informatics studies please contact:

Alexander Bazo
Phone: +49 941 943-4958
Email: alexander.bazo@ur.de

For an overview of the full media informatics staff please visit our German language page.