Trial Coordination

Depending on the study design, we recruit participants through e-mails to the campus or different institutions, distribute flyers and posters, or contact specific people with the right set of skills or features (actors, musicians, yoga instructors, people from a specific age group or fitness level, etc.).

Trial Coordinators schedule the experiments, carefully explain details about the study and how the data is going to be stored and used. Participants sign a consent form that specifies how their data may be used. For each session, we store this information about how the data may be published or shared. Depending on the protocol, the data capture may involve taking body measurements, putting on motion capture markers, applying make-up, or preparing clothing.

Participants receive 12 EUR per hour for taking part in the trials. The trial coordinators handle this payment.

Data Protection and Ethics

The Data Team is responsible for preparing and submitting proposals to the University of Tübingen Ethics Board and the Max Planck Society Ethics Committee and for adapting study protocols to the feedback we receive form the boards. 

Data protection and our participants’ privacy and trust are of great importance to us. We collect, store, process and share data in accordance with German national law, European Union regulations and the rules and standards of the Max Planck Society. In addition, we have internal procedures and measures to maintain awareness of the data privacy and data handling. We have developed a data-handling training course for department members that focuses on general rules as well as specific good practices for every step of the workflow with human subject data.

Data Management and Processing

Data Team members are responsible for pre-processing steps after data is collected. Organizing and securing raw data are the first key steps in often complex pipelines. 

Providing clean Motion Capture data (without inconsistencies in marker labelling) is one of the most challenging processing tasks. While multiple team members are trained to do this manually, we are moving towards using an in-house software solution to automate and speed up the process.

Perceptual Experiments and Labeling Data

The data team designs and conducts perceptual studies on Amazon Mechanical Turk. This allows us to validate results, label data, and determine its quality. To do so, we design HTML templates and more complex tool. Our custom apps allow regions or key points to be marked in 3D.