The traditional user-centered design process can hardly keep up with the ever faster technical development and increasingly diverse user preferences. As a solution, we propose to augment the tried-and-tested approach of conducting user studies with simulation and optimization of the entire human-computer interaction loop. This approach allows to better understand phenomena through explicit modeling, build virtual prototypes through simulation, and improve interaction techniques through optimization. Building predictive user models also supports the creation and validation of HCI theories, and constitutes a decisive step towards new, intelligent, and adaptive user interfaces. We report our experience in virtually developing new interaction techniques on the example of acoustic levitation, and present our optimization-based framework for HCI. With this, we strive to gain a better understanding of interaction and at the same time feed the discussion on questions such as which tools and tutorials are necessary to make virtual prototyping more accessible to different audiences.

翻译：传统以用户为中心的设计流程难以跟上日益加速的技术发展与愈发多样的用户偏好。为此，我们提出对经过验证的用户研究方法进行增强，通过仿真与优化整个人机交互循环来解决问题。该方法允许通过显式建模更好地理解现象，借助仿真构建虚拟原型，并通过优化改进交互技术。构建预测性用户模型还能支持人机交互理论的创建与验证，并为开发新型智能自适应用户界面迈出决定性一步。我们以声悬浮为例，报告了在虚拟环境中开发新型交互技术的实践经验，并提出了基于优化的HCI框架。借此，我们致力于加深对交互的理解，同时推动关于"为使虚拟原型化更易于不同受众使用需配备哪些工具与教程"等问题的讨论。