St Andrews HCI Research Group

News

Best paper award at TVX 2019


Congratulations to Guilherme Carneiro, Miguel Nacenta, Alice Toniolo, Gonzalo Méndez and Aaron Quigley who won the Best Student Paper award for their paper “Deb8: A Tool for Collaborative Analysis of Video at TVX 2019.

Deb8 is a tool that allows collaborative analysis of video-based TV debates. The tool provides a novel UI designed to enable and capture rich synchronous collaborative discussion of videos based on argumentation graphs that link quotes of the video, opinions, questions, and external evidence.

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First international Laidlaw scholar


Chhavi SharmaThis summer we are delighted to host Chhavi Sharma from The University of Hong Kong. Chhavi is the first international Laidlaw scholar the University of St Andrews has hosted and as a result she will also be the first international Laidlaw scholar in Computer Science. She will be supervised by Professor Aaron Quigley. Together they will be working on Blended Reality and Discreet Computing using the Magic Leap system for digital/physical interactions. MORE

Dr. Daniel Rough heading to Ireland


Congratulations to Dr Daniel Rough who has been awarded a 24-month Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral Fellowship in Ireland as part of the EDGE Programme. The prestigious MSCA EDGE Fellowships are based within 10 academic institutions across Ireland and affiliated with one of three Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Research Centres. The EDGE Programme also incorporates training and development in research, with a strong focus on industry engagement and impact, including a secondment with a relevant industry partner.
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SICSA director


Professor Aaron Quigley will take up the role of SICSA Director from July 2019. SICSA is the Scottish Funding Council Research Pool in Informatics and Computer Science comprising all 14 Scottish Higher Education Computer Science & Informatics Schools and Departments. SICSA promotes international excellence in University-led research, education, and knowledge exchange for Scottish Informatics and Computer Science and acts to cohere communities to help increase critical mass and to enable cooperation in research, teaching and Knowledge Exchange. The SICSA Director provides academic leadership for SICSA, working with the SICSA Directorate and the SICSA Executive.

“SICSA funding has enabled SICSA members to recruit over 90 high-quality Ph.D. students from across the world through our Prize Studentship Programme. Similarly, SICSA has provided SICSA member institutions with the opportunity to recruit some of the world’s best researchers to their Schools. SICSA delivers a range of programmes and activities to support Computing Science researchers at all levels in Scotland.”

VL/HCC 2018


Last year Dr Daniel Rough attended VL/HCC 2018 to present two papers. Daniel recently published a guest blog post which is now on the SoftVis site on this experience.
The papers Daniel presented were:

Rachel Menzies: Unlocking Accessible Escape Rooms: Is Technology the Key?


Event details

  • When: 2nd April 2019 14:00 – 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar

Abstract:

Escape rooms are popular recreational activities whereby players are locked in a room and must solve a series of puzzles in order to ‘escape’. Recent years have seen a large expansion technology being used in these rooms in order to provide ever changing and increasingly immersive experiences. This technology could be used to minimise accessibility issues for users, e.g. with hearing or visual impairments, so that they can engage in the same way as their peers without disabilities. Escape room designers and players completed an online questionnaire exploring the use of technology and the accessibility of escape rooms. Results show that accessibility remains a key challenge in the design and implementation of escape rooms, despite the inclusion of technology that could be used to improve the experience of users with disabilities. This presentation will explore the lack of accessibility within Escape Rooms and the potential for technology to bridge this gap.

Speaker Bio:

Dr Rachel Menzies is the Head of Undergraduate Studies for Computing at the University of Dundee and is the current SICSA Director of Education (https://www.sicsa.ac.uk/education/). She co-directs the UX’d research group (https://www.ux-d.co.uk/) and her research interests include user centred design with marginalised user groups, such as users with disabilities, as well as exploring novel interfaces, data visualisation and CS education. Her most recent work focusses on accessibility is in escape rooms, in particular how users with varied disabilities can access and enjoy the experience alongside typical users.

Event details

  • When: 2nd April 2019 14:00 - 15:00

Fully funded Joint PhD (co-tutelle) in Computer Science at University of Primorska (Slovenia) and University of St Andrews (UK) – starting Oct 2019


The Faculty of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Information Technologies at the University of Primorska (UP FAMNIT) is offering one fully-unded PhD scholarship for a planned Joint PhD (co-tutelle) in computer science with University of St Andrews (UK).

The selected candidate will receive a 36-48 month scholarship which includes:

  • Monthly payments of 1,544 € before tax + expenses
  • Research equipment and a working desk.
  • Yearly budget for other research costs for covering fieldwork and conference attendance.
  • Tuition fees at University of Primorska.

NOTE: St. Andrews tuition fees are not covered by this scholarship. For possible exemptions and height of tuition fees visit follow this link. Fees need to be paid during the time at St. Andrews (minimum one year). MORE

SACHI sponsor prize at Augmented Reality Summer School Auckland


As an ACM Distinguished Speaker, Professor Quigley was recently invited to deliver a series of lectures in New Zealand on “Novel Interactions in Augmented Reality” and “Discreet Computing” at the “Magic Leap Workshop” (a.k.a. Augmented Reality Summer School February 11th – 15th, 2019 in Auckland, New Zealand). To thank the summer school participants, SACHI sponsored a prize (from the Weta Workshop), which Aaron gave to three teams at the AR Summer School.
 
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SACHI and Summer Schools


IUI Summer School in Acre (2018)


The St Andrews Computer Human Interaction research group (SACHI) was established in 2011. Each year our members have been involved in summer or winter schools, either as organisers or participants. Starting from 2011 we organised, with our colleagues across Scotland, the SICSA Multimodal Systems for Digital Tourism summer school here in St Andrews. In 2012, Professor Quigley taught a summer school in Oulu Finland “UbiOulu” on UbiComp and Big Data. In early 2013, Dr. Anne-Marie Mann attended the “Tiree Tech Wave” and later that year we organised another school here in St Andrews called the SICSA summer school on Big Data, Information Visualisation with Professor Adam Barker the director of the Systems Research Group. SICSA further supported this event with a distinguished visiting fellowship for Professor John Stasko, of Georgia Tech, who is now a visiting Professor here in St Andrews.
 
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Keynote in KAIST Korea


Keynote in KAIST, Daejeon

Aaron with two of his co-authors Juyoung Lee and Hyung-il Kim in KAIST.


On February 1st, Professor Quigley delivered an invited talk as part of the ACM Distinguished Speaker Program during the HCI@KAIST International Workshop in KAIST, Daejeon, South Korea.
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