Title: “Serious Games” – Metrics for the Design of Educational Computer Games
Speaker: Dr. Azizah Jaafar, National University of Malaysia.
 

Professor Aaron Quigley has been invited to join the IDEAS Executive Committee as the external member, and will contribute to guiding the strategic direction of IDEAS. IDEAS is a new multi-disciplinary research centre encompassing the disciplines of Engineering, Computing, Architecture & Built Environment and Art & Design.

On the 11th of February SACHI hosted over 30 researchers from across SICSA for a MultiModal Interaction theme workshop here in St Andrews. Along with research overviews from many groups we were able to have a research poster session at lunch. This event gave us the opportunity to launch our new HCI lab which will form the basis of our experimental facilities here in St Andrews. Per Ola was also able to join us from Cambridge for the day which gave everyone a great opportunity to meet him. Others from St Andrews who attended included Mirco,Tristan, Alan, Colin, Jakub, Tom and Savio for the poster session.
A substantive outcome from the day was the identification and formation of five new strands of activity within the SICSA MMI theme (along with identified leadership).
5 Strands identified:

1. IxD/UX (interaction design/user experience)
2. Tourism
3. Health and Wellbeing
4. Social and Affective
5. Mobile Interaction

Email Aaron if you want a contact for any of these or the contact the SICSA MMI theme leader, Professor Stephen Brewster.
The agenda for the day was:
10.30am Informal morning coffee in Jack Cole Building
11.00 – 11.05 Introductions and Welcome from Aaron Quigley and Stephen Brewster
11.05 – 11.20 Heriot-Watt University
11.20 – 11.35 University of Abertay Dundee
11.35 – 11.50 Glasgow Caledonian University
11.50 – 12.05 University of St Andrews
12.05 – 1.00 Discussion Session A Jack Cole 1.33a Topics
1. Revisit 4 themes of
a. Tools and Techniques,
b. Evaluation,
c. Social and Affective MMI,
d. Whole Body Interaction
2. Schedule and goals for MMI workshops for Apr, Jul, Oct (GCal), Jan (’12)
3. MMI theme collaboration on special issue journals, workshops, events, conferences
4. Cross-site activities: internships, debates, PhD event, visitors, seminar series, exchange program
1.00 – 2.00 Lunch and Poster Session
SACHI: St Andrews Computer Human Interaction research group, HCI Lab, John Honey Building
2.00 – 2.15 University of Glasgow
2.15 – 2.30 University of Edinburgh
2.30 – 2.45 Edinburgh Napier University
2.45 – 3.00 University of Dundee
3.00 – 4.00 Discussion Session B Jack Cole 1.33a Topics
1. Revisit 4 themes of Tools and Techniques, Evaluation, Social and Affective MMI,Whole Body Interaction
2. Funding opportunities (discussion on EU, national (EPSRC/TSB/SFC), industry funding groups in MMI could pursue)
Email Aaron if you have any questions on this day. We owe a great thanks to the administrative and technical support team here in Computer Science for their efforts behind the scenes and to Jakub and Tom for setting up a great many things, including the lunchtime poster session.

Aaron Quigley from the SACHI research group has been appointed an expert board member for the EU FP7 coordinating action called BRAID. Prior to joining the University of St Andrews he was the director for the HITLab Australia one of the project partners in BRAID. He was part of the team which successfully applied for the BRAID grant in 2009. He was previously the coordinator for the EU FP7 project CAPSIL in the University of College Dublin in Ireland. You can read more about this project here or visit the BRAID website.

Professor Aaron Quigley has been invited to serve as the founding Editor-in-Chief for the Journal Computers. Computers is an international, open access journal which provides an advanced forum for computer sciences. Computers is an online journal, with its Editorial Office located in Basel, Switzerland and a branch office in Beijing. The preliminary aims and topics are given at http://www.mdpi.com/journal/computers/about/.

On Thursday 14th October 2010 at 6:30 pm Aaron will give a talk on Invisible Interfaces and the BCS Edinburgh Branch in the University of Edinburgh Informatics Forum.
Overview
The user interface represents the point of contact between a computer system and a human, both in terms of input to the system and output from the system. Ubiquitous Computing or UbiComp consists of hardware, software, systems and services which act as the computational edifice around which we need to build our user interfaces to afford natural or “invisible” interaction styles. This is driven by the evolution from the notion of a computer as a single device, to the notion of a computing space comprising personal and peripheral computing elements and services all connected and communicating as required. This presentation discusses research and developments in the realisation of User Interfaces for UbiComp systems. Examples are drawn from research and development groups around the world who are exploring mobile and embedded devices in almost every type of physical artefact including cars, toys, tools, homes, appliances, clothing and work surfaces.
BCS Edinburgh Website