Building on the success of the 2012 and 2013 events, the 3rd International Symposium on Pervasive Displays (PerDis’14) will be held this June with Aaron Quigley as the program chair. The website is at: http://pervasivedisplays.org/2014/
This symposium will take place in Copenhagen in June 2014 and will include a keynote address. In addition to research papers we are also soliciting submissions for posters and demonstrations.
As digital displays become pervasive, they become increasingly prevalent and indeed relevant in many areas, including advertising, art, computing, engineering, entertainment, interaction design, sociology and urban life. We invite submissions that report on cutting-edge research in the broad spectrum of pervasive digital displays, from large interactive walls to wearable displays, from installations to personalised signage or mobile displays to urban visualisation. The symposium on Pervasive Displays welcomes work on all areas pertaining to digital displays including, but not limited to:

• Applications
• Content design
• Evaluations, case studies, deployments and experience reports
• Interfaces and interaction techniques
• Novel technologies and new forms of pervasive display
• System architectures and infrastructure

http://pervasivedisplays.org/2014/
 
 
 

(Please note this competition is open to any student in the University of St Andrews)
The St Andrews Human-Computer Interaction Research group (SACHI) is one of the leading research groups in Human-Computer Interaction in Scotland and the United Kingdom. To accompany our current growth and increased impact and international recognition, we are planning to redesign the image of the group, starting with its logo.
We have decided to open the design of the logo to any students in the University of St Andrews. We are looking for a logo that:

• Looks and feels contemporary
• Is original, recognisable, and distinguishable from other similar institutions
• Can be integrated in a range of media (e.g., websites and paper)

Prize:

• One submission will get a 100 pound gift voucher.
• The author of the winning logo will be acknowledged in the group’s webpage.

Notice that:

• The logo can have one or more forms (e.g., one with letters and one without) for flexibility of use in different contexts
• The logo can, but does not have to, include the text “SACHI” or any subset or super-set of these letters
• The logo can, but does not have to, be graphically connected with the activities of the group, namely: human-computer interaction, information visualization, intelligent user interfaces, input devices, interaction techniques, computer-supported collaborative work. For more inspiration from the research themes of the group, please take a look at our soon-to-be-redesigned web page (http://sachi.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk )

Requirements:

• The logo should be original, free of royalties, and not include any element owned by third-party (e.g., existing fonts, dingbats, or external logos, even if these are open source/open access/royalty free).
• The logo should be usable for a number of graphical and non-graphical media, including web, software and paper-based media.
• The logo should have a small version that can be recognisable that is 50 pixels in its minimum dimension (horizontal or vertical).
• The logo should have a greyscale version that can be recognisable (note: these version does not have to be just a greyscale conversion of the full-colour logo).

Submission:

• The logo or logos will be submitted in a single pdf, in at least three sizes (small = 1cm, medium = 3cm, large 10cm), and with a version in greyscale or black and white for each of the sizes.
• The logo or logos will include an explanation of the logo in text of at least 50 words.
• The logo or logos can be accompanied by a preferred colour scheme.

Rules:

• The winning logo will be chosen by a jury chosen from the SACHI staff and students. Although members of SACHI are encouraged to submit their logos, they will not be able to be both submitters and judges.
• The contest may be left with no winners (no new logo from the submissions is adopted) but, if this is the case, there will still be a 50 pound prize to the best design.
• Submissions need to be sent by e-mail to aquigley@st-andrews.ac.uk before January 31st2014, 12:00pm GMT. Send any further queries or questions to this address.

Vacancy Advertisement:  (http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AHX243/research-fellow/)
We wish to recruit a Research Fellow in Information Visualisation and Human Computer Interaction to support a number of new and ongoing research projects. The post will be based in the School of Computer Science so particular expertise and background experience in programming, interface design, evaluation or novel user interface development would be an advantage.
SACHI (http://sachi.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk) has over twenty members, is strongly active in the international community organising conferences such as UIST 2013, ITS 2013 and MobileHCI 2014. We regularly publish in the leading international HCI venues including CHI, UIST, IUI, AVI, ITS, PerDis etc. As a group we have several funded projects, organise an international seminar series, host visitors regularly and maintain a HCI lab with a wide range of equipment.
As a HCI group we encourage group-wide collaborative research so there are opportunities to participate in in other projects, be involved with undergraduate and postgraduate supervision, in addition to working on emerging topics of interest in the group.
In addition, demonstrated experience in information visualisation, intelligent user interfaces, web applications or ubiquitous and pervasive computing would be highly advantageous.
You should have a good honours degree in Computer Science or a related discipline, and preferably have, or be about to obtain, a PhD in Computer Science. It is essential that you have strong software development and evaluation skills. In addition you must demonstrate that you are able to manage work across a number of projects with competing deadlines while leading the day-to-day work and development.
The post is available for 2 years in the first instance, with possible extension, starting as soon as possible.
Informal enquiries should be directed to Professor Aaron Quigley aquigley@st-andrews.ac.uk or +44 (0) 1334 461623
Please quote ref: SB1190
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AHX243/research-fellow/
Closing Date: 31 January 2014
Further Particulars: SB1190AR FPs.doc
Salary: £30,728 – £33,562 per annum
Start: As soon as possible
Fixed term for 2 years

Faculty, postdocs and graduate students from across SACHI are involved with a number of ACM conferences in 2014.

Aaron Quigley is the general co-chair for MobileHCI 2014 and Daniel Rough is the registration chair. MobileHCI 2014 is the 16th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services. It is the premier forum for innovations in mobile, portable and personal devices and with the services to which they enable access. MobileHCI will be held in Toronto, Canada from September 23-26, 2014.

Miguel Nacenta is the program co-chair for ITS 2014. ITS 2014 is the ACM Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces Conference. It is a premiere venue for research in the design and use of new and emerging tabletop and interactive surface technologies. ITS 2014 will be held in Dresden, Germany from November 16-19, 2014.

Per Ola Kristensson is the demo co-chair for UIST 2014 and Jakub Dostal is the registration chair. UIST 2014 is the 27th ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. It is the premier forum for innovations in human-computer interfaces and brings together people from diverse areas including graphical & web user interfaces, tangible & ubiquitous computing, virtual & augmented reality, multimedia, new input & output devices, and CSCW. UIST will be held in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA from October 5-8, 2014.

Tristan Henderson is the workshops co-chair for MobiSys 2014. MobiSys 2014 is the 12th ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services. MobiSys 2014 seeks to present innovative and significant research on the design, implementation, usage, and evaluation of mobile computing and wireless systems, applications, and services. MobiSys will be held in Bretton Woods, NH, USA from June 16-19, 2014.

Uta Hinrichs will serve as a program committee member for AVI 2014. AVI 2014 is the 12th edition of the International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces. AVI brings together a wide international community of experts with a broad range of backgrounds who share the interest in the investigation, design, development, and evaluation of  innovative interactive solutions. AVI will be held in Como, Italy from May 27-29, 2014.

Professor John Stasko and the Associate Chair of the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech has been appointed as an Honorary Professor in the School of Computer Science. Professor Stasko will be joining SACHI as an adjunct faculty member. You can find a complete blog post on our school’s website.

<!–Speaker: Ingi Helgason, Edinburgh Napier University
Date/Time: 2-3pm Jan 21, 2013
Location: 1.33b Jack Cole, University of St Andrews–>
Abstract:
This talk will present the work of the UrbanIxD project’s interdisciplinary summer school that took place in Croatia in August 2013. The goal of the summer school was the production of fictional concepts that explored the active role of citizens as designers, users and inhabitants in the emerging socio-technical situations that might characterise the Hybrid City of the near-future. The built environment is already in the process of being enriched with layers of data gathering computation and, combined with our own personal mobile technologies, this is offering a myriad of new urban informatics experiences and possibilities.
By employing a Critical Design methodology the UrbanIxD FP7 project is providing an opportunity to re-think what networked and connected communities of the future might look like. The project is questioning the premise of the “smart city” and is developing a community of researchers with a shared commitment to the foregrounding of the human experience in the emerging field of Urban Interaction Design.
Bio:
Ingi Helgason is a research fellow working on the UrbanIxD project based at Edinburgh Napier University where she is also studying part-time towards a PhD in Interaction Design. She teaches technology design and innovation at the Open University and her research interests focus on technology-mediated interactions in public and urban spaces. She was a member of the executive committee of the BCS Create series of interaction design conferences, and was on the programme committee of the BCS HCI conference for 2012. Ingi is on the editorial board of the SpringerOpen Journal of Interaction Science (JoIS). She is one of the organisers of This Happened Edinburgh, a series of events focusing on the stories behind interaction design.
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

The annual 35 Innovators Under 35, published by the MIT Technology Review identifies young individuals who are pushing forward the boundaries of technology and driving the next generation. This year, SACHI’s Dr Per Ola Kristensson was recognised in the prestigious Visionaries category.
Per Ola was recognised for his breakthrough work on text input and gesture recognition originally successfully commercialised as ShapeWriter, later purchased by Nuance Communications. The technology is a highly influential precursor to the gesture keyboards seen in today’s Android mobile telephone handsets and tablet computers.
Joining tech luminaries already honoured, including Jonathan Ive, Jerry Yang, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg, Per Ola was also recognised for his work to aid people with disabilities, such as speech impediments or limited dexterity, expanding the use of statistical language modelling to significantly speed their communication from an unaided one or two words per minute.
SACHI congratulates Per Ola on this prestigious honour.
Read More: MIT Technology Review, University of St Andrews News

<!–Speaker: Ruth Aylett, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh
Date/Time: 1-2pm Sep 10, 2013
Location: 1.33a Jack Cole, University of St. Andrews–>
Abstract:
In the EU-funded LIREC project, finishing last year, Heriot-Watt University investigated how a long-lived multi-embodied (robot, graphical) companion might be incorporated into a work-environment as a team buddy, running a final continuous three-week study. This talk gives an overview of the technology issues and some of the surprises from various user-studies.
Bio:
Ruth Aylett is Professor of Computer Sciences in the School of Mathematical and Computer Science at Heriot-Watt University. She researches intelligent graphical characters, affective agent models, human-robot interaction, and interactive narrative. She was a founder of the International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents and was a partner in the large HRI project LIREC – see lirec.eu. She has more than 200 publications – book chapters, journals, and refereed conferences and coordinates the Autonomous affective Agents group at Heriot-Watt University- see here
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

<!–Speaker: Gregor Miller, The University of British Columbia, Canada
Date/Time: 1-2pm July 16, 2013
Location: 1.33a Jack Cole, University of St Andrews–>
Abstract:
I will be discussing two projects from the Human Communications Technology lab at the University of British Columbia. The first is OpenVL, an abstraction of computer vision which provides developers with a description language which models vision problems and hides the complexity of individual algorithms and their parameters. Additionally this provides facilities for hardware acceleration (and multiple implementations) and quick inclusion of improvement to the state-of-the-art. The second project is MyView, a video navigation framework utilising a personal video history for simpler browsing and search, as well as intuitive summary creation, social navigation and video editing.
Bio:
Gregor Miller has been a Research Fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UBC since early 2008, working in the areas of Computer Vision, Computer Graphics and Human-Computer Interaction, and in particular the strands which connect them. Dr. Miller works in the Human Communication Technologies Laboratory as lead researcher for the MyView and OpenVL projects. Prior to coming to UBC Dr. Miller worked as a Research Fellow in Computer Science at the University of Dundee, designing multi-viewpoint camera systems. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Vision and Graphics from the University of Surrey and a BSc (Honours) in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Edinburgh. Dr. Miller has also been a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, and worked for three years as a software developer.
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

<!–Speaker: Jacob Eisenstein, Georgia Institute of Technology,
Date/Time: 1-2pm July 23, 2013
Location: 1.33a Jack Cole, University of St Andrews–>
Abstract:
Large text document collections are increasingly important in a variety of domains; examples of such collections include news articles, streaming social media, scientific research papers, and digitized literary documents. Existing methods for searching and exploring these collections focus on surface-level matches to user queries, ignoring higher-level thematic structure. Probabilistic topic models are a machine learning technique for finding themes that recur across a corpus, but there has been little work on how they can support end users in exploratory analysis. In this talk I will survey the topic modeling literature and describe our ongoing work on using topic models to support digital humanities research. In the second half of the talk, I will describe TopicViz, an interactive environment that combines traditional search and citation-graph exploration with a dust-and-magnet layout that links documents to the latent themes discovered by the topic model.
This work is in collaboration with:
Polo Chau, Jaegul Choo, Niki Kittur, Chang-Hyun Lee, Lauren Klein, Jarek Rossignac, Haesun Park, Eric P. Xing, and Tina Zhou
Bio:
Jacob Eisenstein is an Assistant Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. He works on statistical natural language processing, focusing on social media analysis, discourse, and latent variable models. Jacob was a Postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Illinois. He completed his Ph.D. at MIT in 2008, winning the George M. Sprowls dissertation award.