In this talk academic staff members working on topics related to HCI will present an overview of their research and how this relates to the HCI MSc modules and program.

<!–Speaker: Nick Taylor, University of Dundee
Date/Time: 2-3pm March 10, 2015
Location: CS1.33a, University of St Andrews–>
Abstract:
Engagement with local issues is typically very low, despite digital technologies opening up more channels for citizens to access information and get involved than ever before. This talk will present research around the use of simple physical interfaces in public spaces to lower barriers to participation and engage a wider audience in local issues. It will also explore the potential for moving beyond top-down interventions to support sustainable grassroots innovation, in which citizens can develop their own solutions to local issues.
Bio:
Nick Taylor is a Lecturer and Dundee Fellow in the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design at the University of Dundee. His research interests involve the use of novel technologies in social contexts, particularly in communities and public spaces. This has involved the exploration of technologies to support civic engagement in local democracy, public displays supporting community awareness and heritage, as well as methods of engaging communities in design.
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

Speaker: Dr. Eve Hoggan, Aalto Science Institute and the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology
<!–Date/Time: December 2, 2014 / 2-3pm
Location: Jack Cole Building 1.33a, School of Computer Science
Title:  Augmenting and Evaluating Communication with Multimodal Flexible Interfaces–>
Abstract:

This talk will detail an exploratory study of remote interpersonal communication using the ForcePhone prototype. This research focuses on the types of information that can be expressed between two people using the haptic modality, and the impact of different feedback designs. Based on the results of this study and other current work, the potential of deformable interfaces and multimodal interaction techniques to enrich communication for users with impairments will be discussed. This talk will also present an introduction to neurophysiological measurements of such interfaces.

Bio:

Eve Hoggan is a Research Fellow at the Aalto Science Institute and the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT in Finland, where she is vice-leader of the Ubiquitous Interaction research group. Her current research focuses on the creation of novel interaction techniques, interpersonal communication and non-visual multimodal feedback.  The aim of her research is to use multimodal interaction and varying form factors to create more natural and effortless methods of interaction between humans and technology regardless of any situational or physical impairment.

More information can be found at www.evehoggan.com
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

Speaker: Dr. Jason Alexander, School of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University
<!–Date/Time: November 11, 2014 / 2-3pm
Location: Jack Cole Building 1.33a, School of Computer Science
Title:  Supporting the Design of Shape-Changing Interfaces–>
Abstract:
Shape-changing interfaces physically mutate their visual display surface to better represent on-screen content, provide an additional information channel, and facilitate tangible interaction with digital content. The HCI community has recently shown increasing interest in this area, with their physical dynamicity fundamentally changing how we think about displays. This talk will describe our current work supporting the design and prototyping of shape-changing displays: understanding shape-changing application areas through public engagement brainstorming, characterising fundamental touch input actions, creating tools to support design, and demonstrating example implementations. It will end with a look at future challenges and directions for research.
Bio:
Jason is a lecturer in the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University. His primary research area is Human-Computer Interaction, with a particular interest in bridging the physical-digital divide using novel physical interaction devices and techniques. He was previously a post-doctoral researcher in the Bristol Interaction and Graphics (BIG) group at the University of Bristol. Before that he was a Ph.D. student in the HCI and Multimedia Lab at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. More information can be found at http://www.scc.lancs.ac.uk/~jason/
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

<!–Speaker: Neal Lathia, Cambridge University
Date/Time: 2-3pm October 28, 2014–>
Location: Maths Lecture Theatre D, University of St Andrews
Abstract:
In the UK, more than 70% of mobile users now own a smartphone. These increasingly powerful, sensor-rich, and personal devices present an immense opportunity to monitor health-related behaviours and deliver digital behaviour-change interventions at unprecedented scale.
However, designing and building systems to measure and intervene on health behaviours presents a number of challenges. These range from balancing between energy efficiency and data granularity, translating between behavioural theory and design, making long psychological assessments usable for end users, and making sense of the sensor and survey data these apps collect in a multidisciplinary setting.
Approximately 18 months ago, we launched Emotion Sense, a mood-tracking app for Android where we tried to address some of these challenges. To date, the app has been downloaded over 35,000 times and has an active user base of about 2,000 people: in this talk, I will describe how we designed, trialled, and launched Emotion Sense, and the insights we are obtaining about diurnal patterns of activity and happiness that we are finding by mining the 100 million+ accelerometer samples the app has collected to date. I’ll close with future directions of this technology — including a novel smoking cessation intervention (Q Sense), and a generic platform (Easy M) that we have developed to allow researchers to conduct their own studies.
http://emotionsense.org/
http://www.qsense.phpc.cam.ac.uk/
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~nkl25/easym/
Bio:
Neal is a Senior Research Associate in Cambridge University’s Computer Laboratory. His research to date falls somewhere in the intersection of data mining, mobile systems, ubiquitous/pervasive systems, and personalisation/ recommender systems, applied to a variety of contexts where we measure human behaviour by their digital footprints. He has a PhD in Computer Science from University College London. More info/contact http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~nkl25/
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

<!–Speaker: Professor Janet C Read, University of Central Lancashire
Date/Time: 2-3pm October 14th, 2014
Location: Maths Lecture Theatre B, University of St Andrews–>
Abstract:
The process of learning to write is both cognitive and motoric.  Forming symbols into words and committing them to a surface is a process laden with complexity; creating the meaning that will be represented by these words is even more complex.
Digital technologies provide opportunities and insights for the study of writing processes.  With keyboard capture and pen stroke capture important information can be gathered to make writing systems more child suited and to provide useful assistance to beginner writers.  Data captured during the electronic transcription of writing can also provide insights into how writing emerges as a form.
This talk will present child computer interaction against the context of children writing using electronic means.  The marriage of the text input space, the digital ink space and the child will be explored using examples from recent research.
Bio:
Prof. Janet C Read (BSc, PGCE, PhD) is an international expert in Child Computer Interaction having supervised 7 PhD students to completion, examined 14 PhD students in six different European countries and currently supervising 8 PhD students studying a range of topics including the use of colour in teenage bedrooms, the design of interactive systems for dogs, the use of scaffolding in serious games, the use of text input to detect fraudulent password use, collaborative gaming for children, evaluation of systems for children and the forensic detection process.  Her personal current research is in three main areas – she has recently published several papers on the ethics of engaging with children in participatory research activities offering a model for working with children which ensures they are given full information, and also a set of techniques that can be used to ensure that children’s contributions to interaction design are treated with respect. A second strand of interest is in the study of fun and the study of means to measure it.  The Fun Toolkit, which is a set of tools to measure the experience of children when using interactive technology, is her most cited work and this is work that has developed over time but is still being examined.  The uses of digital ink with children, and the whole area of text input for children, both with standard keyboards and with `handwriting recognition completes her current research portfolio. Professor Read has acted as PI on several projects (see below) and is the Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Child Computer Interaction.
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

<!–Speaker: David Harris-Birtill, University of St Andrews
Date/Time: 2-3pm September 23rd, 2014–>
Location: Maths Theatre D
Abstract:
This talk outlines David Harris-Birtill’s previous research (at the Institute of Cancer Research and Imperial College London) focusing on applications in detecting and treating cancer. The talk will discuss photoacoustic imaging in the clinic, photothermal therapy with gold nanorods, and the advantages of imaging in a variety of settings and in it’s many forms from a nano to a macro scale to help the fight against cancer. This talk will also touch on the importance of displaying the right type of information to the right type of user and why data analysis skills are so important in efficient scientific research.
For any questions please email David on dcchb@st-andrews.ac.uk
Bio:
Dr David Harris-Birtill is a Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews. His current research is in human computer interaction and information visualisation, and is particularly interested in data analysis, sensors and automising research.
David’s work has been published in journals including Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Journal of Biomedical Optics, and has presented his research across the globe at conferences including San Francisco (SPIE Photonics WEST) and Hong Kong (Acoustics 2012). He has created open source image analysis programs which have been downloaded by over 100 researchers all over the globe, has run a course on “Introduction to Matlab for busy researchers and clinicians” and supervised research by Masters and PhD students.
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

<!–Speaker: Aaron Quigley and Daniel Rough, University of St Andrews
Date/Time: 12-1pm May 20, 2014
Location: Jack Cole 1.33a–>
Title: AwToolkit: Attention-Aware User Interface Widgets
Authors: Juan-Enrique Garrido, Victor M. R. Penichet, Maria-Dolores Lozano, Aaron Quigley, Per Ola Kristensson.
Abstract: Increasing screen real-estate allows for the development of applications where a single user can manage a large amount of data and related tasks through a distributed user inter- face. However, such users can easily become overloaded and become unaware of display changes as they alternate their attention towards different displays. We propose Aw- Toolkit, a novel widget set for developers that supports users in maintaing awareness in multi-display systems. The Aw- Toolkit widgets automatically determine which display a user is looking at and provide users with notifications with different levels of subtlety to make the user aware of any unattended display changes. The toolkit uses four notifica- tion levels (unnoticeable, subtle, intrusive and disruptive), ranging from an almost imperceptible visual change to a clear and visually saliant change. We describe AwToolkit’s six widgets, which have been designed for C# developers, and the design of a user study with an application oriented towards healthcare environments. The evaluation results re- veal a marked increase in user awareness in comparison to the same application implemented without AwToolkit.
Title: An Evaluation of Dasher with a High-Performance Language Model as a Gaze Communication Method
Authors: Daniel Rough, Keith Vertanen, Per Ola Kristensson
Abstract: Dasher is a promising fast assistive gaze communication method. However, previous evaluations of Dasher have been inconclusive. Either the studies have been too short, involved too few partici- pants, suffered from sampling bias, lacked a control condition, used an inappropriate language model, or a combination of the above. To rectify this, we report results from two new evaluations of Dasher carried out using a Tobii P10 assistive eye-tracker machine. We also present a method of modifying Dasher so that it can use a state-of-the-art long-span statistical language model. Our experi- mental results show that compared to a baseline eye-typing method, Dasher resulted in significantly faster entry rates (12.6 wpm versus 6.0 wpm in Experiment 1, and 14.2 wpm versus 7.0 wpm in Exper- iment 2). These faster entry rates were possible while maintaining error rates comparable to the baseline eye-typing method. Partici- pants’ perceived physical demand, mental demand, effort and frus- tration were all significantly lower for Dasher. Finally, participants significantly rated Dasher as being more likeable, requiring less concentration and being more fun.
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

<!–Speaker: Alan Dix, Birmingham University
Date/Time: 2-3pm May 6, 2014
Location: Maths Lecture Theatre B, University of St Andrews–>
Abstract:
From buying plane tickets to eGovernment, participation in consumer and civic society is predicated on continuous connectivity and copious computation . And yet for many at the edges of society, the elderly, the poor, the disabled, and those in rural areas, poor access to digital technology makes them more marginalised, potentially cut off from modern citizenship. I spent three and half months last summer walking over a thousand miles around the margins of Wales in order to experience more directly some of the issues facing those on the physical edges of a modern nation, who are often also at the social and economic margins. I will talk about some of the theoretical and practical issues raised; how designing software with constrained resources is more challenging but potentially more rewarding than assuming everyone lives with Silicon Valley levels of connectivity.
Bio:
Alan is Professor of Computing at University of Birmingham and Senior Researcher at Talis based in Birmingham, but, when not in Birmingham, or elsewhere lives in Tiree a remote island of the west coast of Scotland.
Alan’s career has included mathematical modelling for agricultural crop sprayers, COBOL programming, submarine design and intelligent lighting. However, he is best known for his work in Human Computer Interaction over three decades including his well known HCI textbook and some of the earliest work in formal methods, mobile interaction, and privacy in HCI. He has worked in posts across the university sector as well as a period as founder director of two dotcom companies, aQtive (1998) and vfridge (2000), which, between them, attracted £850,000 of venture capital funding. He currently works part-time for the University of Birmingham and is on the REF Panel for Computer Science. He also works part-time for Talis, which, inter alia, provides the reading list software used at St Andrews.
His interests and research methods remain, as ever, eclectic, from formal methods, to technical creativity and the modelling of regret. At present he is completing a book, TouchIT, about physicality in design, working with musicologists on next generation digital archives, envisioning how learning analytics can inform and maybe transform university teaching, and working in various projects connected with communication and energy use on Tiree and rural communities.
Last year he completed a walk around Wales as an exploration into technical issues ‘at the edge’, the topic of his seminar.
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

<!–Speaker: Johannes Schöning, Hasselt University
Date/Time: 2-3pm April 8th, 2014
Location: Maths Lecture Theatre B, University of St Andrews–>
Title: Highly Deformable Mobile Devices & Future Mobile Phones
Abstract:
In the talk I will present the concept of highly deformable mobile devices that can be transformed into various special-purpose controls in order to bring physical controls to mobile devices (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLe52PFZrtc). I will present different interaction techniques enabled by this concept and present results from an in-depth study. Our findings show that these physical controls provide several benefits over traditional touch interaction techniques commonly used on mobile devices. In addition we will give insights on a large-scale study that logged detailed application usage information from over 4,100 users of Android-powered mobile devices.
Bio:
Johannes Schöning is a professor of computer science with a focus on HCI at Hasselt University, working within the Expertise centre for Digital Media (EDM) – the ICT research Institute of Hasselt University. In addition, he is a visiting lecturer at UCL London within the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Cities.
His research interests are new methods and novel mobile interfaces to navigate through spatial information. In general, he develops, designs and tests user interfaces that help people to solve daily tasks more enjoyable and/ or effectively. This includes the development of mobile augmented reality applications, interactive surfaces and tabletops and other “post desktop” interfaces. His research and work was awarded with several prices and awards, such as the ACM Eugene Lawler Award or the Vodafone Research Award for his PhD.  In addition, Johannes serve as a junior fellow of “Gesellschaft für Informatik”.
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.