<!–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.

Speaker: Yvonne Rogers, UCL
Date/Time: 2-3pm March 11th, 2014
Location: Maths Lecture Theatre B, University of St Andrews
Abstract:
We are increasingly living in our digital bubbles. Even when physically together – as families and friends in our living rooms, outdoors and public places – we have our eyes glued to our own phones, tablets and laptops. The new generation of ‘all about me’ health and fitness gadgets, that is becoming more mainstream, is making it worse. Do we really need smart shoes that tell us when we are being lazy and glasses that tell us what we can and cannot eat? Is this what we want from technology – ever more forms of digital narcissism, virtual nagging and data addiction? In contrast, I argue for a radical rethink of our relationship with future digital technologies. One that inspires us, through shared devices, tools and data, to be more creative, playful and thoughtful of each other and our surrounding environments.
Bio:
Yvonne Rogers is a Professor of Interaction Design, the director of UCLIC and a deputy head of the Computer Science department at UCL. Her research interests are in the areas of ubiquitous computing, interaction design and human-computer interaction. A central theme is how to design interactive technologies that can enhance life by augmenting and extending everyday, learning and work activities. This involves informing, building and evaluating novel user experiences through creating and assembling a diversity of pervasive technologies.
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

<!–Speaker: Benjamin Cowan, University of Birmingham
Date/Time: 2-3pm Feb 25, 2014
Location: Maths Lecture Theatre B, University of St Andrews–>
Abstract:
Dialogue is a dynamic social activity. Research has consistently shown that our dialogue partners impact our speech choices whereby we converge (or align) on aspects such as lexical choice and syntax. With the development of more natural computer dialogue partners and the increase of speech as an interaction modality in many devices and applications, it is important that we understand what impacts how we behave linguistically in such dialogue interactions wth computers. My talk will focus on my current work looking at how design choices and computer partner behaviours affect alignment in human-computer dialogue and how this can inform the theory-based debate over what leads to such a behaviour.
Bio:
Dr Benjamin Cowan is a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham’s Human-Computer Interaction Centre, based in the School of Computer Science. His research is at the juncture between Psychology and Computer Science, studying how interface design affects user perceptions, emotions and behaviours in human-computer based interactions. Specifically he studies how design and system actions affect user linguistic behaviours as well as the causes and predictors of user anxiety towards social system contributions.
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

<!–Speaker: Hans Gellersen, Lancaster University
Date/Time: 2-3pm Feb 11, 2014
Location: Maths Lecture Theatre B, University of St Andrews–>
Abstract:
Touch input and two-handed interaction were intensively studied in the mid 80’s but it’s taken 20 years for these ideas to emerge in the mainstream, with the advent of multi-touch interfaces. Gaze has been studied for almost as long as interaction modality and appears on the brink of wider use. This talk will present recent work that reconsiders touch and gaze to address challenges in ubiquitous computing: interaction across personal devices and large displays, and spontaneous interaction with displays using our eyes only.
Bio:
Hans Gellersen is a Professor of Interactive Systems in the School of Computing & Communications at Lancaster University. His research interests are in ubiquitous computing and systems and technologies for human-computer interaction. He has contributed on topics including location, context and activity sensing, device association and cross-device interaction, and interfaces that blend physical and digital interaction. In his recent work, he is particularly interested in eye movement analysis: as a source of contextual information on human activity, interest and well-being; and as a resource for interaction beyond the lab. Hans is closely involved with the UbiComp conference series which we founded in 1999, and served on the Editorial Boards of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, and IEEE Pervasive Computing. He holds a PhD from Karlsruhe University.
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

<!–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.

<!–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.

Title: London and the 19th Century Global Commodity Trade: Industrialists and Economic Botanists
 
<!–Speaker: Jim Clifford, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada (@jburnford,
Date/Time: Thursday, August 15; 1-2pm,
Location: 1.33a Jack Cole, University of St Andrews–>
Abstract:
Greater London’s industry relied on overseas ghost acres for economic expansion. Britain did not have enough land to support the massive growth in industries such as soap making and it could not grow tropical and sub-tropical plants, such as sugarcane or cinchona, on an economic scale. This project explores the environmental consequences of London’s industrial development during the long nineteenth century. For example, the soap industry’s transnational fat supply shifted from Russian tallow at the start of the century, to animal fats from around the world, supplemented by palm oil from West Africa, coconut oil from Ceylon, and cottonseed oil from Egypt. This one industry’s supply chain represents a wider trend where British industrialists increasingly relied on plantations, farms, forest, mines and oceans all over the world to supply essential raw materials. Along with finding new supplies to expand existing industries, London’s industrialists, and economic botanists at Kew Gardens, also searched the world for new economically viable plants, and both groups played a role in the transfer of seeds and living plants to establish new plantations throughout the British Empire. For example, the British created neo-South American landscapes in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) with cinchona and rubber plantations.
This presentation will discuss how I’m combining archival research on the soap industry and economic botany with a text mined database created by the Trading Consequence research project. Our research team extracts a database of information about commodity flows throughout the British World during the nineteenth century by using computer algorithms to text-mine millions of pages of digitized historical documents. We then develop a range of visualizations to explore this large database. This new methodology allows us to explore a much wider range of commodity flows throughout the British World in the nineteenth century than traditional archival research.
Bio:
Jim Clifford is an environmental historian of Britain and the British World during the long-19th century. He uses digital methods to explore the global environmental consequences of Britain’s growing industrial economy. Jim is interested in the intersections between environmental, social and political history. In particular, he researches how communities responded to worsening environmental conditions.
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.