When:  Thursday June 15th
Where:  Maths Seminar Room 2
Time:  14:00 – 15:00
Title:  New Approaches to Mode-Switching
Abstract:  The fundamental unit of all interaction is issuing commands, and the trickiest types of commands are those that control “modes” — different ways to map the same input to different application actions. For example, the current mode in a tablet drawing app could determine if the exact same sequence of touch movements draws a line, pans the canvas, makes a marquee selection, or issues a gestural command. Switching between modes like these are frequent, so finding optimum mode-switching methods is important.  In this talk, I survey my group’s work to understand and improve mode-switching and command selection for different input types and device form factors. These include: Pin-and-Cross, a touch overloading technique combining static touches with nearby crossing selection; Conté, a pen-like input device that leverages small changes in contact geometry; Doppio, a reconfigurable two-faced smartwatch for tangible input; and Gunslinger, a mid-air interaction technique using bare hand postures and gestures performed in a relaxed arms-down position.
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When: Tuesday 30th May, 14:00 to 15:00
Where: Jack Cole room 1.33A
Title:  Internet services, energy demand and everyday life
Abstract:  Over the last decade, the growth in data traffic across the Internet has been dramatic, and forecasts predict a similar ongoing pattern. Since this is associated with remarkable electricity consumption (about 10% globally, and rising), such a trend is significant to efforts to reduce carbon emissions.  This calls for careful attention to the nature of these trends, as levels of Internet electricity demand become ever more directly and explicitly problematic.  Based on a host of prior literature and two field studies, this talk explores what we know about the energy intensity of digital stuff, and the growth of Internet traffic.  It considers how such traffic can be attributed to different Internet services like video streaming or social networking, and how these link to everyday practices which draw upon and generate data online.
Biography:  Dr Mike Hazas is a Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University, who works at the confluence of human-computer interaction and social science. His research combines qualitative and quantitative methods to understand everyday practices and technologies, how they can be related to carbon emissions and energy demand, and more sustainable trajectories. Mike co-directs the multidisciplinary Socio-Digital Sustainability group at Lancaster, and has served as a chair of the CHI Specific Application Areas subcommittee for the last three years.  Mike is a co-investigator in the DEMAND Centre (EPSRC, 2013-2018) which is concerned with the relationship of social practices and energy demand.

Press:
University of St Andrews: SWiM: an evolution in one-handed texting
TechCrunch: Tilt gesture keyboard could hold promise for typing in VR
Fast Co.Design: Why Don’t More UIs Use Accelerometers?
prosthetic knowledge: SWiM: Shape Writing in Motion
NewAtlas: Researchers create an app that makes you tilt and roll to type
The Scotsman: SWiM: an evolution in one-handed texting
Fife Today: Could this be the future of phone messaging?
Gizmodo Japan: 文字入力の方法を再発明。ボールを転がして文字を選んでタップ、片手での操作が簡単に
Engadet De: SWiM: Tippen durch Wackeln
Tweakers: Onderzoekers ontwikkelen typmethode die werkt met kantelbewegingen
Hi-News.ru: В Шотландии придумали принципиально новый способ ввода текста
Naked Science: Исследователи разработали новый способ ввода текста на мобильных устройствах
Sohu: 通过手势倾斜打字，有望成为VR输入方式之一
MobileGeeks: SWiM: Neue Tastatur-Eingabemethode für Einhandbedienung und VR
MacLife: SWiM: Das dürfte die Zukunft der Keyboards sein
30 seconds teaser:

Full video:

Paper [PDF]
 

Members of SACHI will be at the upcoming CHI’17 conference.
If you are looking to meet members of SACHI to discuss collaborations or research visits you can find us here. Likewise, if you are a company attending CHI and you wish to discuss working with us please get in touch. You can find us helping and involved throughout CHI 2017 with the presentation of 5 papers including 2 full papers, 1 late breaking work paper, 2 workshop papers and other activities.
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Thursday, May 18 from 10am – 1pm at the School of Computer Science

Technology fundamentally shapes our communication, relationships, and access to information. It also evolves through our interaction with it. Dialoguing across disciplines can facilitate an understanding of these complex and reciprocal relationships and fuel reflection and innovation.
This hands-on, participant-driven and experimental workshop will start a discussion of what can come from considering technology through a philosophical lens. MORE

Papers are due for this workshop on May 19th. In this workshop we are interested in object recognition work based on computer vision, radar (e.g. Project Soli by the Google ATAP (Advanced Technology and Projects)), acoustic sensing, tagging, smart objects etc. This workshop is on Sept 4th in Vienna, Austria in conjunction with MobileHCI 2017.
Full workshop details can be found here: http://sachi.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/activities/workshops/mobilehci-17/

Pedagogy & Physicalization: Designing Learning Activities around Physical Data Representations
This workshop will be held as part of the DIS 2017 conference, June 10-14, Edinburgh, UK
For complete details please visit: http://dataphys.org/workshops/dis17/
 
Call for Participation  
In an age where data and their various representations proliferates many aspects of our professional and private lives, a new form of awareness and visual literacy is required that enables people to decipher, interpret, critically discuss and actively engage in activities around this public and/or personal data and its (visual) representations. Previous case studies have found Physicalization to be a productive way to introduce people of different ages, and with different backgrounds, to activities around data collection, processing, and representation.
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Congratulations to Hui-Shyong Yeo, who has been selected as both an ACM SIGCHI communication ambassador and to represent SIGCHI at the ACM 50 Years of the A.M. Turing Award Celebration.
Yeo is a 2nd year PhD student and is particularly interested in exploring and developing novel interaction techniques. Since joining us in SACHI, he has had work accepted at ACM CHI 2016 and CHI 2017, ACM MobileHCI 2016 and 2017 and ACM UIST 2016. His work has featured at Google I/O 2016, locally on STV news and he gave a talk at Google UK in 2016 about his research.  His work has also featured in the media including in Gizmodo, TheVerge, Engadget and TechCrunch., see his personal website for more details. MORE

When: Tuesday 11th April
Time: 14:00 – 15:00
Where: Cole 1.33A
Title: Co-Designed, Collocated & Playful Mobile Interactions
Abstract: Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets were originally conceived and have traditionally been utilized for individual use. Research on mobile collocated interactions has explored situations in which collocated users engage in collaborative activities using their mobile devices, thus going from personal/individual toward shared/multiuser experiences and interactions.
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When: Monday 3rd April 2017, 14:00 – 15:00
Where: Jack Cole 1.33a
Title: Social interaction characteristics for socially acceptable robots
Abstract: The last decade has seen fast advances in Social Robotic Technology. Social Robots start to be successfully used as robot companions and as therapeutic aids. In both of these cases the robots need to be able to interact intuitively and comfortably with their human users in close physical proximity.
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