St Andrews HCI Research Group

News

CSCW 2016 Workshop on Collocated Interaction: New Challenges in 'Same Time, Same Place' Research


San Francisco, CA, USA, 27th February 2016.
Submission due date: 22nd December 2015 (notifications in time for early registration), or 8th January 2016.
https://collocatedinteraction.wordpress.com/
 
ABSTRACT
In the 25 years since Ellis, Gibbs, and Rein proposed the time-space taxonomy, research in the ‘same time, same place’ quadrant has diversified, perhaps even fragmented. The goal of this one-day workshop is to bring together researchers with diverse, yet convergent interests in tabletop, surface, mobile and wearable technologies, and those interested in the social aspects of interaction, such as conversation analysis and ethnomethodology. These communities have matured considerably, and produced significant exemplars of systems, methods, and studies concerned with collocated interactions. Yet, new challenges abound as people wear and carry more devices than ever, creating fragmented device ecologies at work, and changing the ways we socialise with each other. In this workshop we seek to start a dialogue to look back as well as forward, review best practices, discuss and design paper-prototypes using the collocated design framework, to consider how we might address new and future challenges through collocated design practice.
MORE

TEI 2016 Workshop on Tangible Data, explorations in data physicalization


Tangible Data, explorations in data physicalization @ TEI’16 Eindhoven 14th & 16th Feb 2016
http://dataphys.org/workshops/tei16/
Call for Participation
We are pleased to announce our studio-workshop “Tangible Data, Explorations in Data Physicalization”, which will take place at TEI’16 in Eindhoven on the 14th and 16th February 2016. This workshop addresses both experienced researchers and practitioners as well as those who are new to the field but interested in applying Data Physicalization to their own (research) practice. The workshop will provide opportunities for participants to explore Data Physicalization hands-on, by creating their own prototypes built with tangible media including digital fabrication technologies. These practical explorations will lead into reflective discussions on the role tangibles and embodiment play in Data Physicalization and the future research challenges for this area.
MORE

 CHI 2016 Workshop on Proxemic Mobile Collocated Interactions


  • San Jose, CA, USA
  • 7th May 2016
  • Submission due date: 8th January 2016

https://proxemicmci.wordpress.com/
ABSTRACT
Recent research on mobile collocated interactions has been looking at situations in which collocated users engage in collaborative activities using their mobile devices. However, existing practices fail to fully account for the culturally-dependent spatial relationships between people and their digital devices (i.e. the proxemic relationships). Building on the ideas of proxemic interactions, this workshop is motivated by the concept of ‘proxemic mobile collocated interactions’, to harness new or existing technologies to create engaging and interactionally relevant experiences. Such approaches would allow devices to not only react to presence and interaction, but also other indicators, such as the interpersonal distance people naturally use in everyday life.
MORE

SICSA DEMOfest 2015


On Thursday a large proportion of the SACHI lab and many in the School of Computer Science department headed South to Edinburgh’s SICSA Demofest.  The Demofest is a yearly meeting of the Scottish Computer Science community in which students and academics showcase the latest research to a varied audience of industry and academics.

IMG_6511

MORE

Andrew Manches: Interaction, Embodiment and Technologies in Early Learning.


<!–Speaker: Andrew Manches, University of Edinburgh
Date/Time: 2-3pm November 24, 2015
Location: CS1.33a, University of St Andrews–>
Abstract:
Most of us might agree that ‘hands-on learning’ is good for children in the early years. But why? Is it simply more fun and sociable, or are there any more direct cognitive benefits? And what determines definitions of ‘hands-on’? Can we include iPads? This talk will draw upon an ESRC-funded project to examine the educational implications of recent theoretical arguments about the embodied nature of cognition. Video data from the project will be used to illustrate the methodological significance of the way children gesture when describing mathematical concepts and evaluate a hypothesis that numerical development is grounded upon two particular embodied metaphors. If correct, this presents a serious challenge to traditional approaches to the types of learning materials we offer children. The talk then demonstrates two embodied technologies to consider the potential of new forms of digital interaction to further our understanding of embodied cognition as well as support early learning.
Bio:
Dr Andrew Manches is a Chancellor’s Fellow in the School of Education and leads the Children and Technology group at the University of Edinburgh. He has 20 years experience working with children, first as a teacher, then as an academic. His recent research, funded by an ESRC Future Research Leader grant, focuses on the role of interaction in thinking, and the implications this has for early learning and new forms of technology. When not being an academic, Andrew is a parent of two young children and directs an early learning technology start-up that was awarded a SMART grant this year to build an early years maths tangible technology.
This seminar is part of our ongoing series from researchers in HCI. See here for our current schedule.

Dr David Harris-Birtill presents his research to 1,000s in India


Dr David Harris-Birtill gave a talk at the 6th Edition of the International Conference on Transforming Healthcare with IT, held on 16th – 17th October 2015 at the Lalit Ashok in Bangalore, India. David’s research presentation was titled “Remote Sensing of Heart Rate and Blood Oxygenation Level Using Gaming Camera-based Technology”, and was presented to 800 delegates who attended the session in person, as well as the 8,216 who virtually attended the meeting, streaming his talk in 32 countries.
David_Harris-Birtill_at_THIT2015
After the session, David was presented with a commemorative plaque for his research, as shown in the photo above.
MORE

Games Night


IMG_0545

Friday night was games night at SACHI, this week featuring a couple of scary games for Halloween!  The night began with pizza followed by three rounds of social deduction game One Night Ultimate Warewolf.  The main event was the Cthulhu themed Elder Sign from the designers of Arkham Horror.

Fortunately the team was able to stave off the imminent return of the Ancient Ones to enjoy the delicious range of cakes and other treats provided by or own Fearn Bishop.  Thanks Fearn!

Welcome Hui-Shyong Yeo


Hui-Shyong Yeo

Photo by Hui-Shyong Yeo

This week we have added a new member to the group. Hui-Shyong Yeo is a 1st year PhD student in the SACHI research group, supervised by Prof. Aaron Quigley. Hui-Shyong is particularly interested in exploring and developing novel interaction techniques that transcend the barrier between human and computers, especially on topics such as gestural/mid-air interaction, mobile/wearable interaction, Augmented/Virtual reality and text entry.

Before he came here, he was a researcher at UVR lab, KAIST. He worked on several projects such as on-body clothing design system using projection mapping and Mixed Reality remote collaboration system.

MORE

Two IEEE talks: JEEVES and the Speculative W@nderverse


In October 2015 we attended two IEEE conferences in the USA. Daniel Rough presented a full paper at the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, October 18–22, in Atlanta, Georgia. Uta Hinrichs presented a full paper at the IEEE Information Visualization (InfoVis) conference as part of VizWeek, October 25-30 in Chicago, Illinois. You can find details of these and all our papers on the publications page.
On November 10th, Daniel and Uta will reprise their talks here in St Andrews and everyone is welcome to attend. You can find the details for the two talks below along with links to the papers via the University of St Andrews research portal.
MORE

Irish HCI conference 2015


Trapped-in-AppLand
On Friday the 23rd of October, Aaron Quigley presented a keynote talk at the 9th annual Irish HCI conference (iHCI 2015) in Dublin. The talk was entitled “Trapped in AppLand: Archipelagos of Interaction”. The conference was hosted at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin and organised by the NCAD+UCD Creative Technology Network and was sponsored by the ACM SIGCHI Chapter Ireland and the NCAD+UCD Project. The conference showcased leading research by researchers in Ireland, and by Irish researchers working internationally, through poster and curated presentation sessions. The overall theme for this year was creative technology and the future of HCI in Ireland.
MORE