We are pleased to announce that Professor Aaron Quigley and Dr. Sara Diamond the President of the Ontario College of Art and Design University are the general co-chairs for MobileHCI 2014 the 16th International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction in Toronto,  Canada. Associate Professor Pourang Irani, University of Manitoba invited Aaron to join this Canadian organising committee as an international member.
The chairs, Dr. Sara Diamond and Professor Aaron Quigley, have extensive experience organizing and managing academic conferences. Sara Diamond is President of the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCAD U), Canada’s premiere university institution targeted at Art and Design and based in Toronto, proposed home for MobileHCI 2014. Aaron is the Chair of Human Computer Interaction at the School of Computer Science, University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He directs the St. Andrews Computer Human Interaction Research Group. Building upon a vast repertoire of resources available locally, nationally and internationally, both chairs look forward to delivering a successful and exciting MobileHCI 2014 event in Toronto.
 

MobileHCI Program Chairs prior to PC meeting.  Pourang Irani University of Manitoba, Canada and Sriram Subramanian University of Bristol, UK (yes that is an ice rink in the background)

<!–Speaker: Loraine Clarke, University of Strathclyde
Date/Time: 1-2pm Jan 15, 2013
Location: 1.33a Jack Cole, University of St Andrews–>
Abstract:
Interactive exhibits have become highly expected in traditional museums today. The presence of hands-on exhibits in science centres along with our familiarity of high quality media experiences in everyday life has increased our expectations of digital interactive exhibits in museums. Increased accessibility to affordable technology has provided an achievable means to create novel interactive in museums. However, there is a need to question the value and effectiveness of these interactive exhibits in the museum context. Are these exhibits contributing to the desired attributes of a visitors’ experience, social interactions and visitors’ connection with subject matter or hindering these factors? The research focuses specifically on multimodal interactive exhibits and the inappropriate or appropriate combination of modalities applied in interactive exhibits relative to subject matter, context and target audience. The research aims to build an understanding of the relationships between different combinations of modalities used in exhibits with museum visitors experience, engagement with a topic, social engagement and engagement with the exhibit itself. The talk will present two main projects carried out during the first year of the PhD research. The first project presented will describe the design, development and study of a Multimodal painting installation exhibited for 3 months in a children’s cultural centre for children. The second project presented is an on-going study with the Riverside Transport Museum in Glasgow of six existing multimodal installations in the Transport Museum.
Bio:
Loraine Clarke is a PhD student at the University of Strathclyde. Loraine’s research involves examining interaction with existing museum exhibits that engage visitors in multimodal interaction, developing multimodal exhibits and carrying out field based studies. Loraine’s background is in Industrial Design and Interaction Design through industry and academic experience. Loraine has experience in industry relating to the design and production of kayaking paddles. Loraine has some experience as an interaction designer through projects with a software company. Loraine holds a BDes degree in Industrial Design from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and a MSc in Interactive Media from the University of Limerick.

 
Dr Urška Demšar (School of Geography and Geosciences) and Dr Miguel Nacenta (SACHI) are looking for a doctoral student to carry out research in trajectory analysis and interaction. For more information see the position announcement.
For further queries feel free to e-mail Miguel or Urska.
 
 

Next year Miguel will join the program committee for the 2nd International Symposium on Pervasive Displays 2013 in cooperation with ACM / SIGCHI
“As digital displays become pervasive, they become increasingly relevant in many areas, including advertising, art, sociology, engineering, computer science, interaction design, and entertainment. We invite submissions that report on cutting-edge research in the broad spectrum of pervasive digital displays, from large interactive walls to personal projection, from tablets and mobile phone screens to 3-D displays and tabletops. The symposium on Pervasive Displays welcomes work on all areas pertaining to digital displays”. http://www.pervasivedisplays.org/2013/

Aaron and Per Ola are two of the Associate Chairs for MobileHCI 2013, the 15th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2013) which will be held in Munich, Germany August 27 – 30, 2013.
“MobileHCI is the world’s leading conference in the field of Human Computer Interaction concerned with portable and personal devices and with the services to which they enable access. MobileHCI provides a multidisciplinary forum for academics, hardware and software developers, designers and practitioners to discuss the challenges and potential solutions for effective interaction with and through mobile devices, applications, and services.” http://www.mobilehci2013.org/ Per Ola is also the workshops co-chair for MobileHCI 2013, the call for workshops 2013 is here.

Aaron will be joining the Technical Program Committee of the 2013 ACM International Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2013).
The UbiComp 2013 Program Chairs are Marc Langheinrich, John Canny, and Jun Rekimoto and they said of UbiComp 2013. That it is the first merged edition of the two most renowned conferences in the field: Pervasive and UbiComp. While it retains the “UbiComp” short-name in recognition of the visionary work of Mark Weiser, its long name (and focus) reflects the dual history of the new event, i.e., it seeks to publish any work that one would previously expect to find at either UbiComp or Pervasive. The conference will take place from September 8-12 in Zurich, Switzerland. Aaron has previously served on a number of Pervasive and UbiComp Technical program committees and looks forward to serving on this first joint conference UbiComp TPC which is now the premier forum for Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing research.
http://www.ubicomp.org/

Next week Professor Quigley is presenting a seminar in the University of Konstanz, Germany as an invited speaker by Professor Harald Reiterer
Abstract:
The computational and contextual edifice around which we will build our ubicomp user interfaces is complex and constantly changing. This context include physiological, environmental and computational state. In this regard, can we model the physiological differences between people and use the models to adapt and personalize designs, user interfaces and artefacts? Can we model, measure and predict the cost of users altering their gaze in single or multi-display environments? If so, can we personalize interfaces using this knowledge. What about when moving and while the distance between user and screen is varying. Can this be considered a new modality and used to personalize the interfaces along with physiological differences and our current gaze. In this talk we seek to answer some of these questions. We define Ubicomp User Interfaces and introduce an Individual Observer Model of human eyesight, which we use to simulate 3600 biologically valid human eyes. We also report on controlled lab and outdoor experiments with real users. This is to measure both gaze and distance from the screen in an attempt to quantify the cost of attention switching along with the use of distance as a modality. In each case, for distance, gaze or expected eyesight we would like to develop models which can allow us to make predictions about how easy or hard it is to see visual information and visual designs, along with altering the designs to suit individual users based on their current context.

<!–Speaker: John McCaffery, University of St. Andrews
Date/Time: 2-3pm Dec 12, 2012
Location: 1.33a Jack Cole, University of St Andrews –>
Abstract:
Open Virtual Worlds are a platform of several advantages. They provide an out of the box mechanism for content creation, distributed access and programming. They are open source so can be manipulated as necessary. There is also a large amount of content that has already been created within a Virtual World. As such, in the field of HCI experimentation they provide an interesting opportunity. When experimenting with novel modes of interaction prototypes can be created within a Virtual World relatively easily. Once the prototype has been created, users can be put into use case scenarios based around existing content. Alternatively, custom environments with very constrained parameters can quickly be created for controlled experimentation.
This talk will cover some of the interaction modes currently being experimented with by the OpenVirtualWorlds group.
Bio:
John McCaffery is a PhD student in the Open Virtual Worlds group. John works on investigating how the open frameworks for distributing, programming and manipulating 3D data provided by Open Virtual Worlds can be used to provide a model for how the 3D web may develop. Open Virtual Worlds is a general term for open source, open protocol client / server architectures for streaming and modifying 3D data. Examples include the SecondLife viewer and its derivatives and the SecondLife and OpenSim server platforms. John’s work includes investigating how the programming possibilities of Virtual Worlds can be extended and how Virtual World access can be modified to provide new experiences and new experimental possibilities, built around existing content. For more information on John’s Work see his research blog.

Today is St Andrews day and a number of current and former SACHI members graduated from the University of St Andrews.
Dr Umar Rashid who was supervised by Professor Aaron Quigley and Dr Miguel Nacenta was awarded his PhD for a thesis entitled “Cross-Display Attention Switching in Mobile Interaction with Large Displays”. Dr Per Ola Kristensson was his internal examiner and Dr Adrian Friday from the University of Lancaster was his external examiner. 
Jing Sun and Hong Xue who were supervised by Professor Aaron Quigley graduated with the Degree of M.Sc. Hong was awarded the Medal for M.Sc. in Information Technology and the School of Computer Science Award in Information Technology. Bin Han who was supervised by Dr Per Ola Kristensson graduated with the Degree of M.Sc. Moses Akazue supervised by Dr Miguel Nacenta graduated with the Degree of M.Sc. 
 
Anne-Marie Mann who is now a PhD student in SACHI graduated with the Degree of M.Sc.
 
 

SACHI along with other colleagues in Computer Science and across St Andrews are organising a SICSA supported “Big Data Information Visualisation” summer school in July of 2013. We are working on developing the program for this summer school bringing together expertise in a number of areas. Over the weeks and months ahead we will be adding to this website as we confirm topics and speakers. We already have a number of colleagues locally dealing with big data who are willing to act as mentors and domain experts during the summer school.