St Andrews HCI Research Group

News

SACHI @ IEEE VIS in Vancouver


Uta Hinrichs, Fearn Bishop and Xu Zhu are representing SACHI this year at the IEEE VIS’19 conference which is held in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Fearn will present her research on exploring free-form visualization processes of children. Xu will present his work on how people visually represent discrete constraint problems. Uta has been involved on research that introduces design by immersion as a novel transdisciplinary approach to problem-driven visualization. She is also co-chairing the VIS Doctoral Colloquium this year, and is co-organizing the 4th workshop on Visualization for the Digital Humanities (VIS4DH’19).

 

Design by Immersion: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Problem-driven Visualizations [preprint]
Kyle Wm. Hall, Adam Bradley, Uta Hinrichs, Samuel Huron, Jo Wood, Christopher Collins and Sheelagh Carpendale.

Tuesday, Oct. 22 – 2:35-3:50 PM  [preview video]
Provocations; Ballroom A

 

Construct-A-Vis: Exploring the Free-form Visualization Processes of Children [preprint]
Fearn Bishop, Johannes Zagermann, Ulrike Pfeil, Gemma Sanderson, Harald Reiterer and Uta Hinrichs.

Wednesday, Oct. 23 – 2:20-3:50 PM
(De)Construction; Ballroom A

 

 

How People Visually Represent Discrete Constraint Problems [TVCG paper; PDF]
Xu Zhu, X, Miguel Nacenta, Özgür Akgün and Peter W. Nightingale

Thursday, Oct. 24 – 9:00-10:30 AM [preview video]
Vis for Software and Systems; Ballroom B

 

 

SACHI Excursion at Isle of May


On the 19th of June, 2014, the group went out on an excursion to the Isle of May, just off the coast of Anstruther. It was the perfect time to visit, with beautiful weather all day long, and with what we were told to be a quarter of a million birds, as it was the middle of the nesting season. That was actually quite believable, as we saw entire cliff faces covered in birds nested as our ferry, the May Princess, toured round the island: there were puffins, seagulls, ducks, swans, terns – and even a few seals. We enjoyed hiking round the island and photographing the birds for close to three hours. The serene environment gave us a wonderful opportunity to step out of our offices/labs into the bright sunshine and taste the wind and sea – and to embrace the wonders of Mother Nature. As we were getting on and off the boat, we also had quite the “in the wild” experience, when the terns, who were nesting in the mini-harbour area, attacked us in droves, dive-bombing us from overhead to warn us off! We ended the day with an unforgettable meal of Fish and Chips from the famous Anstruther Fish Bar, and with smiles and happy memories! [Photo Credits: Michael Mauderer, Shyam Reyal, Article By: Martin McCaffery]

SACHI Group Members

SACHI Group Members


Birds on the island

Birds on the island


The Group

The Group

Tiree Tech Wave 5: 14-18 March 2013, Isle of Tiree, Scotland, UK


The Tiree Tech Wave (TTW), is run twice a year, and is billed as ‘a hands-on making and meeting event ‘. This Spring, thanks to SICSA funding, SACHI member Anne- Marie Mann was given the privilege of attending.

The Tiree Tech Wave (TTW), organised by Alan Dix and Graham Dean, those who participate are lured by the promise of time to step out, to experiment, play, make things with others and discuss what brings us all together – our new digital maker culture.
The first challenge to all participants of the Tech Wave is getting to Tiree, a small island off the west coast of Scotland. The short flight from Glasgow challenges even the most intrepid participants and appears to be a rite of passage. For the duration of the stay Tech Wavers ask ‘Did you come in the tiny plane?’ a feat of pure courage that bonds us all to Tiree and its inhabitants.Plane to Tiree
Safe and sound on the island, it’s straight down to business. The Tiree Rural Centre becomes home to the 30+ participants of TTW5. This year, saw an eclectic mix of people from across the country enjoying the island and the projects they worked on. This was an exciting opportunity to meet a wide range of people and develop projects and ideas with them.
Whilst everyone was busy working away, I had the pleasure to work on a project with Ruth Aylett, from Heriot Watt University and Steve Forshaw, from HighWire at Lancaster University . The project was based on an art installation by Gordon Pask called Colloquy of Mobiles that had intrigued Ruth. The original artwork, deemed a form of Cybernetic Serendipity was a reactive, computer-based system composed of five large mobiles. Our task was to honour the artwork using only what we could scrounge from the electronic artefacts in front of us. The resultant piece, which we loosely named Cybernetic Fecundity, was run by 3 arduinos, a ‘male’, a ‘female’ and a constant , which represented time and rhythm. Completing the work took time, patience and a lot of ‘iterative design’. For me, it provided a demonstration of design – from conception to realisation, and it’s achievement drew on everyone’s strength and experience and was an excellent learning opportunity. photo (1) A video of the project in action can be viewed here.
Other projects such as those brought by Cardiff School of Art and Design, included various wearable technologies, building a 3D printer, and a ceramic representation of its artist with an embedded RFID tag. The University of Lancaster consisted of two contingents of people, those from HighWire  and a group from the Catalyst project, working on an app to help raise Autism awareness. Another project worth mentioning was conducted by Alessio Malizia and Alan Chamberlain, who both worked hard to implement a gesture aware table top in the Tiree Rural Centre, using a Kinect and a projecter.
Whilst busy by day, the evenings were a more social affair. The events organised included a meal at the Scarinish hotel, the launch of the Tiree mobile heritage app, and a meal hosted by Marie-Angela, Tim, Will and Sam from Catalyst.
The true success of TTW5 was the fellowship and ingenuity of the participants. The Tech Wave allows a chance for creativity and networking in a relaxed, informal atmosphere that fosters strong bonds between those taken part. On that note I would like to thank everyone involved with my Tiree Tech Wave experience and it is fair to say that I hope to see them all again.

PhD student (Geoinformatics+Comp.Sci.) sought


 
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.