SACHI (http://sachi.org.uk/) members are organising two workshops in conjunction with the 25th BCS Conference on Human Computer Interaction in Newcastle on July 5th 2011. Aaron and Miguel are co-organisers for the workshop on Coupled Multi-display Environments (MDEs) in Classrooms (PPD’11) you can find the call for papers here. Tristan is co-organising the Health, Wealth and Identity Theft: designing and evaluating usable privacy and security mechanisms for online happiness workshop, the website is here.
Author Archives: admin
Feb 2011: IDEAS Executive Committee membership
I have been invited to join the IDEAS Executive Committee as the external member, and will contribute to guiding the strategic direction of IDEAS. IDEAS is a new multi-disciplinary research centre encompassing the disciplines of Engineering, Computing, Architecture& Built Environment and Art & Design.
Feb 2011: Expert Board Membership: BRAID
Aaron Quigley from the SACHI research group has been appointed an expert board member for the EU FP7 coordinating action called BRAID. Prior to joining the University of St Andrews he was the director for the HITLab Australia one of the project partners in BRAID. He was part of the team which successfully applied for the BRAID grant in 2009. He was previously the coordinator for the EU FP7 project CAPSIL in the University of College Dublin in Ireland. You can read more about this project here or visit the BRAID website.
Jan 2011: Editor-in-Chief for the Journal Computers
I have been invited to serve as the founding Editor-in-Chief for the Journal Computers. Computers is an international, open access journal which provides an advanced forum for computer sciences. Computers is an online journal, with its Editorial Office located in Basel, Switzerland and a branch office in Beijing. The preliminary aims and topics are given at http://www.mdpi.com/journal/computers/about/.
Nov 2010 – Ambient Displays
Last week Umer Rashid, one of my graduates students presented at the ACM International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2010. Umer recently moved to St. Andrews after completing an internship with Nokia Research.
Dec 2010 – Two Journal Papers: Visualisation and Usability
Along with Julie Doyle and Brian O’Mullane we have had our paper on “Usability by Proxy – Killing 2-N Birds with One Stone?” accepted to the Journal of Usability Studies. A controversial paper we look forward to its publication stimulating follow on research and debate.
Abstract:
Usability testing is a critical part of the design process for applications, which can require many iterations of testing with, often-times, many different groups of users. As such, the cost of testing is typically significantly high. In this article we propose a new UEM to address this problem, which we call Usability by Proxy. Usability by Proxy involves studying usability measures with a cohort at one level of expertise or ability to identify the expected values at the next level of expertise or ability. In this article, we begin the process of evaluating the effectiveness of this method through a usability study of the BioMOBIUS™ biomedical research platform, an application with intended usage by both biomedical engineers and clinicians. We ask whether testing usability with each specific user group is beneficial in identifying additional significant usability problems, or whether the costs in terms of time and resources outweigh these potential benefits
Along with Michael Farrugia we had had our paper on “Effective temporal graph layout: a comparative study of animation versus static display methods” accepted to the Journal of Information Visulisation. Again, this is a paper which turns some conventional wisdom in dynamic display on its head, in a small scale study followed up with a larger online study. Again, we look forward to this paper stimulate follow on work and the realisation of new forms of dynamic information display.
Abstract:
Graph drawing algorithms have classically addressed the layout of static graphs. However, the need to draw evolving or dynamic graphs has brought into question many of the assumptions, conventions and layout methods designed to date. For example, social scientists studying evolving social networks have created a demand for visual representations of graphs changing over time. Two common approaches to represent temporal information in graphs include animation of the network and use of static snapshots of the network at di erent points in time. Here we report on two experiments, one in a laboratory environment and another using an asynchronous remote web based platform, Mechanical Turk, to compare the e ciency of animated displays versus static displays. Four tasks are studied with each visual representation, two characterise overview level information presentation, and two characterise micro level analytical tasks. The results of this study indicate that static representations are generally more e ective particularly in terms to time performance, when compared to fully animated movie representations of dynamic networks.
Aug 2010 BCS Interaction Specialist Group
“Founded in 1984, Interaction (or the BCS Interaction Specialist Group) is a specialist HCI group of the British Computer Society (BCS). It provides an organisation for all those working on human-computer interaction – the analysis, design, implementation and evaluation of technologies for human use.”
In moving to my new role in St. Andrews I’ve joined the executive of the BCS Interaction Specialist Group. I’m looking forward to taking an active role in both this group and more broadly in promoting interest in next generation HCI challenges across the UK.
My own focus in Human Computer Interaction is on bridging the digital-physical divide. We live our lives in a physical world. I contend the current generation of human computer interfaces are very limited in their support for heads up, face to face or face to world interaction as apposed to the heads down interfaces as we currently have. The range of mobile (handheld or tablet/pad), laptop/netbook and desktop interfaces focusses our heads down and away from the world around us. As a result, many day to day tasks or even forms of work are poorly supported by access to appropriate digital information. Myself along with my students are exploring a variety of ways in which we can bridge this divide, bringing digital information into its context of use in our physical world. This is the theme of my research in the University of St. Andrews.
HCI2010
6th – 10th September Dundee
As part of my involvement with this BCS group I will be attending the 24th BCS Conference on Human Computer Interaction – HCI2010 in Dundee this September. This year the conference has as its theme, Play is a serious business. I would certainly agree with this theme. As we move beyond mere usability issues, interfaces must be engaging, persuasive and even elicit an emotional attachment if we want people to love using them, not simply suffer them.
I expect to attend the following workshop on the 6th of September, East meets West: Challenges and opportunities in complementary approaches to HCI. Experience suggests the approach to research (funding/publication/direction/style/graduation etc.) can be markedly different between the east and west. While this can be over emphasised, I’m looking forward to this workshop to help scratch beneath surface of this.
The conference itself runs from Wednesday the 8th until Friday the 10th of September and again this will be an excellent opportunity for me to become familiar with the breath of HCI work across the UK, while reconnecting with colleagues old and new.
On the 7th September my PhD student Jakub Dostal will present an outline of his multi-modal research questions, aims and plans at the HCI2010 Doctoral Colloquium at the University of Abertay Dundee. It is a great opportunity for him and impressive as he made his submission to attend the DC on his first day here in the University of St. Andrews. I hasten to point out he has been developing the ideas for a number of months while a visiting student in HITLab Australia the University of Tasmania. I don’t expect all my students to be ready to submit for a doctoral colloquium on their first day of postgraduate study.
Jakub will give a 20-minute presentation of his work to a panel and the other participants. I expect he will be completing a dry run of his presentation here in St. Andrews on August 31st.
July 2010 – International Workshop on Mobile Collaborative Augmented Reality
I’m been invited to serve on the program committee for a very interesting workshop on mobile collaborative augmented reality which is part of ISMAR 2010. I’ve been interested in AR for a number of years as a means to bridge the digital physical divide. While we have many methods for bring digital information down into our physical world currently our means of bringing information into the digital is limited to mobile, desktop, gaming interfaces and sensor systems. While we look at new means of bringing the digital into our physical day to day life (such as MobileAR, which can overload us) we do need to explore methods to ease the movement of information from our physical world (without burdening people in the provision of input or obtrusive sensing).
“Mobile Augmented Reality For Art Interaction” (image from thesis)
by Laurence Judge University College Dublin Ireland
“Augmented reality is a direct or indirect view of real world scenes in which physical objects are annotated with, or overlaid by computer generated graphics. The past two decades have seen a fast growing body of research and development dedicated to techniques and technologies for augmented reality. In particular, advances in hardware and networking have made possible a wide use of augmented reality for remote collaboration. However, in order to develop systems that are truly useful and comfortable for end users, many challenges need to be addressed first.
Two of those challenges include handling environmental constraints and understanding human needs. The former requires that systems can handle ever changing real word conditions to be continuously functional, while the latter requires that systems are constructed in ways with which end users can work effectively and comfortably. To address these challenges, we invite you to a one-day workshop on research issues specific to mobile augmented reality for remote collaborations.
This workshop aims to bring industrial and academic researchers together and to provide a platform to foster discussions among participants on the current state of art and future directions for mobile collaborative augmented reality. The workshop will be held on October 13, 2010 in Seoul, Korea, in conjunction with ISMAR2010. We solicit high quality research and position papers for the workshop. Submitted papers will be peer-reviewed by our highly regarded international program committee members. Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings. Currently we are investigating the possibility of including the proceedings in ACM or IEEE Digital Library, and inviting selected papers for a special issue of a journal.”
Please see the website at http://research.ict.csiro.au/conferences/collaborative-augmented-reality/ for more details.
July 2010 – First week as a Professor – From Golf to New Jobs and EU funding
So today is the end of the first week in my new role as Professor in the Chair of Human Computer Interaction at the School of Computer Science in St. Andrews University Scotland. While it’s been a relatively quiet week within the University it’s been a hectic time outside as the Golf Open Championship started here on Thursday. On Tuesday I was invited to attend an Open Golf Graduation where Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson and Padraig Harrington were awarded Honorary Degrees by the University in a public ceremony. In the past I’ve not been a great fan of such degrees but having seen the event myself, the caliber of the recipients and the nature of the honorary degree I think I was wrong about such awards. Thankfully the campus closes down for two days to help facilitate the tournament. Given the traffic and numbers in town I think this is the wise (and financially opportune) thing to do.
As for the University, it’s well and true enmeshed within St. Andrews itself. It’s an idyllic setting overlooking the sea, cliffs and beaches and is a quintessential University town. During the graduation ceremony I was able to sit beside two retired ladies from St. Andrews. Their knowledge and pride in the institution is a testament to the high esteem the people of the area hold the University in. Across the board I feel a sense of great academic and community pride throughout St. Andrews. It’s difficult to pick out what is and isn’t part of the University, so much so the whole place feels like the campus. However, my part of the University with Computer Science (shown to the right), Mathematics, Biomedical Science, Physics etc. is one of the few clearly defined “campuses” around. We are on the edge of the town where our teaching, research, office and lab space is more characteristic of a more modern campus. None the less, the character, caliber and ethos remains very much the same.
Along with the usual paper, reviewing deadlines and work on existing grants I’ve been getting settled in. I’ve assumed my teaching duties for HCI and Graphics along with coordination for Knowledge Transfer and as Honours project coordinator. I’m looking forward to the teaching where I hope to weave in some of the latest findings from CHI, UIST, ITS etc. And with graphics to explore the fundamental aspects while pushing into mobile and algorithmic methods to exploit more recent graphics hardware. The Knowledge Transfer role should be an interesting challenge. Moving research findings out to the broader community to encourage dissemination and impact creation. As part of this role I’m going to attend an FP7 (EU) Information and Communication Technologies Funding Day in Edinburgh on the 20th of July. I’ve been involved in a number of EU projects in the past and I think the range of EU opportunities affords us some timely knowledge transfer pathways.
Finally, my new school is seeking applications for a lectureship in human-computer interaction and a lectureship in Software Engineering which each have a closing date of 15 September 2010. The lectureship in human-computer interaction is funded by the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA). “The overall objectives of SICSA are to build a world-class Scottish computer science research community and to promote cultural change so that researchers in Scotland work collaboratively rather than in competition. The SICSA research themes of Next-generation Internet, Multi-modal Interaction, Modelling and Abstraction and Complex Systems Engineering.”
I’m looking forward to some fun and exciting times here.
June 2010 – MUM2010 and AutomotiveUI 2010
I have been invited to serve on the Program Committee for MUM 2010. This is “a leading annual international conference, which provides a forum for presenting the latest research results on mobile and ubiquitous multimedia. The conference brings together experts from both academia and industry for a fruitful exchange of ideas and discussion on future challenges”.
The 9th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM 2010) will be in
I’ve also been invited to serve on the Program Committee for Automotive UI 2010 which will be held in Pittsburgh, 11-12 November 2010.
“In-car electronic devices are becoming ubiquitous. Drivers and passengers use these devices because they perceive them as providing a valuable service. Some of these devices, such as collision warning systems, assist drivers in performing the primary task in a vehicle which is driving. Others provide information on myriad subjects or entertain the driver and passengers. A problem that arises from the proliferation of in-car devices is that they may distract drivers from the primary task of driving, with possibly disastrous results. Thus, one of the three major goals of the Automotive UI 2010 conference is to explore ways in which in-car user interfaces can be designed so as to avoid distracting the driver while still providing a valuable service. This is a challenging task, especially given that the design of in-car devices, which was historically the responsibility of car manufacturers and OEMs, is now a shared responsibility between a large and ever-changing group of parties. This group includes the car manufacturers and OEMs, but also the designers of devices that are brought in to the car, such as portable personal navigation devices and MP3 players.” (website http://www.auto-ui.org/10/)