UCL INTERACTION CENTRE

On Wednesday 10th July, Prof. Marcus Foth, Director for the Urban Informatics Research Lab in the University of Technology in Brisbane, will be giving a talk at 4pm “New Design Opportunities of Next Generation Screens for Participation and Engagement”.

On Tuesday 9th July, Prof. Steve Gill, Director of Research Cardiff School of art and Design, will give a talk at noon “Holistic design: Why so many computer-embedded products in the world aren’t designed for people and what we might do to change that?”

University College London

UCL Interaction Centre

Two fully funded PhD studentships in Human-Computer Interaction

Applications are invited from students to work on the following projects in Human-Computer Interaction at the UCL Interaction Centre [UCLIC] from September 2013.

Project 1: Work-Life Balance and the ‘quantified self’: Using personal informatics tools to regain control over digital habits.
Project 2: Seeing the World Differently.
Project 3: Steering users’ mood through proprioceptive feedback in full-body rehabilitation technology

Further details on each of these projects can be found on our Jobs pages.  Applications can be made for any one of the projects using the application form available at this site.

These studentships are based at the UCL Interaction Centre (UCLIC) and are funded for 48 months from September 2013 by a doctoral training grant from the EPSRC. Eligible UK/EU candidates will receive a tax-free stipend of approximately £15,590 per annum as well as having tuition fees covered. To be automatically eligible for full fees and stipend, candidates must be a UK/EU national who has been ordinarily resident in the UK for the previous 3 years. Other EU candidates are eligible for fees only, but it may be possible to cover the stipend as well. Overseas applicants may similarly be able to receive the stipend, but must pay fees at the International rate, although they can apply for other sources of funding to have some or all of the fees waived.

In all cases, applicants should have a first or upper-second (2:1) class honours degree in HCI, Cognitive Science, Psychology, Computer Science or another related area and have a clear interest in Human-Computer interaction.  Candidates should also have excellent written and oral communication skills and a passion for presenting and representing in innovative, creative and insightful ways.

Applications should include a two page outline of your research proposal setting your research problem in the project area of interest with some background information about the problem as well as methods you would use to tackle it. You can also download the application form from the UCL Jobs pages at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hr/jobs/ and search on Reference number 1344227. Enquiries about the application process can be made to Louise Gaynor (L.Gaynor@ucl.ac.uk). You can find out more about research in general at UCLIC on the research projects pages and people pages.



Closing date for applications is Friday 19 July 2013.
Interviews will be held around Tuesday 13 August 2013.

UCL Taking Action for Equality

Although not based in UCLIC for much of the time (because he has a day-job at NATS), Dave Thompson has been studying for an EngD with us for the past five years. And now he doesn't have to study any more: he just has minor corrections to make to a thesis on behavioural markers in air traffic control.
Congratulations, Dr Thompson!

Sarah Wiseman appeared this week on Watchdog on the BBC talking about number entry errors. See it here:http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b02zj9yv/Watchdog_Series_31_Episode_8/?t=24m04s

Our very own Sarah Wiseman is featured in EPSRC Magazine Pioneer about her experiences of delivering her stand-up comedy routine about her PhD research at UCL's Bright Club.

Wednesday 13th June 2013 at 4pm in 24 Gordon Square, Room 105

UCLIC will be hosting a guest seminar tomorrow for Simon Li, who is visiting from Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

Human Error Detection in Medical Devices and Procedures

I am currently on a 2-week research visit at UCLIC as part of  a collaborative research project with Ann & Anna. The project is titled  “Human Error Detection in Medical Devices”. In this seminar, I will present what the project is about and one of the main ideas that I have been working on so far – the effect of prescription complexity on error checking behaviour. The idea is still work-in-progress, therefore, this seminar is used to share that idea with you all. I will talk about the experimental hypotheses and how I arrive at them.

Simon Li graduated with a PhD from UCLIC in 2006. He is now an Assistant Professor at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. http://www.ln.edu.hk/socsp/staff/simonindex.php 

Wednesday 15th May 2013 at 4pm in Room 110, Roberts building

This week we have two-post docs from UCLIC presenting, Charlene Jennett and Sheila Pontis.

Creativity in Citizen Cyber-Science: All for One and One for All (Charlene Jennett)

We interviewed researchers and volunteers about their experiences of creativity in citizen cyber-science (CCS). Our preliminary results reveal two types of creativity – imaginative self-expression and solving project problems. We conclude that a good project community is important for encouraging creativity in CCS.

Expertise and insight in identifying current and future leaders: an exploratory study on the “Nobel Laureates” problem (Sheila Pontis)

Wednesday 8th May 2013 at 4pm in Room 110, Roberts building

Despite decades of research and enormous investments by the industry, our most commonly used user interfaces are age-old. For example, the QWERTY keyboard was invented in the 19th century, the menu in the 1950s, and the mouse and touchscreen in the 1960s. I claim that these problems are due to the fact that the space of alternative designs is too enormous to be explored by trial and error. Let us consider the case of designing a menu, one of the most commonly used user interface. The number of possible designs for a menu with 20 items is 20!=2432902008176640000  -- more than there are stars in the observable universe (10 ^ 24)!. Our group investigates computational methods for interface design. The automatization of well-known, recurring problems allows a designer to focus on truly novel aspects. The basis of this work is quantitative behavioral modeling of interaction combined with computational methods for searching the optimal design. Instead of generating and trying out one or only a few instances at a time, the designer defines optimization goals, assumptions about the user and use, and sets constraints, and the computer explores the best designs. We have also developed user interfaces that allow a designer to fluently interact with an optimizer while editing a user interface. Whereas previous work in user interface design has been largely based on trial and error, this approach allows aggressive exploration of millions of user interface designs as part of the design. Research results for keyboards, menu systems, and gestural interfaces are presented as case examples.

Bio: Antti Oulasvirta is a Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics and the Cluster of Excellence on Multimodal Computing and Interaction, where he leads the Human-Computer Interaction group. He received his doctorate in Cognitive Science from the University of Helsinki in 2006, after which he was a Fulbright Scholar at the School of Information in UC Berkeley in 2007-2008 and a Senior Researcher at HIIT in Finland in 2008-2011. During his postgraduate studies in 2002-2003, he was an exchange student at UC Berkeley's Neuropsychology Lab and did an internship at T-Labs in Berlin in 2006. Dr. Oulasvirta is an associate editor of International Journal of Human-Computer Studies and Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, and he serves as a subcommittee chair for the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. He was awarded the Best Paper Award at CHI in 2011, the Best Paper Nomination at CHI in 2009 and 2008 at CHI, and the Best Note Award in 2011 at MobileHCI. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Centre for Computing and Communication at University of Copenhagen.

Homepage: http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~oantti/
Group page: http://hci.mpi-inf.mpg.de/

Applications are invited for students to work on several fully funded (if you meet the funding criteria) PhD projects in Human-Computer Interaction at UCLIC. Applications can be made for any one of the projects - please see our advert with more information about the projects. To apply, please complete the application form, including a research proposal in your application and send it along with your CV to Louise Gaynor by Friday 19 July 2013. Interviews will be around Tuesday 13 August - the studentship will begin in September 2013.

This year's MSc Open Evening will take place from 5pm on Wednesday 8th May at Malet Place, London. This is a great opportunity to meet lecturers and current students. You can also find out about research in the HCI field, computer games research and many other research activities at UCLIC and try out some of our sensing devices (e.g., eye‐tracking, motion capture systems, biosensors). For more information and to attend the UCLIC Open Evening please fill out the registration form by 29 April 2013. Anyone who has already applied will automatically be invited to attend.

UCLIC has redesigned its website. The website is due to be launched in week beginning 22nd April. If you notice any problems with the site, or have any other comments, please contact r.fleck (at) ucl.ac.uk .