Anna has been promoted to Professor of Human-Computer Interaction, Duncan has been promoted to Reader in Human-Computer Interaction, and Enrico has been promoted to Senior Lecturer.

Full details of recent promotions can be found here.

My research has responded to this by investigating digital technology as a site for re-inventing social and cultural perspectives of the female body, and-imagining and re-designing women's health interactions and systems. In this talk I focus on two distinct research projects from the last five years. FeedFinder - a mobile tool aimed at mapping women's experiences of public breastfeeding, and Labella - a tool designed for embodied discovery of a woman's intimate anatomy. I will show how you can use design as a mode of inquiry that enables knowledge creation, and critical public discourse; a research methodology that combines Research-through-Design with a feminist approach to Human Computer Interaction.

We are also recruiting to two funded PhD studentships at the moment that begin in October 2017. One of the studentships has two themes - centred around 'A new approach for helping children get better in hospital: Empowering staff, children and families using Internet of Things, Data Analytics and Physical Computing technology', or on 'Work-life balance in the digital economy: exploring how mobile technologies impact stress and wellbeing '. Please see prism.ucl.ac.uk/#!/?project=220 for more information on each theme and how to apply. Applicants should email the theme contacts to discuss choosing a focus for their application. The application deadline for this studentship is 31 May 2017 with interviews soon after. Note that this funding is only available to UK/EU candidates who have (a) settled status in the UK, with no restrictions on how long they can stay and (b) been 'ordinarily resident' in the UK for 3 years prior to the start of the studentship and (c) not been residing in the UK wholly or mainly for the purpose of full-time education. See epsrc.ac.uk/skills/students/help/eligibility.
The other funded PhD studentship is linked with the Global Disability Innovation Hub and is focused on: 'Representation and Perceptions of Disability'. Please see more information and how to apply at prism.ucl.ac.uk/#!/?project=231 - the same eligibility criteria apply.

1) Understanding emotions in biological systems (humans and other animals) and their functions. From this perspective, we investigate questions such as:

• What are the key features of human and animal emotions that can be shared by autonomous robots in similar environments?
  • How do emotions affect behavior and cognition?
  • How did emotions evolve?
  • How do they develop through life?

2) Building better robots. From this perspective, we try to answer questions such as:

• How can emotions help robots to make "good" decisions?
• How can emotions make robots interact with people better?

I will also discuss how, in my view, answering these questions requires giving robots internal models of emotions in addition to skills to express emotions and recognize emotions, and how these models need to be embodied.

We are also recruiting to two funded PhD studentships at the moment that begin in October 2017. One of the studentships has two themes - centred around 'A new approach for helping children get better in hospital: Empowering staff, children and families using Internet of Things, Data Analytics and Physical Computing technology', or on 'Work-life balance in the digital economy: exploring how mobile technologies impact stress and wellbeing '. Please see prism.ucl.ac.uk/#!/?project=220 for more information on each theme and how to apply. Applicants should email the theme contacts to discuss choosing a focus for their application. The application deadline for this studentship is 31 May 2017 with interviews asoon after - candidates must ensure they meet the eligibility criteria - see epsrc.ac.uk/skills/students/help/eligibility.
The other funded PhD studentship is linked with the Global Disability Innovation Hub and is focused on: 'Representation and Perceptions of Disability'. Please see more information and how to apply at prism.ucl.ac.uk/#!/?project=231 - the same eligibility criteria apply. The deadline is 15 May 2017.

Here is a sneak peek at our accepted contributions.

Full Papers

• Quantifying the Body and Caring for the Mind: Understanding Self-Tracking in Multiple Sclerosis
  Amid Ayobi, Paul Marshall, Anna Cox, Yunan Chen.
• A City in Common: A Framework to Orchestrate Large-scale Citizen Engagement around Urban Issues
  Mara Balestrini, Yvonne Rogers, Carolyn Hassan, Javi Creus, Martha King, Paul Marshall.
• Always On(line)? User Experience of Smartwatches and their Role within Multi-Device Ecologies
  Marta Cecchinato, Anna Cox, Jon Bird.
• MagicFace: Stepping into Character through an Augmented Reality Mirror
  Ana Javornik, Yvonne Rogers, Delia Gander, Ana Moutinho.
• CoReach: Cooperative Gestures for Data Manipulation on Wall-sized Displays
  Can Liu, Olivier Chapuis, Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, Eric Lecolinet.
• EagleSense: Tracking People and Devices in Interactive Spaces using Real-Time Top-View Depth-Sensing
  Chi-Jui Wu, Steven Houben, Nicolai Marquardt.
• Supporting Everyday Function in Chronic Pain Using Wearable Technology
  Aneesha Singh, Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze, Amanda Williams.

Journal Articles

• Tariff Agent:Interacting with a Future Smart Energy System at Home
  Alper Alan, Enrico Costanza, Sarvapali Ramchurn, Joel Fischer, Tom Rodden, Nicholas Jennings.
• Go-with-the-Flow: Tracking, Analysis and Sonification of Movement and Breathing to Build Confidence in Activity Despite Chronic Pain
  Aneesha Singh , Stefano Piana, Davide Pollarolo, Gualtiero Volpe, Giovanna Varni, Ana Tajadura-Jiménez, Amanda Williams, Antonio Camurri, Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze.

Late-Breaking Work

• Using Nature-Based Soundscapes to Support Task Performance and Mood
  Joseph Newbold, Jake Luton, Anna Cox, Sandy Gould.
• Was I There? Impact of Platform and Headphones on 360 Video Immersion
  Audrey Tse, Charlene Jennett, Joanne Moore, Zillah Watson, Jacob Rigby, Anna Cox.
• WRISTBAND.IO: Expanding Input and Output Spaces of a Smartwatch
  Léa Saviot, Frederik Brudy, Steven Houben.

Student Design Competition

• ParentCircle: Helping Single Parents Build a Support Network [Poster] [Video]
  Latefa Al-naimi, Sinan Arkonac, Joseph Frazer, Ryan Horgan, Anna Kracewicz.
• GotYourBack: An Internet of Toilets for the Trans Community [Poster] [Video]
  Diana Beirl, Jerald Chan, Kai Loh, Anya Zeitlin, Xiaodi Zhong.
• StreetHeart: Empowering HomelessThrough Art and Technology [Poster] [Video]
  Clement Hamon, Oleksandra Danilina, Giovanna Vilaza, Johanna Mahonen.

Courses

• Understanding People: A Course on Qualitative and Quantitative HCI Research Methods
  Duncan Brumby, Ann Blandford, Anna Cox, Sandy Gould, Paul Marshall.
  More information available on the Course Website and Registration Page.
• Sketching User Experiences: Hands-on Course of Sketching Techniques for HCI Research
  Nicolai Marquardt.

SIG Meetings

• HCI and Health: Learning from Interdisciplinary Interactions
  Aneesha Singh, Nikki Newhouse, Jo Gibbs, Ann Blandford, Yunan Chen, Pam Briggs, Helena Mentis, Kate M Sellen, Jakob Bardram.

Workshops Organised

• Designing the Social Internet of Things
  Alessandro Soro, Margot Brereton, Paul Roe, Peta Wyeth, Daniel Johnson, Aloha Hufana Ambe, Ann Morrison, Shaowen Bardzell, Tuck W Leong, Wendy Ju, Silvia Lindtner, Yvonne Rogers, Jacob Buur.
• HCITools: Strategies and Best Practices for Designing, Evaluating and Sharing Technical HCI Toolkits
  Nicolai Marquardt, Steven Houben, Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, Andrew Wilson.
• Quantified Data & Social Relationships
  Chris Elsden, Aisling O'Kane, Paul Marshall, Abigail Durrant, Rowanne Fleck, John Rooksby, Deborah Lupton.

Workshop Papers

• Degrees of Agency in Owners and Users of Home IoT Devices
  Marta Cecchinato, Daniel Harrison.
  Workshop: Making Home: Asserting Agency in the Age of IoT.
• Designing for Curiosity in Citizen Science
  Charlene Jennett, Anna Cox, Paul Guerrero, Anthony Steed, Niloy Mitra.
  Workshop: Designing for Curiosity: An Interdisciplinary Workshop
• Serious Video Games as Psychosocial Interventions for Psychosis
  Oleksandra Danilina, Anna Cox, Andres Fonseca, Sonia Johnson.
  Workshop: 2nd Symposium Computing and Mental Health
• Becoming Mother: Designing Online Resources That Support And Empower
  Nikki Newhouse, Ann Blandford.
  Workshop: Hacking Women's Health
• Self-Experimentation and the Value of Uncertainty
  Amid Ayobi, Paul Marshall, Anna Cox.
  Workshop: Digital Health & Self-Experimentation: Design Challenges & Provocations
• Pinsight: Community-based Creation of A Physical Knowledge Network
  Can Liu, Licia Capra, Yvonne Rogers.
  Workshop: Designing the Social Internet of Things
• Keynote at Workshop: Designing Sustainable Food Systems
  Yvonne Rogers.

The phrase "in-the-wild" is becoming popular again in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI), describing approaches to HCI research and accounts of user experience phenomena that differ from those derived from other lab-based methods. The aim of this book is to examine what this new direction entails and what it means for HCI theory, practice, and design. The focus is on the insights, demands and concerns. But how does research in the wild differ from the other applied approaches in interaction design, such as contextual design, action research, or ethnography? What is added by labeling user research as being in-the-wild? 

You can access a pdf copy of it through the UCL library (as well as all the other Morgan and Claypool ebooks from UCLICers) or from the publisher's website. The link to the book is http://www.morganclaypoolpublishers.com/catalog_Orig/product_info.php?products_id=1053

Yvonne Rogers and Paul Marshall have published a new ebook entitled 'Research in the Wild' .

The phrase "in-the-wild" is becoming popular again in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI), describing approaches to HCI research and accounts of user experience phenomena that differ from those derived from other lab-based methods. The aim of this book is to examine what this new direction entails and what it means for HCI theory, practice, and design. The focus is on the insights, demands and concerns. But how does research in the wild differ from the other applied approaches in interaction design, such as contextual design, action research, or ethnography? What is added by labeling user research as being in-the-wild? 

You can access a pdf copy of it through the UCL library (as well as all the other Morgan and Claypool ebooks from UCLICers) or from the publisher's website. The link to the book is morganclaypoolpublishers.com/catalog_Orig/product_info.php?products_id=1053

Ahmed Alqaraawi is a new a PhD student who will be supervised by Enrico Costanza
Temi Olugbade who is now working as a part-time post-doc on Nadia Berthouze on the WeDraw project
Nicola Binetti who just stared as a post-doc on the HUMAN project
Dilisha Patel is a new a PhD student who will be supervised by Ann Blandford

I hope you will all feel at home and enjoy working with us here in UCLIC!

Human-robot interaction (HRI) is a highly interdisciplinary field that has grown substantially over the past 15 years. My talk will reflect on the concept of 'social robots' and focus on companion robots, i.e. robots that provide useful assistance to people and are required to interact with people in a socially acceptable ways. More and more robotics projects focus on human-robot collaboration and interaction scenarios, with applications e.g. in healthcare, service robotics, entertainment and manufacturing. My own research currently includes basic research into HRI as well as application oriented research into the development of robot home companions and robot-assisted therapy for children with autism. The talk will emphasize the need for a highly user-centred towards design, development and evaluation of companion robots. General findings from such work highlight the need for robots to be personalized and to learn cooperatively with the users. Thus, while companion robots don't necessarily need to be 'life-like' or humanoid in appearance and behaviour, they do need to deal with the complexity and dynamics of the (human) social and non-social environments they operate in. I will outline challenges and opportunities of these research areas, avenues for future research, and will also comment on some common misconceptions of the reality and future of social robotics.

The awarded research analyses how organisers of large crowdsourcing platforms can better manage volunteer capacity in the presence of major events, such as large emergency scenarios. The work has implications for a wide range of crowd platforms with event-centric dynamics, including platforms for emergency response, breaking news, forums for public discourse, and opinion-gathering platforms. The research was undertaken in close collaboration with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), which coordinates tens of thousands of online volunteers to trace roads, waterways, huts and houses from satellite data.

The paper was presented by Martin Dittus. A summary of the work can be found in the conference schedule. The paper is available online, as are the presentation slides. (Photo by Giovanni Quattrone.)

Team ParentCircle: Helping Single Parents Build a Support Network

Latefa Al-naimi, Sinan E Arkonac, Joseph Frazer, Ryan Horgan, Anna Kracewicz
Single parents often suffer from financial difficulties, loneliness and a lack of social support. The latter in particular leaves single parents vulnerable to stress, which can lead to the development of psychological disorders such as depression. We created the app, ParentCircle, as a low-cost solution to encourage physical interaction between parents in social spaces, and thus, help them build an effective support network. They can share announcements, chat, and are encouraged to form lasting, real world relationships. ParentCircle also offers parents the ability to join various community groups, which provide information about local news, and events to take part in with their children. It differs from existing products and apps, because it actively encourages and facilitates physical interaction, with the intention of helping single parents build a support network which will ease the various burdens they experience.

PDF Extended Abstract
Poster

Team Tai-CHI: GotYourBack: An Internet of Toilets for the Trans Community

Diana Beirl, Jerald Chan, Kai Loh, Anya Zeitlin, Xiaodi Zhong
Transgender individuals frequently report negative experiences when attempting to access gender segregated areas, such as toilets. This includes physical and verbal harassment and being denied access to facilities. The existing applications used to locate gender-neutral toilets are limited by the few facilities available. Our research shows that many transgender individuals feel more comfortable using gendered toilets in the presence of people who support gender diversity. In this paper we present GotYourBack, a mobile application which utilizes this support network and works with an Internet of Toilets ecosystem to improve safe access to gendered toilets. GotYourBack works by utilizing motion sensors and Bluetooth beacons to provide real-time data on toilet capacity and presence of supporters.

PDF Extended Abstract
Poster

Team StreetHeart: Empowering Homeless Through Art

Clement Hamon, Oleksandra Danilina, Giovanna Vilaza, Johanna Mahonen
The life of the current or former homeless is not an easy one. Besides, prejudice from society can hinder their chances to overcome problems, at the same time it cripples their confidence. Fortunately, many charity organizations encour- ages artistic activities by providing the workspace, tools and materials needed. There is an impressive amount of talent out there, but much of it remains unseen. This is why we designed StreetHeart, a platform that gives the underprivi- leged the power to upload, exhibit and sell their artworks in- dependently. Through displays spread around the city, their art can reach larger audiences and the public can send
their appreciation directly to the artists. We believe that this could have a big impact on decreasing prejudice against homeless and it could serve as an incentive to the artists to keep developing their creativity.

PDF Extended Abstract
Poster

Cathy has won the UCL Engineering Engager of the Year - Research / Academic Staff (grade 8 or above) Award, while Susan has won the UCL Engineering Engager of the Year Awards - Postgraduate Category. The awards judging panel felt that their work has "inspired and transformed the lives of many young people across the UK".

More information on the awards ceremony can be found here.

You can register for thsi event here https://ucl.hobsonsradius.com/ssc/eform/N67d82TT868Ex6700mx675.ssc

Visit our prospective students page to find out more about the programme.

Children are growing up in the newly emerging Internet of Things, but it is not always the case they understand how these devices and apps work. Digital Fluency is a learning approach intended to fill this gap, and brings together disparate aspects of computer science, cognition, design and everyday life to provoke curiosity, deep learning and creativity.

It was developed by an interdisciplinary team led by Prof Yvonne Rogers together with Dr Nic Marquardt, Dr Venus Shum, Dr Rose Johnson and Susan Lechelt. The team has produced an extensive, tangible computing toolkit called Magic Cubes; special building blocks that encourage collaborative exploration through a range of exciting and sometimes mysterious making and programming activities.

For example, one minute someone can be using it to construct a cube, the next making a pattern of LEDs light up while shaking the cube, then watching an interconnected set of cubes placed in a room light up like a Mexican wave.

Read the whole article here.

We are recruiting a Research Associate to work as part of a multidisciplinary group within the EU-funded project weDraw. WeDraw is a 2-year research project that brings together European partners from industry and university to explore how multi-modal and multi-sensory technology can support the learning of mathematical and geometrical concepts in children.
This post is available from 1st March 2017 and is funded for 22 months in the first instance. The deadline for application is Fri 6th Jan 2017 with interviews around 19th Jan 2017. Please download the Job description and Person specification for more information and please apply at the UCL Jobs advert page ref 1614112.

Page last modified on 29 Nov 2016 18:58

In this talk, I will describe our progress towards developing general-purpose support for deep learning on resource-constrained mobile and embedded devices. Primarily, this requires a radical reduction in the resources (viz. energy, memory and computation) consumed by these models -- especially at inference time. I will highlight various, largely complementary, approaches we have invented to achieve this goal including: sparse layer representations, dynamic forms of compression, and scheduling partitioned model architectures. Collectively, these techniques rethink how deep learning algorithms can execute not only to better cope with mobile and embedded device conditions; but also to increase the utilization of commodity processors (e.g., DSPs, GPUs, CPUs) -- as well as emerging purpose-built deep learning accelerators.

This talk will examine the relationship between design, engineering, and research.
The context is human-computer interaction (HCI), as embodied in touch-based mobile
devices and other high-impact products bearing novel user interface features.
Introductory comments will characterize the critical missions of design (form),
engineering (function), and research (discovery). Simple enough. How the three
disciplines work together is more complicated, however. While design and engineering
are closely aligned with products, research seeks to provide the raw materials
(materials and methods) that designers and engineers use in creating products. Yet,
the vast majority of research results have no direct impact on, or presence in,
products. While this might be viewed as a deficiency of research, it is demonstrated
that a healthy program of research is well-distanced from the short time lines in
product development (and, hence, design and engineering). It is argued that research
proceeding in close proximity to product development is, in fact, little more
than... The four-letter word completing this sentence will be revealed in the talk.

Following a Design Based Learning approach can provide an integrated process to teach children some of the 21st century skills, such as problem solving, creativity and critical thinking in an integrated process. Children can for example use technology toolkits in a design-based learning approach to develop digital literacy and design thinking skills.
Furthermore, children can be supported in self-directed learning by tools that help them select and reflect on learning goals A major challenge is to develop an easy to use and flexible digital toolkit /learning environment that fits with the specific 21st century learning goals and course specific learning goals. Embedded technologies can support teachers in creating learning activities, keeping track of students' development, managing diverse time schedules, etc. We have conducted design explorations with input from diverse stakeholders, such as teachers, children, publishers and educational scientists to examine how to develop tools to support design-based learning in schools.

The award is part of the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre's initiative to celebrate women in maths and computing, which was launched Tuesday 11 October at Bletchley Park. As a new branch of the existing Suffrage Science scheme, it will encourage women into science, and to reach senior leadership roles.

More information about the initiative can be viewed at the link below:
csc.mrc.ac.uk/celebrating-women-science-ada-lovelace-day-2016

Congratulations to Group D, who won 3 out of 4 categories, including Overall best video!

The videos can be found on UCLICTV: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTx9PW4reG897E9iERevzkqjs3jtoT6uR

Kyrill Potapov, a part-time PhD student who will be supervised by Paul Marshall
Gill Conquest, a PhD student in her final year on a secondment from Anthropology via the cross disciplinary training scheme working with Anna Cox
Mark Warner, a PhD student who will be supervised by Ann Blandford
Nora Ptakauskaite, a PhD student who will be supervised by Anna Cox
Jolien Vos, a new post-doc working with Ann Blandford on the ECLIPSE project
Rayoung Yang and Diana Nowacka will soon be transferring officially to UCL from Southampton to work with Enrico Costanza

I hope you will all feel at home and enjoy working with us here in UCLIC!

Mental disorders like depression and bipolar disorder impose a very high societal burden in terms of cost, lost productivity, morbidity, suffering, and mortality, and are a leading cause of disability and disease burden worldwide. According to EU, depression-related diseases are among the most pressing public health concern today, and account for more than 7% of all estimated health and premature mortality costs in Europe, only exceeded by heart disease and cancer. According to WHO, mental health is the fastest growing chronic disease and is one of the leading causes to disability worldwide.
In this talk I will present our research into the design of personal health technologies for patients suffering from mental disorders. Based on research done as part of the EU-funded MONARCA project, I will present the user-centred design of the technology and present results from clinical pilot trials. I will also share our experience in being part of "real" randomized clinical trial that seeks to establish clinical evidence for the efficacy of personal health technology in improving treatment outcome. I will reflect upon the challenges of combining a user-centred, agile, flexible design process with a rigours clinical trial.

Please register through eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/frontiers-in-digital-health-on-the-design-of-personal-health-technologies-for-mental-disorder-tickets-27520651008

Speakers

• Gregory Abowd
• Susanne Bødker
• Andrew Howes
• Vassilis Kostakos
• Stuart Reeves
• Yvonne Rogers

Schedule

Schedule for the day

Registration

Please register through eventbrite.

The event is now fully subscribed, but we warmly invite you to join us for what promises to be a very stimulating day via our YouTube live stream. We will be taking questions from those of you participating through the live stream. We will update the YouTube page with details on how to submit your questions shortly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXpcJdbihwg

Need more info?

See event webpage.

See more at microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/outstanding-collaborator-award.

More information at: http://robotic.inaoep.mx/~foe/blog/

I'll also share insights from our research on GOV.UK Verify, which is the new way to prove your identity when using digital government services.

For further details about the UCLIC MSc Human Computer-Interaction please visit our MSc pages uclic.ucl.ac.uk/study/prospective-taught-courses

Most technology that is designed for people with disabilities, pragmatically focuses on mitigating their functional limitations. With the OutsideTheBox project, we take a different approach and critically reflect on concepts of disability and how these are embodied in the technologies we design. In our work, we aim to explore meaningful roles for technology with autistic children that responds to desires and ideas that go beyond narrow conceptions of assistance or intervention. Such open and holistic approaches require new ways of participation of autistic children in design to unlock opportunity spaces that would otherwise be inaccessible to neuro-typical adult designers. In this talk, I will present work conducted in the past one and a half years during which we have engaged children in intense co-design processes to create their own smart thing. I discuss how we re-interpreted participatory methods to facilitate collaboration and how each smart thing we created, tells a unique story about the life-worlds of autistic children. I will present our efforts in capturing our design experiences in a new format we call Design Exposes, to carefully construct knowledge from this work and I discuss the challenge of how to evaluate the experiences autistic children have with such technology.

The talk draws on material from the following papers and book chapters:
Moncur, W. (2016). Living Digitally. In S. Groes (Ed.), Memory in the Twenty-first Century: Critical Perspectives from the Sciences and Arts and Humanities. Palgrave Macmillan.
Moncur, W. (2015). Digital ownership across lifespans. In C. Garratini & D. Prendergast (Eds.), Ageing and the Digital Life Course. Berghahn Books.
Moncur, W., & Kirk, D. (2014). An Emergent Framework for Digital Memorials. In Proc. DIS'14 (pp. 965-974). Vancouver, Canada: ACM Press.
Moncur, W., M Julius, Hoven, E. van den, & Kirk, D. (2015). Story Shell: The Participatory Design Of A Bespoke Digital Memorial. In Proc PIN-C 2015. Den Haag, Netherlands. Retrieved from sites.thehagueuniversity.com/pinc2015/home

Jussi Okkonen is currently Associate Professor in Department of Information Systems in Economics and Management at Peter the Great Saint-Petersburg Polytechnic University and Senior Researcher in Tauchi at University of Tampere. After receiving his M.Soc.Sc (econ.) degree at University of Tampere in 1997 Okkonen worked for Tampere University of Technology and received his doctoral degree there in 2004. Until 2012 Okkonen worked as Senior Research Fellow for TUT Institute of Business Information Management and Logistics. In 2012 Okkonen returned Alma Mater to join Tauchi, Tampere Unit for Computer-Human Interaction at School of Information Sciences of University of Tampere.

Okkonen has been active in both research and teaching. The array of his courses consist of micro and macroeconomics, knowledge management, business information management, and research methods. Okkonen has supervised about hundred theses and dissertations.

The key topic in his research work is performance and productivity. From 1997 Okkonen has approached productivity and performance issues of knowledge work and knowledge intensive organisations from theoretical and practical perspectives in several national and international research projects. Due to digitalization of work environments Okkonen has put more emphasis on extended, augmented, asynchronic and spatially dispersed work. The underlying theme still is the individual and organizational performance connected to information ergonomics.

We would like to thank the UCL Department of Computer Science, the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, and the UCL Interaction Centre for their generous financial support that allows the student team members to travel to the conference in San Jose in May 2016.

Team 1: AwareMe: Addressing Fear of Public Speaking through Awareness

Mark Bubel, Ruiwen Jiang, Christine Lee, Wen Shi, Audrey Tse

Fear of public speaking is an anxiety that most people encounter at some point in their lives. Some people with extreme fear of public speaking will avoid it at all costs, even if it means their personal, professional, and social growth may be hindered. AwareMe incorporates aspects of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and good public speaking practices to make an empowering assistive technology for people who suffer from different levels of public speaking anxiety. AwareMe is a device that provides feedback on voice pitch, filler words, and words per minute during presentation practice. It has a detachable wristband, worn during presentations, that provides visual and haptic feedback. Our approach differs from existing solutions because it focuses on bringing the users' attention to how their anxiety influences their speech patterns; this awareness helps them to directly improve their public speaking skills.

• AwareMe: Addressing Fear of Public Speaking through Awareness [PDF extended abstract]
• Poster

Team 2: CarryLine: A Tool for Management and Rehabilitation of Post-Natal Chronic Back Pain

Danilo Di Cuia, Jelizaveta Janovica, Zuzanna Lechelt, Sheng Li, Harpreet Purewal

Thus far, very little research has specifically addressed the potential of technologies for post-natal chronic back pain. This is a prevalent condition in women which re- sponds to rehabilitation and management patterns dis- tinct from those used for other forms of chronic back pain and must also take into account the unique life- style factors of motherhood. Here, we present Carry- Line, a smart baby carrier connected to a digital frame, which encourages physiotherapist-recommended activi- ty for rehabilitation of post-natal chronic back pain in an innovative and engaging way.

• CarryLine: A Tool for Management and Rehabilitation of Post-Natal Chronic Back Pain
• Poster

The talk will propose different lenses that we can bring to bear on a given learning analytics tool, to ask what it would mean for it to be accountable, and to whom. As algorithms pervade societal life, they are moving from the preserve of computer science to becoming the object of far wider academic and media attention. Many are now asking how the behaviour of algorithms can be made "accountable". But why are they "opaque" and to whom? As this vital discussion unfolds in relation to Big Data in general, the Learning Analytics community must articulate what would count as meaningful questions and satisfactory answers in educational contexts. In this talk, I propose different lenses that we can bring to bear on a given learning analytics tool, to ask what it would mean for it to be accountable, and to whom. From a Human-Centred Informatics perspective, it turns out that algorithmic accountability may not be quite the right focus.

This industry-sponsored studentship is a collaboration between UCL's Centre for Medical Image Computing, UCL Interaction Centre, and Icometrix - a healthcare engineering company based in Leuven, Belgium. The studentship aligns with the Horizon 2020 - EuroPOND and develops user interfaces enabling computational models of disease progression to support front-end clinical decision-making in neurodegenerative disease.

The supervisory team are Prof Daniel Alexander, Dr Anna Cox, and Dr Annemie Ribbens, and the deadline for applications is 15 July 2016.

For more information on the project and how to apply, please visit:

https://www.prism.ucl.ac.uk/#!/?project=190

I'll talk first about my fieldwork of a 'quantified past' - speaking to long-term users of personal informatics tools and journaling apps. I'll then introduce the Metadating project where we invited participants to 'date with data', as a means to understand the talk and social life of data. Finally, I'll briefly describe my current work-in-progress on a research-through-design project, speculating about services and artefacts for remembering a 'quantified wedding'.

We are recruiting a Lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction to start in post ideally next September 2016! The deadline for applications is 15th May 2016 and interviews will be held on 20th and 21st June 2016. Please download the Lecturer Job description and Person specification to see more information about the post and check the instructions how to apply carefully - note that three references must be sent directly to Louise Gaynor from your referees by the closing date. Apply online from the UCL Jobs advert page ref 1538980.

We are also recruiting a Research Associate to develop a user-centred app for self-testing for HIV as part of the UCL i-sense programme! This post is available from July 2016 and the deadline for application is 8th April 2016 with interviews on 3rd May 2016. Please download the i-sense Job description and Person specification for more information and please apply at the UCL Jobs advert page ref 1539866.

• discuss some of the challenges (and rewards) of doing design research with the mental health sector
• outline what we mean by 'the Person-Centred Approach'
• reflect on how we are collecting and making sense of data
• and finally give the audience an insight into what our participants and stakeholders have said they want from a networked mental health service

Mara's paper presented Jokebox, an interactive installation designed to be placed in public spaces with the aim to explore how urban HCI can enable eye contact and foster social interactions between strangers. The CSCW has been awarded a honourable mention, and more information can be found here.

Martin's paper involved how organizers of large crowdsourcing initiatives can grow their volunteer capacity. The research was in close collaboration with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), which coordinates thousands of online volunteers to trace roads, waterways, huts and houses from satellite data (see image below). A summary of the work can be found here, and the paper can be found here:

www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/l.capra/publications/cscw2016.pdf

"Pioneers in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) are memorable for their extraordinary research, astonishing designs, energetic lectures, passionate discussions, and personal warmth. As a community we have had as much impact as the chip designers in enabling 7+ billion people to benefit from advanced technologies. Our work on graphical user interfaces, World-Wide Web design, social media, and mobile devices with their numerous apps has been culturally and technologically transformative."

More information and all the entries can be viewed at the link below:
hcipioneers.wordpress.com

1. knowing more about how being in a body mediates how we do and feel about anything we do and feel
2. if our perspective on health and wellbeing shifts from designing primarily for prevention to performance
3. if we help people see for themselves how they are better at anything they/we want to do when we are physically better (or fit).

Many of us may not see that we have the time or opportunities to specialise in neurology, physiology, nutrition, kinesiology and prefer instead to collaborate with experts in health to help us design tools. We may want to ask: how is that working? What do the literature reviews say about the efficacy of the majority of eHealth and mHealth tools? The answer - so far - seems to motivate a need for a different approach - at least to explore some new possibilities - which includes the kind of thinking that UCL and your group is very good at: looking at how we make sense of our current state - what i'd suggest may be framed as well as looking at how we construct is our cultural of normal with our various technologies of normal - from chairs to hand held mobile phones.

In this talk, i'd like ot share some possible models (Future athlete vs invalid and Experiment in a Box in particular) for re-considering human health and wellbeing - what i've been calling wellth - reflecting on our cultural normals and how re-inscribe those norms with our (interactive) technology. I'd like to begin this exploration with you reading this right now: for those of us who are not in hospital, or classed as "sick" if asked the question "have you ever felt better than you do right now?" would you say "yes"? If yes, why? And if yes, what do you think interactive technology can do about it? I hope to make the case that it can do it better - immediately and almost effortlessly - once we ourselves know a little more about what is not normal but more optimal for us as physical-social-cognitive creatures. @mcphoo #MakeBetterNormal

Will look forward to meeting with you - if you'd like to meet with me please let Anna know so we can set up a time together.

So, if you're sick of walking along boring routes through the city suggested by Google Maps or Citymapper, get the app and make your route the experience!

Likeways is available on the app store now: itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1054718491

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.

Design and Technology is the third most popular school subject in the UK, and all school students study it for several years, with a good number going on to A-level. However, the syllabi are set by the Exam Boards, and the syllabi show almost no consideration of the product users at present; there is only a small mention of "individual differences", mostly hand anthropometry, a bit on focus groups, and certainly no comprehensive Ergonomics or HCI.

The Campaign for Real People, set up in 2010 by UCLIC, supported by the CIEHF, and led by Rachel Benedyk, aims to increase awareness of ergonomic design in school teaching and the need to place the user at the centre of design thinking. Ultimately, the Campaign set its aim to get user-centred design principles into the GCSE syllabus.

This aim has now been realised!

Last week the Department for Education and Schools published its new Subject Content requirements for Design and Technology and for the first time ever it has included.....

Core designing and making principles

14. All AS and A level specifications must require school students to develop knowledge and understanding of:
"user-centred design (UCD): the investigation and analysis of a problem within a context, and the needs, wants and values of users, to define a design opportunity or problem leading to the production of a design brief and specification to direct, inform and evaluate their design practice"

UCD's inclusion in the A-level syllabus is a big success for the Campaign, which has been working to increase awareness among DT teachers and examiners and to create school teaching materials that are rooted in ergonomics. In part it has also benefited from a general upsurge of interest in the human factors of design products, stemming from some of the major design consultancies like IDEO (who have long included Human Factors and UCD in their design process) and the indirect knowledge dissemination they carry out by putting many of their materials on-line.

Thanks are due to all the professionals and volunteers from the CIEHF and the DT teaching communities, who have put so much effort into the Campaign for Real People over the past few years.

This includes experiences from the design and experimental evaluation of a smartphone-based consultation system for Swiss hospital doctors to examine and contrast the different modes of speech, images and image annotation for knowledge exchange.¹ Arguing that technology should not be conceived as a separate entity, Christoph will also illustrate the ways the ways in which medical actors use and connect speech, bodily movements (e.g., gestures), and the visual and haptic structures of their own bodies and of artefacts, such as technological instruments and computers, to construct complex, multimodal representations.²

The use of digital technologies is not restricted to high income settings but in particular mobile and social media are gaining in popularity in low and middle income countries. Mirroring this dynamic, Christoph will discuss observations from Asian and African contexts, where, for example, tens of thousands of health professionals have appropriated a Facebook site as an informal Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) which harbours rich forms of learning and professional participation;³,⁴ or other studies where rural South African midwives use a range of mobile and social media tools for 'organically-grown', learning and communication practices.⁵

References:

1. Pimmer C, Mateescu M, Zahn C, Genewein U. Smartphones as multimodal communication devices to facilitate clinical knowledge processes - a randomized controlled trial. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 2013;15(11):e263.

2. Pimmer C, Pachler N, Genewein U. Reframing Clinical Workplace Learning Using the Theory of Distributed Cognition. Academic Medicine. 2013;88(9):1239-1245.

3. Pimmer C, Linxen S, Gröhbiel U. Facebook as a learning tool? A case study on the appropriation of social network sites along with mobile phones in developing countries. British Journal of Educational Technology. 2012;43(5):726-738.

4. Pimmer C, Linxen S, Gröhbiel U, Jha A, Burg G. Mobile learning in resource-constrained environments. A case study of medical education. Medical Teacher. 2013;35(5):e1157-e1165.

5. Pimmer C, Brysiewicz P, Linxen S, Walters F, Chipps J, Gröhbiel U. Informal mobile learning in nurse education and practice in remote areas. A case study from rural South Africa. Nurse Education Today. 2014;34(11):1398-1404.

This includes experiences from the design and experimental evaluation of a smartphone-based consultation system for Swiss hospital doctors to examine and contrast the different modes of speech, images and image annotation for knowledge exchange.¹ Arguing that technology should not be conceived as a separate entity, Christoph will also illustrate the ways the ways in which medical actors use and connect speech, bodily movements (e.g., gestures), and the visual and haptic structures of their own bodies and of artefacts, such as technological instruments and computers, to construct complex, multimodal representations.²

The use of digital technologies is not restricted to high income settings but in particular mobile and social media are gaining in popularity in low and middle income countries. Mirroring this dynamic, Christoph will discuss observations from Asian and African contexts, where, for example, tens of thousands of health professionals have appropriated a Facebook site as an informal Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) which harbours rich forms of learning and professional participation;³,⁴ or other studies where rural South African midwives use a range of mobile and social media tools for 'organically-grown', learning and communication practices.⁵

In this paper we will discuss the barriers faced by users of digital archival collections, the strategies that experts and novices use to surmount them and how the systems themselves could provide more support and reduce user uncertainty.

I will present the results of a series of studies carried out at the National Archives focusing on user enquiries through multiple communication channels (on- and offline) and the interactions between archivists, users and archival systems. We will then discuss the results of a further study combining recorded online search sessions and participant interviews and examine why users succeed and fail to make progress in online archival search. Gathering all of this evidence together we will weigh up a series of techniques which could be applied to digital catalogues in order to better support users to locate the material they need.

This talk should be particularly useful for people with an interest in the home, energy, UbiComp, IoT, and ethnomethodology.

References
Fischer, J.E., Costanza, E., Ramchurn, S.D., Colley, J. and Rodden, T. (2014).Energy Advisors at Work: Charity Work Practices to Support People in Fuel Poverty.In: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp '14). ACM Press.

Costanza, E., Fischer, J.E., Colley, J.A., Rodden, T., Ramchurn, S.D. and Jennings, N.R. (2014). Doing the Laundry with Agents: a Field Trial of a Future Smart Energy System in the Home. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). ACM Press.

Rodden, T., Fischer, J.E., Pantidi, N., Bachour, K. and Moran, S. (2013). At Home with Agents: Exploring Attitudes Towards Future Smart Energy Infrastructures.In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '13). ACM Press.

The first part of the talk will be focused on Inria, its Lille research center and the creation of the Mjolnir team. The second part will be focused on our work toward improving user's expertise with software applications. In particular, we will explain the design and evaluation of systems for helping users to use "expert" features while interacting with both desktop and touch-based computers.

• struggled for an excuse to approach someone?
• found it difficult to make eye contact?
• recoiled from interpersonal touch (whilst secretly yearning it)?
• felt that your actions were ignored? Or found it too easy to ignore other people?
• had the sensation that everyone was on a different level to you?
• felt socially inhibited whilst being observed?
• avoided open ended encounters for fear of getting stuck for e v e r?
• or had any other difficulties in initiating or sustaining co-located social encounters?
• or perhaps you have "a friend" in this position? Or these issues overlap with some of your research challenges?
  Then come along to participate in a bouncy romp reviewing what interaction
  design may offer to address these difficulties (discretion assured).

Check out the two papers below:

Prize winning paper: Borghouts, J., Soboczenski, F., Cairns, P., & Brumby, D.P. (2015). Visualizing magnitude: graphical number representations help users detect large number entry errors. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, HFES 2015. HFES.

Wiseman, S.E.M., Borghouts, J.W., Grgic, D., Brumby, D.P., & Cox, A.L. (2015). The effect of interface type on visual error checking behaviour. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, HFES 2015. HFES.