UCLIC Research Seminar 11th of December: Conor Linehan (University College Cork), Reorienting Geolocation Data through Mischievous Design

The increasing capability of smart mobile devices to use geolocation and networking has resulted in a proliferation of services that respond to the social and physical places we visit as we move through the world. This chapter reports and comments on a series of four provocative design projects…
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***CANCELLED*** UCLIC Research Seminar 27th of November: Regan Mandryk (University of Saskatchewan)

Games have long been used to support social interaction and create shared experiences that draw us closer together. Digital games are increasingly being used to form and maintain relationships and researchers have been investigating the role that social games play in satisfying our need to relate…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 20th of November: Pawel Wozniak (Utrecht University), Designing for the 51%: Understanding Technologies for Physically Active Individuals

Recent data indicates that more than a half of the European Union's population exercises three times a week or more. While HCI has an established history of understanding and designing technologies for healthcare, the question of how technologies can benefit the wellbeing of active users is less…
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Welcome to new students

We would like to welcome some new PhD students who are joining us this Autumn 2019! These are: Margaret Jennings who is working with Prof. Yvonne Rogers Sheena Visram who is also working with Prof. Yvonne Rogers Marina Fernandez Camporro, who is working with Dr Nic Marquardt Muna Alebri who is…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 13th of November: Annie Lau (Macquarie University) on Patient work – a context and time-use approach

It is commonly known that many digital health interventions suffer from poor uptake, with some studies reporting participant retention rates as low as 1%. One of the reasons for discontinuation is poor 'fit' of the intervention in participants' daily lives. 'Patient work', a concept that forms the…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 30th of October: Bran Knowles (Lancaster University) on "Understanding older adults' distrust of digital technology"

It is well known that older adults continue to lag behind younger adults in terms of their breadth of uptake of digital technologies, amount and quality of engagement in these tools and ability to critically engage with the online world. Can these differences be explained by older adults' distrust…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 23rd of October: Ben Oldfrey (UCL) on "The future of tech is squidgy"

Humans have a huge array of technological achievements, but most of this is done using hard, rigid materials. The beautiful weavesOur soft material technology has not kept pace, and is mostly just protection for our hard tech. Although the greatest computational device we know of - our brains - are…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 9th of October: Jo Vermeulen (Aarhus University) on "Explainable AI – What can we do as HCI researchers?"

We increasingly encounter technology that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). AI and ML are used to process sensor data from our devices and support advanced features of various services that we use every day. Algorithmic decision-making also affects people when they are…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 2nd of October: Dorian Peters (University of Cambridge) on "Wellbeing-supportive design: Designing technologies to support psychological needs"

Research in psychology has shown that both motivation and wellbeing are contingent on the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs. Fulfillment of these needs also predicts positive domain-specific outcomes, such as positive health or educational outcomes. Moreover, the fact that they have…
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Research Fellow position on WEISS project available!

We are currently advertising a post-doctoral Research Fellow position on the WEISS project - the deadline is just before midnight on Fri 8 November 2019. The successful candidate will work with Prof. Ann Blandford in the Wellcome / EPSRC Centre for Interventional and Surgical Sciences (WEISS) to…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 18th of September: Ellen Bass (Drexel University) on "An integrated framework for modeling and verifying usability with respect to the end user’s tasks, motor capabilities and signifier interpretation"

In human-interactive systems, usability is the extent to which an interface supports a specified end user in achieving goals effectively and efficiently in a specified operational environment. Safety-critical, human-interactive systems can have complex internal algorithms and controlled actuators,…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 6th of September: Gregory Abowd (Georgia Institute of Technology) on "The Internet of Materials: The next logical step or a paradigm shift?"

Revisiting Weiser's 30-year old inspirational vision on ubiquitous computing, we see that there are three factors that today limit the kind of ubiquity that Weiser described: power, cost, and form factor. Using these factors to drive our efforts, we have created examples of computational materials…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 30th of August: Andreas Holzinger (Medical University Graz) on "From Explainable AI to Human‐Centered AI "

In the medical domain the expectations to automatic AI/machine learning systems are extremely high, particularly in disciplines requiring prognostic models (oncology) and/or decision support (radiology, pathology). Due to the raising ethical, social, and legal issues governed by the European Union,…
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UCLIC research in Daily Mail: How a game of Tetris is a better stress buster than mindfulness

UCLIC research shows that people who played 10 minutes of Tetris felt more relaxed than after using Mindfulness apps. Another experiment showed that people felt less tired after playing Tetris game. Professor Anna Cox said: 'We need to stop making people feel bad about playing games on their…
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UCLIC research in press: Dark mode isn't as good for your eyes as you believe

UCLIC researchers explain the benefits and drawbacks of Dark Display Mode in this article. The article evaluates questions such as Does dark mode really help eye strain? Does it make text more legible? Is dark mode better for your battery life and for bedtime? Does it increase concentration? A…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 25th of June: Frauke Zeller (Ryerson University) on "A New Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) Design and Evaluation Framework"

Social media platforms have become essential to many aspects in our daily lives, for gathering news, for finding and forming relationships, or simply to find distraction. In this talk, Dr. Zeller explores the opportunities and potential role of social media in application to an emerging class of…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 19th of June: James Gadsby Peet (William Joseph Ltd) on "Designing Digital for older audiences"

Over the last couple of years, William Joseph have been asked to build more and more digital experiences for older users of the internet. Through these experiences we've learned a few things that you should consider when designing for people who have not grown up using digital tools. In this…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 12th of June: Sarah Bell (University of Exeter) on "Sensing Nature: Exploring nature with sight impairment"

Over the last few years, we have seen growing research and policy interest in the potential for time spent with nature to promote feelings of health and wellbeing. Yet relatively little effort has been made to understand such experiences in the varied contexts of life with impairment or disability.…
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Professor William Newman

We are saddened to hear of the death of Professor William Newman (1939-2019). William was a Visiting Professor in UCLIC, closely involved in both research and teaching, 2004-2009. In particular, he developed and taught a module, jointly with John Dowell, on "Perspectives on Design", supervised…
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New! MSc in Disability, Design & Innovation at UCL

This September UCL's Global Disability Innovation Hub will welcome its first cohort of students for its ground-breaking new MSc in Disability, Design and Innovation. The deadline for applications is 12 July 2019. MSc in Disability, Design & Innovation at UCL Computer Science The course: Where…
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