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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Funded PhD studentship in Physiological Computing and Artificial Intelligence -deadline 21 July 2019 - closed

We are seeking to appoint a talented PhD student who will explore an emerging research area, 'physiological computing and artificial intelligence' with the specific aim to boost disability innovation. This is a 4-year fully funded post (tuition fee + stipend) in the department of Computer Science…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 5th of June: Bernardino Romera-Paredes (DeepMind) on "The U-net and its impact to medical imaging"

The U-net has become the predominant choice when facing any medical image segmentation task. This is due to its high performance in many different medical domains. In this talk, I will introduce the U-net, and I will present three projects from DeepMind Health Research that use the U-net to address…
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Joint UCL Knowledge Lab & UCLIC Seminar 4th of June: Gijs Huisman (Amsterdam University of Applied Science) on "A personal touch: adventures in haptic technology"

In this talk I will share my work on haptic technology, in particular haptics applied to social communication, from creating wearable technology for academic research to joining a startup company to create actual products. I will draw on work from psychology to outline my thoughts on social touch…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 22nd of May: Joel Fischer (University of Nottingham) on "The trouble with Alexa: voice interfaces and conversation design"

In this talk I will present our conversation analytic study of recordings of people's talk with Alexa in several homes in the UK, developed with colleagues Martin Porcheron and Stuart Reeves. I will examine fragments of Alexa-talk to show key features of the interaction of importance to those…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 15th of May: Ron Baecker (University of Toronto) on What society must require from AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, especially machine learning (ML) programs, are now being employed or proposed for use in: a) scanning résumés to weed out job applicants; b) evaluating risks children face in their families; c) informing judicial decisions about bail, sentencing, and parole; d…
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5th Edition of Interaction Design book published!

The 5th edition of the textbook Interaction Design by Helen Sharp, Yvonne Rogers and Jenny Preece has just been published and is available through various outlets! This time it has a lovely green cover - see id-book.com for more information.
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Welcome to new staff and students-May19

We welcome Joe Newbold and Niels van Berkel, who are now working as Research Fellows in UCLIC! Joe is working on the GetaMoveIOn project with Prof. Anna Cox and Niels is working with Prof. Ann Blandford on the WEISS project. We also welcome Kuba Maruszczyk, who has just started his PhD with Prof.…
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Summer internship in UCLIC available - now closed

We are looking for a UCL student registered for a Computer science or Engineering Degree undergraduate course to work as a summer intern with Professor Yvonne Rogers and Dr Nic Marquardt. The main purpose of this internship is to work on a project to build an interactive sensing tool by hacking a…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 24th of April: Sarah Bell (UCL) on Co-designing infrastructure: engaging communities in complex, urban decisions

Infrastructure resilience is vital for the safety of the public, the strength of the economy, the health of the environment and local quality of life. Community resilience is also recognised as a key factor in determining responses to extreme events and delivering climate adaptation. To date,…
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UCL will have a great presence at CHI 2019

Authors from UCL will have a great presence at CHI 2019, the premier conference in Human-Computer Interaction, which takes place in Glasgow, UK 4 - 9 May 2019. Here is a sneak peek at our accepted contributions. Full Papers Why Do You Need This? Selective Disclosure of Data Among Citizen…
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UCLIC Research Seminar 20th of March: Lola Cañamero (University of Hertfordshire) on Embodied Affect in Autonomous and Social Robots

Emotions are a key aspect of human behavior, communication and cognition. Affective computing and human-oriented approaches to technology design take into account different aspects of emotions and their expression in order to create technology that humans feel comfortable with. However, the…
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Congratulations to Catherine Holloway for winning East London Innovators Award!

We are delighted to annouce that Dr Catherine Holloway won an East London Innovators award for her work with Disability Innovation. See the Twitter announcement.
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UCLIC Research Seminar 27th of February: Tim Adlam (UCL) on Technology for capability: technology to enable exploration

Assistive technology design and product creation has been conservative and incremental for many years. This is changing with a new focus on the needs and desires of the user; the emergence of enabling innovations in sensing, control, manufacturing, information systems and service delivery; and a …
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Research Fellow position in GetaMoveOn Network - this position is now closed

We are currently advertising a post-doctoral position in UCLIC until just before midnight on Mon 25th March 2019. The post is for a Research Fellow to work on the GetaMoveOn Network and is available immediately, funded full-time for 12 months initially. The post will involve taking a leading role…
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