Interaction Design for Maritime Navigation Vacancy

Knowledge Transfer Partnership Associate – Interaction Design for Maritime Navigation
University of Bristol Interaction and Graphics group and the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office

Closing date for applications is 30 May 2013.
Interviews will be held around 7 June 2013.

Are you looking for a challenging role within a dynamic and ambitious team who are world leaders in marine navigation and interaction design?

Under the co-supervision of Dr David Coyle, and working with Prof. Sriram Subramanian, the successful candidate will deliver a Knowledge Transfer Project in partnership with the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO). Maritime transport is the lifeblood of the world economy and the UKHO provides nautical charts of the world’s oceans and ports, and navigational services to the Royal Navy and merchant marine markets.  It is currently the world’s leading provider of navigational products, both paper and digital, to the global merchant marine fleet. The aim of this project is to design the next-generation of digital navigational tools and services to enhance the safety and efficiency of maritime transport.

The postholder will possess a First class or 2.1 undergraduate degree (or equivalent) in Computer Science, Psychology, Design or another relevant discipline and preferably an MSc or PhD level postgraduate degree in HCI or Interaction Design. Applicants should have excellent interpersonal and organisational skills and an aptitude for written and verbal communication. They must be self-motivated and able to work to deadlines whilst maintaining accuracy and an eye for detail.

An understanding of design and evaluation approaches is essential. In particular, the candidate should have experience of qualitative data analysis, as well as design and prototyping skills, and a willingness to conduct field studies of maritime technologies.

This position is based at the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office in Taunton and will provide an ambitious and committed candidate with invaluable personal and career development opportunities. This is funded initially for 21 months and the salary will range from £25k to 28k per annum, depending on experience.

Knowledge Transfer Projects are specifically aimed at supporting training and personal development. Significant time (10%) is there available for these purposes and a personal development budget of up to £3,500 is available with the approval of the supervisors. The successful candidate may also choose to register as a PhD candidate with the University of Bristol.

For further details about the vacancy and to apply online, please go to http://www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/index.html and search for job number ACAD100315. Please include in your application a CV as well as examples of previous work in interface design and evaluation.

For informal enquiries or if you would like further information please contact Dr David Coyle (david.coyle@bristol.ac.uk).

BIG paper receives honorable mention at CHI 2013

Our CHI 2013 paper on environmental crowdsourcing received a Best Paper Honorable Mention.

Community groups typically rely on core groups of highly motivated members. In this paper we consider how crowdsourcing strategies can be used to supplement the activities of pro-environmental community groups, thus increasing the scalability of their campaigns. We focus on mobile data collection applications and strategies that can be used to engage casual participants in pro-environmental data collection. We report the results of a study that used both quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the impact of different motivational factors and strategies, including both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. The study compared and provides empirical evidence for the effectiveness of two extrinsic motivation strategies, pointification - a subset of gamification - and financial incentives. Prior environmental interest is also assessed as an intrinsic motivation factor. In contrast to previous HCI research on pro-environmental technology, much of which has focused on individual behavior change, this paper offers new insights and recommendations on the design of systems that target groups and communities. Close the door

Morphees hits the press

Anne Roudaut presented Morphees at CHI 2013 this week. “Morphees,” are thin, electronic displays capable of automatically changing shape to perform certain functions. The project has been featured by national news and a whole host of tech blogs. Click below to see what all the excitement is about.

• Wired
• The Verge
• Slashdot
• Phys.org
• The Telegraph
• Discovery
• SlashGear
• io9
• Gigaom

GHOST project launched

Display technology developments mean the next generation of visual output devices will extend beyond the rigid, flat surfaces with which we are familiar and allow users to physically push, pull, bend, fold or flex the display. This will better represent on-screen content or support new modes of interaction.

The GHOST project “Generic and Highly Organic, Shape-changing inTerfaces” brings together a range of partners from across Europe to design, develop and evaluate prototypes to define the current and future challenges of crafting organic user experiences.

GHOST, is a collaborative project funded by the EU under the FET-Open program. The project involves various universities across Europe including the University of Copenhagen, University of Bristol, Lancaster University and Eindhoven University of Technology.

The BIG Laboratory is delighted to be part of this exciting new developing area.

Follow the links to visit the website, join the discussion or find out more about the forthcoming workshop on 27 and 28 April 2013 .

Three papers accepted to CHI 2013

The BIG lab team are very pleased to announce that we have had three papers accepted to CHI 2013 the premier international conference on human-computer interaction.

Close The Doors
“Using Crowdsourcing to support Pro-Environmental Community Activism” studies the use of a mobile app to support Close The Doors, a community activist group encouraging shops to keep their door shut in winter. The app lets volunteers collect data as to which shops have their doors open or closed, and maps the data for use by Close The Doors to target their activity. The paper studies the effect of gamification – scoring points and appearing on a leaderboard – on volunteer engagement, and also explores other factors which motivate and enable the volunteers.
More info about Close the Doors.

Talking about Tactile Experiences
A common problem with designing and developing applications with tactile interfaces is the lack of a vocabulary that allows one to describe or communicate about haptics. In this paper we present 14 categories for a human-experiential vocabulary (H-E-Vocabulary) based on findings from a user study using the explicitation interview technique. The H-E-Vocabulary is tied back to neurophysiological and psychophysical data on the human hand and is illustrated with example design implications for haptic systems.
More info about UltraHaptics.

Morphees
We introduce the term shape resolution in 10 features, which adds to the existing definitions of screen and touch resolution and helps the design of shape-shifting mobile devices. We then present six building strategies of Morphees that are self-actuated flexible mobile devices adapting their shapes on their own to the context of use in order to offer better affordances.
More info about Morphees.

BIG Graduation

We are pleased to celebrate the graduation of Peter Hanson, Diana Krusteva, Paul Worgan and Dr. Ben Long.

Peter, Diana and Paul did their MSc projects in the Interaction and Graphics lab.

Peter also won the “Tom Gower Fewtrell” Prize for the best MSc Computer Science student in 2011/2012.
Last but not least, Dr. Ben Long received his PhD.

Congratulations to you all.

BIG hosts “This happened…” event

BIG were delighted to host a Christmas special for This happened Bristol yesterday evening. Our visitors were treated to demonstrations of our projects, devices and research in an informal and relaxed setting.

It is the first time that the two groups have come together and it enabled us to exchange information, share and develop new ideas, strengthen links and share our stories behind the interaction designs.

Thank you This happened Bristol and those that came along. It was great to meet you all.

Further information about This happened can be found here.

If you, or your group would be interested in seeing our work, then do not hesitate to get in touch.

Former BIG students TangibleFX are wildcard entries for The Pitch 2012

Bristol University Computer Science graduates and former BIG students Dan Newton and Lee Arromba have been working on creating a brand new musicals interactions company called TangibleFX. Their aim is to give musicians new and innovative ways of controlling their sounds through iPhone apps and hardware. Recently they were fortunate enough to get through to the semi-finals of a national pitching competition called The Pitch 2012, to win £50,000 worth of business investment. Up against some very tough opposition they were selected as one of the wildcard entries competing through an online voting system for a place in the final at The Ministry of Sound in London on Friday November 16th.

For more details of their pitch or to vote for them please see The Pitch 2012. You can also keep up with their progress on their Facebook page.

If they get through to the final then Dan and Lee will be throwing a celebratory party in Bristol with live music, DJs, demos and more. To get an invite simply join the Facebook event.

PiVOT tabletop display featured in Gizmag

PiVOT a novel multiview system developed by Abhijit Karnik, Diego Martinez, Walterio M. Cuevas and Sri Subramanian was featured in Gizmag. The whole article is available (here). The paper describing the system was presented earlier this week at UIST 2012 in Cambridge, MA.

A Mobile, Battery-Powered Wireless Depth Camera based on Microsoft’s Kinect

We have released the circuit board diagrams and details of our battery-powered depth camera today, so that the open-source hardware, hacker and maker communities can replicate our work stripping down the Kinect for portable use. We have been using the portable Kinect alongside the University of Southampton and Microsoft Research as part of the PATINA project in the context of archaeology fieldwork, but we expect many more applications could be supported with this technology. More information is available on the dedicated project page.