Selected Current and Recently Finished Projects
The CASIDE Project: http://www.caside.lancs.ac.uk/
The Equator Digital Care Project: http://machen.mrl.nott.ac.uk/Projects/Digitalcare/Smspublic.htm
Exploring transparancy/visibility issues in proactive/context-aware systems:Access software for the Intelligent Office
CASCO: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/staff/kc/CASCO/SupportingResources.htm
Selected Recent Publicatiuons
Cheverst, K., A. Dix, C. Graham, D. Fitton and M. Rouncefield, “Exploring Awareness Related Messaging through Two Situated Display based Systems”, Special Issue on ‘Awareness Systems Design: Theory, Methodology, and Applications’ To appear in Special Issue of Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 22 (2007), Number 1.
This article focuses on our exploration of awareness issues through the design and long term deployment of two systems: the Hermes office door display system (which enabled staff in a University Department to post awareness messages to their door displays) and SPAM (a messaging system for supporting coordination between staff at two associated residential community care facilities). In the case of both systems, a significant number of the messages sent could be classified as relating to awareness. Furthermore, with both systems, the situatedness of displays (outside office doors in the case of Hermes and in staff offices in the case of SPAM) had a significant impact on the design and subsequent use of the deployed systems. In particular, the placement of displays provided significant context for awareness messages, including, for example, the identity of the sender of the message and the intended audience of the message. Both systems highlight the need for interaction methods that fit in with both normal working practices (and unplanned events) and that enable the user to manage communication channels. The need for appropriate levels of expressiveness and user control is also apparent: we present numerous examples of users controlling the precision of awareness information and sending awareness messages that have as much to do with playfulness as supporting coordination through activity awareness.
Saslis-Lagoudakis, G., Cheverst, K., Dix, A., Fitton D., and Rouncefield, M. “Hermes@Home: Supporting Awareness and Intimacy between Distant Family Members”, in Proc. of International Conference of the Australian Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group (OzCHI’06), November 2006.
This paper presents the Hermes@Home system, which supports awareness (through messaging) between members of a home. Person(s) ‘away’ from the home can send messages via a web portal to an ‘always on’ ‘information appliance’ style display situated in the home, while people at home can scribble messages on the touch sensitive display of this unit for reception by the person(s) away from the home. The system was conceived as a technology probe and serves as a tool in investigating related issues such as awareness and intimacy between home inhabitants. It supplements existing communication methods by providing a highly expressive and always-available messaging method. We present some findings and initial results from a preliminary analysis of messages sent through the system during four deployments, identifying emerging themes in message content. In addition, we also present some of the issues that have surfaced through these deployments in a domestic environment.
Fitton, D., K. Cheverst, C. Kray, A. Dix, M. Rouncefield and G. Saslis-Lagoudakis, “Rapid Prototyping and User Centred Design of Interactive Display based Systems” Special Issue of IEEE Pervasive Computing on Rapid Prototyping for Ubiquitous Computing, Guest editors, N. Davies, J. Landay, S. Hudson and A. Schmidt, IEEE, October-December, 2005. pp 58-66. 4(4).
Much work on display-based ubicomp systems (and rapid prototyping in general) focus on producing proof-of-concept demonstrators, usually to gauge technical feasibility and collect initial user feedback.2 In our work, we’ve found that it’s often equally important to investigate factors such as use and appropriation3 and that in some cases, without user studies, technical feasibility can be meaningless. We have used rapid prototyping combined with a phased, iterative, and user-centered design approach to develop five display-based ubicomp systems for real-world use over time. In this article, we discuss our aims, approach, and lessons learned.
Cheverst, K., H.E. Byun, D. Fitton, C. Sas, C. Kray and N. Villar, “Exploring Issues of User Model Transparency and Proactive Behaviour in an Office Environment Control System.” Special Issue of UMUAI (User Modelling and User-Adapted Interaction) on User Modeling in Ubiquitous Computing, Kluwer, Volume 15, Numbers 3-4, Pages: 235 – 273, August 2005
It is important that systems which exhibit proactive behaviour do so in a way that does not surprise or frustrate the user. Consequently, it is desirable for such systems to be both personalised and designed in such a way as to enable the user to scrutinise her user model (part of which should hold the rules describing the behaviour of the system). This article describes on-going work to investigate the design of a prototype system that can learn a given user’s behaviour in an office environment in order to use the inferred rules to populate a user model and support appropriate proactive behaviour, e.g. turning on the user’s fan under appropriate conditions. We explore the tension between user control and proactive services and consider issues related to the design of appropriate transparency with a view to supporting user comprehensibly of system behaviour. To this end, our system enables the user to scrutinise and possibly over-ride the ‘IF-THEN’ type rules held in her user model. The system infers these rules from the context-history (effectively a data set generated using a variety of sensors) associated with the user by using a fuzzy decision tree based algorithm that can provide a confidence level for each rule in the user model. Currently, a number of users in a university department are running the system and a questionnaire based study has also been completed in order to explore the feasibility of the approach and user acceptance.
Cheverst, K., D. Fitton, and A. Dix. “Exploring the Evolution of Office Door Displays”, in: Public and Situated Displays: Social and Interactional aspects of shared display technologies. K. O’Hara, M. Perry, et al (Eds). Chapter 6, pp. 141-169, Kluwer. ISBN 1-4020-1677-8. 2003
Within the field of ubiquitous computing, many of the issues related to the notion of ‘situated interaction’ remain very much under explored. For example, there is little understanding of the kinds of interactions or uses that are likely to occur when large numbers of interactive displays are publicly situated throughout an office environment. In this chapter, we describe the development, deployment and initial evaluation of the Hermes system, a system that comprises a collection of small interactive display units placed outside a number of offices within a University department. The placement outside offices is enabling us to explore some of the issues, such as appropriation control, that arise when interactive displays are situated in places that exhibit both public and private properties. To date, the development of the system has been guided by the principles of participatory design and our intention is that the use of the Hermes system will continue to evolve over a longitudinal period of time as it is used on a day to day basis by university staff and students alike.
Special Issue: 'HCI in Mobile Guides' of Behaviour and IT (Vol 24, Issue 1): the CFP and the editorial
1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Workshops on HCI in Mobile Guides: http://www.mguides.info/
Workshop on User Modelling in Ubiquitous Computing '03: http://www.di.uniba.it/~ubium03/
Workshop on Appropriate Methods for Design in Complex and Sensitive Settings '05 : http://ozchi.org/2005/index.php?id=tut12
UbiDeUM: Ubiquitous and Decentralized User Modeling '07: http://www.iit.demokritos.gr/um2007/workshops.php
Mobile HCI '07: http://www.mobilehci.org
Mobile Learning '07: http://www.mlearning-conf.org/
IUI '07: http://www.iuiconf.org
MobiQuitous 2007: http://www.mobiquitous.org
UbiDeUM: Ubiquitous and Decentralized User Modeling '07: http://www.ubideum.org/
CHI 2007 Workshop on "Mobile Spatial Interaction": http://msi.ftw.at/
CHI 2006 Workshop on "Investigating new user experience challenges in iTV: mobility & sociability": http://soc.kuleuven.be/com/mediac/chi2006workshop/
Workshop on Mobile and Ubiquitous Information Access '06: http://www.cis.strath.ac.uk/external/muia06/
Context-aware Mobile Systems (CAMS '06): http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/fedconf/cams2006cfp.html
Personalized Context Modeling and Management for ubiComp Applications '05: http://uvr.gist.ac.kr/ubiPCMM05/
UserModelling '05: http://gate.ac.uk/conferences/um2005/um05.html
Workshop on Decentralized, Agent Based and Social Approaches to User Modelling '05: http://www.l3s.de/~dolog/dasum/
CONTEXT '05: http://context-05.org/
Workshop on Invisible and Transparent Interfaces '04: http://ole.cs.washington.edu/iti/
Mobisys 2004 Workshop on Context Awareness: http://www.sigmobile.org/mobisys/2004/context_awareness/contextWorkshopSchedule.html
Dr Feng Wang, University Strathclyde, 2005.
Dr Nick Bradley, University of Glasgow, A User-centred Design Framework forContext-aware Computing, 2005.
Dr Jeni Paay, University of Melbourne, Indexing to Situated Interactions, 2006.
Current PhD Supervision
Daniel Fitton, Exploring the Design and Use of the Hermes Door Display System
John Patterson, Exploring Support forPedestrian Navigation Using Pervasive Digital Displays
George Saslis-Lagoudakis, Exploring the Design and Use of a Situated Home Messaging System