Aaron Quigley's blog

2016 in review

2016-12-31T16:41:00.000+00:00

Microsoft Surface Hub arrives and is unboxed
SACHI @ IUI 2016
Object Recognition with the Project Soli in St Andrews
SACHI @ CHI 2016
WatchMI won honorable mention award at MobileHCI 2016 (Florence, Italy)
Media Coverage for WatchMI (Wareable, Engaget, SlashGear, ACM TechNews SIGCHI etc.)
RadarCat at UIST 2016 in Tokyo, Japan
Media Coverage of RadarCat (Gizmodo, Engaget, The Verge, Fast Co, Futurism)
Sidetap and Slingshot at UIST 2016 (Tokyo Japan)

Publications: https://sachi.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/publications/

June 2015: Graduation address: Professor Aaron Quigley

2015-07-20T21:48:00.000+01:00

From: Graduation address: Professor Aaron Quigley

Vice-Chancellor, ladies and gentlemen and to all of our new graduates, congratulations! Your time invested here has been rewarded with the degrees you now hold. On behalf of my colleagues, I would like to thank you for your hard work and dedication, you make working here the pleasure that it is. I hope you have fond memories of your time here in this ancient seat of learning.
I first learned about the University of St Andrews nearly 20 years ago just days after I sat where you are now, graduating with my undergraduate degree. I left my home in Ireland and headed off to work in Japan as a teacher. There, I had to introduce myself to a large group of young Japanese teenagers who were learning English. At a loss as to what to tell them about, I decided to introduce them to my university the great Trinity College, Dublin, which was over 400 years old. After I finished my introduction, my now friend Ann, a recent graduate from here, stood up to tell the students about her university which was nearly 600 years old, with bonfires and balls, May Dips, red gowns and Raisin Weekends. I was certainly put in my place I can tell you. Today, you become part of the history of this great university and in time, the tapestry of your life will become part of the fabric of this institution.

When I first came to St Andrews, I met our Proctor, who told me that we in St Andrews are ‘lamb dressed as mutton’. This is a turn of phrase which I am sure you will agree requires careful statement and consideration. For it is true: on the outside we have our ancient buildings and age-old traditions but inside we are young. We are young and hungry as we undertake leading research in the world, we are young in our thinking about how we blend our teaching and research and we are young because of you, our students and now graduates. We should each remember this, as we proudly display the trappings of age that inside, burning brightly, is a young community of academics and scholars.
If you pause for a moment you might wonder what past scholars and alumni thought life had in store for them; what were their hopes and dreams and indeed what legacy did they leave the world?

In 1929, the then Duchess of York received an honorary degree from the University of St Andrews and opened this very graduation hall you are sitting in today. British Pathé has a recording of some of this day, 86 years ago, which provides us with a window into the past. In that recording you can see the procession occur much as it did today, the maces, great robes of office and the new Younger Hall. If you found yourself a little flustered today, not knowing what to do with your robes, hood or programme then take comfort. In this recording you can see the young Duchess of York, later HM The Queen Mother, appearing a little nervous as she too struggles with her programme and hood before entering this very hall. However, what is most striking to me are the images of the students; aside from the ladies wearing caps and ties, they look very much as you do today. Happy, excited, jumping about for the camera, just like you all will be in a few moments out in the Quad. Keep that in mind as you are posing for images, that one day 86 years from now some academic might be digging through the archives of your selfies, trying to figure out what a selfie is, the word long since having vanished from the dictionary.

Today, I would like to leave you with three pieces of advice which I would hope our honorary graduate Vint Cerf agrees with.
Firstly, never stop learning. Perhaps today as you reflect on your time here you may feel it has passed far too quickly. Perhaps you wish you could stay a little longer or perhaps never leave. In a way you never have to leave (I do not mean your rooms in the residences – we need those back for the golfers). If you continue to learn for the rest of your life, you will never really leave here. You can carry the St Andrews experience on for the rest of your days.
Secondly, life is not always fair but never let that stop you being optimistic about it. I think that any life, when examined under a microscope, has its fair share of sorrow, tragedy and failure. You can sit back and let this wash over you and erode your confidence in life or you can accept it, learn to appreciate what you have in life and build on it. No matter what life throws at you, stay in the game, do not sit on the sidelines. Stay optimistic about the days ahead.
Thirdly, you can, if you wish, simply float down the river of life, avoiding risky undertakings or bold choices and dodging unusual or exciting experiences. This does not quite exemplify the sense of ‘Ever to Excel’ that I think you now feel. Life is an adventure. To continue the adventure you have started, you need to remind yourself that you have only one life so live it well. Life is too short; so do not waste a moment of it. Embrace the opportunities, experiences and risks you take and try to live a life without regret.

In my experience, your life is a canvas for your imagination. So far you have only sketched the outline of what might be. But life is not paint by numbers, so you will probably need to go outside your sketched lines from time to time. I suggest you try to experiment with all the colours in the palette (in moderation) and realise that we all make mistakes. Deciding which mistakes to keep separates the master from the apprentice, but this is half the fun in life.
Finally, I do wonder what you will remember from your time here in St Andrews. Will it be your assignments or an academic family? Practicals or the pier walk? Racing to a tutorial or red gowns and Raisin Monday? A May Dip at dawn, or a Dervish at dark? Your lectures and your lecturers or the Lizard Lounge? None, some, or all of these? Only time will tell, but today I recommend you try to soak up every last moment here, show your friends and family around and tell them about your memories of this place. And of course thank them; thank them for the love, care and support they have given you over the years. With learning, optimism and adventure and whatever may come, I hope that you enjoy your life and that it truly becomes a masterpiece.

from: https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/archive/2015/title,261350,en.php

Vision videos of interest to Computer Scientists

2015-07-04T00:03:00.001+01:00

A couple of years ago I organised with others a CHI SIG on Visions and Visioning. To support this we built a Wiki to collect all the videos (which you can see here). I've been using the collection to support my HCI teaching and now I'm placed all the youtube videos into one playlist.

Many of the videos are only a few minutes but there is the occasional hour long video included.

[ACM DL]

Books for new and old Computer Scientists

2015-07-02T17:24:00.000+01:00

Here I am collecting up some references to books from colleagues and others which are suggested reading for computer science students. Some suggestions are from others on twitter so these just have their @ handle. Those related to posts with more details are linked. Rather than repeat what each person or others say about the book I simply refer you to the source to keep this list brief. Note, some of the text in [AD 2010] and [IS 2010] overlaps as they drew from the same suggestions.

This list was last updated: Jul 2nd 2015

Sources:

Reading list for Computer Scientists by Al Dearle, Nov 2010 [AD 2010]
Reading list for Techies by Ian Sommerville, Oct 2010 [IS 2010]
Tweeted suggestions from:

@klillington Irish Times tech journo/columnist
@vivdunstan St Andrews CS alumni
@dermotcasey technologist and strategist

Textbooks

Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment by W. Richard Stevens and Stephen A. Rago [@saleem_bhatti AD 2010]
The C Programming Language by Brian Kernighan and Dennis M Ritchie [@turingfan AD 2010]
Structure and interpretation of computer programs by Abelson and Sussman [@simoninireland AD 2010]

Non-Fiction

Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges [@turingfan AD 2010]
Apollo: the Race to the Moon [@IanSommerville AD 2010]
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre [@saleem_bhatti AD 2010]
The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google by Nicholas Carr [@IanSommerville IS 2010]
Digital Woes: Why We Should Not Depend on Software by Lauren Wiener [@vivdunstan 2015]
The design of everyday things by Donald Norman [@aquigley IS 2010]
Envisioning Information by Ed Tufte [@aquigley IS 2010]
Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter [@simoninireland AD 2010]
God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science by James Hannam [@saleem_bhatti AD 2010]
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy [@vivdunstan 2015]
Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens when People Come Together by Clay Shirky [@IanSommerville IS 2010]
How Would You Move Mount Fuji? by William Poundstone [@aldearle AD 2010]
How to Solve it: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method by George Polya
[@dermotcasey 2015]
In the Beginning...Was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson [@klillington 2015]
Information Anxiety 2 by Richard S Wurman [@dermotcasey 2015]
The Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks [@turingfan AD 2010]
New Turing Omnibus by A.K. Dewdney [@vivdunstan 2015]
Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies by Charles Perrow [@IanSommerville IS 2010]
The Number Mysteries by Marcus Du Sautoy [@saleem_bhatti AD 2010]
To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design by Henry Petroski [@IanSommerville IS 2010]
Peopleware by DiMarco and Lister [@aldearle AD 2010]
The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown [@dermotcasey 2015]
The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder [@klillington 2015]
The transparent society by David Brin [@simoninireland AD 2010]
Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig [@dermotcasey 2015]

Fiction

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson [@aldearle AD 2010]
Accelerando by Charles Stross [@aldearle AD 2010]
Microserfs by Douglas Coupland [@IanSommerville IS 2010]
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco [@saleem_bhatti AD 2010]

Apr: SACHI at CHI 2015: What to see

2015-04-02T14:01:00.000+01:00

Members of SACHI are presenting a number of papers and other works at this year’s CHI in Seoul, South Korea. See all the details here!

Mar: LitLong Launch

2015-03-30T13:58:00.000+01:00

The Palimpsest project involving the University of St Andrews’ SACHI team, collaborating with the University of Edinburgh’s English literature and text-mining group, has now completed its LitLong Edinburgh application and website, which are launched today (30th March 2015).

http://sachi.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/2015/03/litlong-launch/

Mar: Stealers Wheel and HCI

2015-03-06T13:56:00.000+00:00

Public-displays to the left of me, head-mounted displays to the right, Here I am, stuck with the mobile phone that is you! Helsinki

Seminar Details

Feb: Winter Augmented Reality Meeting 2015

2015-02-01T13:45:00.000+00:00

I have been invited to the Winter Augmented Reality Meeting 2015 as a Keynote Speaker. WARM is an interdisciplinary meeting of experts in AR and related domains running its tenth installment. WARM2015 continues the success of previous WARM events (WARM'05, WARM'07, WARM'08, WARM'09, WARM'10, WARM'11, WARM'12, WARM'13, WARM'14).

The title for my talk will be "Constructing Reality: Digital-Physical Scaffolding" and the

Abstract: Is the relationship between human and computer akin to a dance, where each moves effortlessly responding to the movements of the other? Or, are computers just agents who do our bidding, either undertaking direct actions on our behalf or proactively determining services, information and supports we may need on a moment to moment basis? Or, should computers continue to be best thought of as simple devices which we should turn over work to as Vannevar Bush said or thinking assistants to perform the routinizable work as Licklider suggests while we focus on creative thought and decision? Neither the beautiful dance, the agent nor the simple device seems to capture our current experience of human computer interaction. Technology underpins the human experience and digital technologies in the form of devices, computers and communications are weaving themselves into the fabric of existence. The nature of this weaving is far from uniform, distributed or even fair. For some, the impact of digital technologies are far removed from their day to day life and serve only to support some of the infrastructure of where they live, if at all. For others, digital technologies form part of the substrate of their existence and living without their mobile phone, social media apps and streaming music service seems unimaginable. Between these extremes are broad swathes of the global population who rely on digital technologies for the infrastructure in their areas and services delivered to their homes. Of course, our use and indeed reliance of technology is not new. Indeed, it is one of the defining characteristics of humans and society, our fashioning of tools, instruments and technologies to help shape our world and lives. In this talk I will discuss how we have already used technology to fashion and construct our present reality and explore ways we might create new scaffolds for the future such as enhancing our senses for a myriad of reasons from correction to replacement and enhancement.

Dec: Pen+Touch Interaction

2014-12-01T13:54:00.000+00:00

New Wacom devices find their home in SACHI.

Oct: Digital Content Expo (DC EXPO) 2014

2014-10-26T13:47:00.000+00:00

This weekend I was able to attend the Digital Content Expo (DC EXPO) 2014 at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan). As we had so much to see at the Expo we will need to return to visit the rest of Miraikan which as you can see below is housed in an impressive building in Odaiba beside Toyko harbour.

Oct: Report on MobileHCI 2014 and UIST 2014

2014-10-14T08:34:00.003+01:00

MobileHCI 2014

MobileHCI 2014 was a single track conference so I saw all the papers presented. I've selected a few to highlight which are of interest to me or those I work with. There were many impressive talks and papers which I've not noted here as they simply aren't relevant in my day to day work. As I was the general chair for this conference I hope you aren't offended if I don't list your paper here!

You can see some of the videos or images I took (or others gave me) from the various talks and sessions of note here from Flickr.

Papers

1. Was it worth the hassle?: ten years of mobile HCI research discussions on lab and field evaluations
Refers back to their “lasting impact paper” from 2004 which was awarded this year. As we said their 2004 paper was called “childish and perverse” at the time. This paper discusses the less controversial point of when and how to go into the field (not if). [Permanent Link] [Open TOC Link]

2. Toffee: enabling ad hoc, around-device interaction with acoustic time-of-arrival correlation
I suggest this paper as there were a set of around-device sensing (eg. GSM SideSwipe at UIST or cameras by Song et al at UIST) this year and I found this one nicely written and well presented. [Permanent Link] [Open TOC Link]

3. Around-body interaction: sensing & interaction techniques for proprioception-enhanced input with mobile devices.
This will be a highly cited paper I expect. A nicely put together set of methods in the paper, well described and shown in a convincing manner at MobileHCI. [Permanent Link] [Open TOC Link]

4. Contextual experience sampling of mobile application micro-usage.
I would read this if you are thinking of using ESM. A well written paper and I was convinced to read it in detail by the conference presentation. [Permanent Link] [Open TOC Link]

5. Portallax: bringing 3D displays capabilities to handhelds
A nice hardware/software system to make a mobile device into a stereoscopic 3D enabled device from our friends in Bristol [Permanent Link] [Open TOC Link]

6. An in-situ study of mobile phone notifications
Best paper by one of our former SACHI speakers with nice insights and a well put together paper. [Permanent Link] [Open TOC Link http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2628364]

7. Texting while walking: an evaluation of mini-qwerty text input while on-the-go
A very nice presentation and detailed paper [Permanent Link] [Open TOC Link]

UIST 2014

This was a multi-track conference so I only saw 50% of the papers. You can see some of the videos or images I took from the various talks and sessions of note here from Flickr.

All the papers are here and can be downloaded by anyone (for a year), after this you will need an ACM DL account. Please note, I'm providing two links for each paper. One is the permanent link to the ACM DL (which you need personal or institutional access to read) and the second is the link to the page for the Open TOC provided for the next year. If you click on the Open TOC link you then need to search for the paper yourself to click on again! I cannot link to the Open TOC links from this blog.

1. FlexSense: A Transparent Self-Sensing Deformable Surface
This was a really nice piece of work from industry and academia. The paper is great to read and should give you ideas for follow on work. [Permanent Link] [Open TOC Link]

2. Graffiti Fur: Turning Your Carpet into a Computer Display
This was a little crazy but a fun concept. Some simple and basic research which results in interesting sensing and actuation at a distance. This is a good example of why the UIST demo program is so important and popular to bring the ideas trapped on paper into an interactive space for discussion with the authors. Will probably be a product soon enough! [Permanent Link] [Open TOC Link]

3. Deconstructing and Restyling D3 Visualizations
After Miguel's transmogrify work in 2013 it's nice to see others taking visulisations apart in novel ways. [Permanent Link] [Open TOC Link]

4. InterState: A Language and Environment for Expressing Interface Behavior
State machines brought to life in a visual programming language to express the behaiour of interfaces. [Permanent Link] [Open TOC Link]

5. ParaFrustum: Visualization Techniques for Guiding a User to a Constrained Set of Viewing Positions and Orientations
I enjoyed this talk and paper as it reminded me of Richard Webber's work on graph layout viewpoints. [Permanent Link] [Open TOC Link]

6. InterTwine: Creating Interapplication Information Scent to Support Coordinated Use of Software
This was a nice paper showing how context awareness can come up into the application level to create coordinated support. [Permanent Link] [Open TOC Link]

7. Sensing Techniques for Tablet+Stylus Interaction (best paper)
A fantastic paper (basically 2.5 papers in one). [Permanent Link] [Open TOC Link]

8. RoomAlive and the Dyadic projected spatial augmented reality papers will be of interest to those looking at digital-physical interaction, uses of the Kinect or those interested in whole room interaction. I visited the Microsoft test home on campus a number of years ago so painting the walls with projectors wasn't that surprising to me. The innovation in the setup, configuration and interaction is very impressive in both RoomAlive and Dyadic. It will be interesting to watch how anyone takes such a multi-projector system from the lab to the home or workplace given the power, space, lighting, cost etc. constraints. RoomAlive [Permanent Link] and Dyadic [Permanent Link]. [Open TOC Link]

The best talk I saw was this as the entire talk was given as a demo with the presentation material inside the tool. Kitty: Sketching Dynamic and Interactive Illustrations

Links from my talk on the Digital Tourist, March 12th Edinburgh

2014-03-13T12:20:00.000+00:00

This post contains links to systems and technologies I mentioned during my talk on the "Digital Tourist" on March 12th in the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh. I have linked from bit.ly/stasmart to this page for ease of update. The SFC funded projects described can be found from our SACHI page here.

Slide 2
St Andrews HCI - http://sachi.org.uk
www.visionsofcomputing.org - visions of computing and videos related to computing as predicted in the past or now

Slide 3
Ubiquitous Computing www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/UbiHome.html‎

Slide 7
Pine, J. and Gilmore, J. (1999) The Experience Economy, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 1999.

Slide 11
5 I’s: Inspirational, Inviting, Iconic, Imagery, Interactive
What makes this location different from other places
Easy access to maps, brochures, calendars, videos, apps etc.
http://www.austria.info/uk

Slide 12
http://www.greenland.com/en/

Slide 13
http://www.visitscotland.com/
Google Analytics - http://www.google.com/analytics/

Slide 14

Tripadvisor http://www.tripadvisor.com/
Tripit http://www.tripit.com
AirBnB http://www.airbnb.com
Kayak http://www.kayak.com
Skyscanner http://www.skyscanner.com
Lonely Planet http://www.lonelyplanet.com/
ThornTree http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/
Expedia http://www.expedia.com
Weather Channel http://uk.weather.com/
Hipmunk http://www.hipmunk.com
timeanddate.com
XE http://www.xe.com
Twitter http://www.twitter.com/aquigley
Google Maps https://www.google.com/maps
Discover Ireland on YouTube www.youtube.com/user/discoverireland‎
BitCoin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
Zinio http://www.zinio.com
Google Earth http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/earth/
Google Business View http://maps.google.com/help/maps/businessphotos/

Slide 15
Network analysis of flight data
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/CSE.2009.298

Slide 18

Google Translate
UrbanSpoon http://www.UrbanSpoon.com
FlightRadar http://www.flightradar24.com/51.5,-0.13/7
Hailo https://hailocab.com/
TripLens http://www.hipgeo.com/ (now closed)
Tinder http://www.tinder.com
Tripso http://www.triposo.com/

Slide 19
During: MyMagic+ Disney $1b investment

https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/plan/my-disney-experience/my-magic-plus/

Slide 20
Multimodal Systems for Digital Tourism - SICSA Summer School 2012 - SACHI
http://sachi.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/activities/summer-schools/multimodal-systems-for-digital-tourism/

Slide 22
Hierarchical Structures in Support of Dynamic Presentation of Multi Resolution Geographic Information for Navigation in Urban. Environments.

Slide 23
Umers AVI paper

The cost of display switching: a comparison of mobile, large display and hybrid UI configurations

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2254556.2254577

Slide 26
LADDIE

Slide 40
SMART

Slide 49
Dual view paper
http://pokristensson.com/pubs/DostalEtAlPerDis2013.pdf

Slide 57
Apted T., Kay J., Quigley A., "Tabletop Sharing of Digital Photographs for the Elderly", Proceedings of the 2006 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2006 April 22-27 2006 Montreal, Canada

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1124887

Slide 59
BlueStar, a privacy centric location aware system
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/PLANS.2004.1309060

Slide 60
MEMENTO: A Digital Physical Scrapbook for Memory Sharing (2006)

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.95.3511

Slide 61
Subtle Gaze-Dependent Techniques for Visualising Display Changes in Multi-Display Environments

http://jakubdostal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/jakub_dostal-IUI13-subtle_visual_tracking.pdf

More here - http://jakubdostal.com/about/publications/

Slide 63
ARPhone
http://sydney.edu.au/engineering/it/~massad/source/arphone_ozchi2003.pdf

Slide 67
www.augmentedrealitycinema.com

Slide 69
Ambassadors program Visit Scotland

http://www.conventionscotland.com/ambassadorprog

Slide 70
aquigley@st-andrews.ac.uk

twitter: @aquigley

web: http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~aquigley/

CHI 2014

2013-11-24T18:20:00.001+00:00

I'm currently serving as an Associate Chair for the Interaction Using Specific Capabilities or Modalities subcommittee at the 32^nd ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2014) and on the CHI 2014 Workshops Jury.

Edinburgh Apps

2013-11-10T00:02:00.000+00:00

I was a judge for the Edinburgh apps today. "The event offered teams the opportunity, working with Council and partner data, to provide fresh ideas and solutions to help improve the lives of those living, working and visiting the city. Ultimately, it aimed to support the Strategic Objective where Edinburgh is a thriving, successful and sustainable capital city where opportunity and equality are promoted and supported."

http://www.edinburghapps.net/home/

ITS and UIST 2013 - complete set

2013-10-30T23:28:00.003+00:00

ITS and UIST 2013, a set on Flickr.

600th Anniversary | University of St Andrews - 1413-2013

2013-10-30T23:28:00.001+00:00

600th Anniversary | University of St Andrews - 1413-2013, a set on Flickr.

UIST 2013 St Andrews - the pipers lead the way to the Demo Reception

2013-10-20T22:38:00.001+01:00

UIST 2013 St Andrews - the pipers lead the way to the Demo Reception
Originally uploaded by Aaron Quigley

NodeXL Twitter Ubicomp

2013-10-02T18:10:00.001+01:00

20100930-NodeXL-Twitter-Ubicomp
Originally uploaded by Marc_Smith

Always interesting to see the NodeXL view of the social media interactions at a conference.

Next generation technology and the next 600 years

2013-09-14T16:39:00.000+01:00

"On the morning of Saturday 14 September, the University hosted three open forum discussions (Masterminds) to debate pressing contemporary issues and concerns for the future. Contributors came from a range of disciplines, representing both the Arts and Sciences, and the University drew on internal strengths and external expertise to address each topic". I spoke in a session entitled: The World our Grandchildren will Inherit: Global Health, Sustainability and Next Generation Technology.

The Chair was Professor Candace Currie OBE from the School of Medicine at the University of St Andrews and the speakers included.

Professor Sissela Bok, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Centre for Population and Development Studies at Harvard University
Professor Stephen Gillespie, Sir James Black Chair of Medicine and Director of Research at the University of St Andrews
The Rt Hon The Lord Patel KT MBChB (St Andrews) FMedSci FRSE FRCOG, Chancellor of the University of Dundee, member of the House of Lords and a key contributor to the field of high risk obstetrics
Professor Aaron Quigley, the Chair for Human Computer Interaction at the University of St Andrews’ School of Computer Science

My speech was as follows:

Today, 600 years after this University was founded, let us take a moment to think about where we have come from, where we are today and the world our grandchildren will inherit.

Since the founding of this University the world's population has grown approximately 20 fold, life expectancies have tripled and use of technology has become evermore interwoven into everyday life. However, average life expectancies vary by 40 years across the world, access to basic health care varies dramatically, our use of resources is markedly different as is our access to technology to support our work and life. Of course, there are too many technologies to talk about today so I'd like to focus on digital technologies and computing and the potential for humanity and the billions of people on earth.

The world of 1413 relied on technology but not as we do today. It would be another 200 years before an English Poet would use the word computer to describe the job of tabulating numbers. While at the same time one of our graduates John Napier was proposing the use of logarithms. Within half a century of logarithms we see the introduction of the slide rule as a calculation aid or what some might call a mechanical analog computer. This device remained in use long after its introduction. 350 years later slide rules were carried on the five Apollo space missions to the moon. Through the first 5 centuries of the University, we see the introduction of increasingly sophisticated mechanical calculators, designs for a difference engine by Babbage and tabulation devices. Later still, came devices which could be programmed, such as the Jacquard looms. By 1890, an electric tabulating system with punch cards was used to rapidly tabulate the US census.

Of course, it's in the past 70 years that we have seen the introduction and advancement of the electronic digital computer. These can be programmed to solve more than one kind of problem and in their most basic form consist of memory, long term storage, processing, an instruction set and input and output.

Our use of the digital computer has undergone dramatic change during this time. In the beginning we had each computer being used by many people primarily in government, industry or academia. Whereas today, we are tending towards many computers or processing elements per person. Everything from the home computer, tablet, smart phone to the embedded devices in your car or washing machine. The past three decades have seen computers enter our day to day life and in parallel become essential to the services, infrastructure and support of our lives.

During the course of this period we have had researchers and visionaries considering the future of next generation technology. Can we augment human intellect, can access to information be as natural as our own thinking process, what happens when computing and communications are ubiquitous. As Mark Weiser said, "The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it".

It is difficult for anyone to predict the future. We need only look to our past, to see how amusingly wide of the mark or occasionally prescient people have been. Picture how a townsperson from St Andrews of 1413 might look at the world of today? What would they find unusual, strange, inexplicable or magical? As Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Would our electricity, airplanes, computers and gestural interfaces appear magical?

As a form of technology we have come to rely on, digital technologies, computing and communications are unlike other technologies that have gone before them, due to three important characteristics, namely data, programming and connectivity.

Digital technologies can produce and consume vast stores of data, information and context about us, our environment and the world at large. Such instant access to information will continue to change our life. We can see how the use of data is changing the study of medicine, our planning for health systems, science and engineering. There are two areas of data use related to global health and sustainability I'd like to discuss.

Firstly, the "Internet of Things" or the "Nervous system for the planet". This is where any powered device is connected to a network. This gives rise to new devices, sensors and services. Through monitoring, large power savings with simple sensors distributed through the home can be achieved. Expecting our homes and infrastructure to aid us in improving our energy or resource use will in time appear obvious, unremarkable and simply "how things should be" as we make steps to more sustainable living.

Next, Personal informatics is a large and growing area of study. You collect data that is personally relevant to you for the purpose of self-reflection and self-monitoring. Using this data you can gain knowledge about your behaviors, habits, and thoughts. Health is often a driving force for people acquiring an interest in personal informatics. The simple collection of data can allow people to monitor their movements during the day or their exercise levels versus their goals. In each case the ability to capture and reflect on this helping people make changes in their behaviors.

The second differentiating factor with digital technology, is programming. This helps process information in new ways. In the past we relied on our analog devices to tabulate numbers. Today, we have the ability to construct hardware and software systems to allow us to offload cognitive effort into computational effort.

In the near term, contextual computing will ensure our digital technologies know more about us and personalize accordingly. This context includes our location, identity, who we are with, our user model, environmental, social and resource knowledge, along with our activity, schedule, agenda and even our physiological data. All of this can be used to change how applications support us in our day to day life. Imagine the nurse, whose schedule, location and activity can be cross referenced with the patient she is attending to, to help avoid mistakes. Or the surgeon involved in a difficult operation who is drawing upon external guidance or notes. Or even improving how people operate in hospitals by tracking where every wheelchair, infusion pump or resource is. Our ability to program devices allows us to form and reform them.

The third differentiating factor is connectivity, or the ability to interconnect devices and hence people. This connectivity has a long history but it's our use of it to connect every device and interconnect every person where the true power of digital technology emerges from. About 60 years before St Andrews was founded the black death swept across Europe, wiping out nearly half of our population. Today we can ask does our ability to communicate allow for the identification of new pandemics. Or does it allow for the rapid dissemination of information to mitigate the next black death? It is already showing how remote medical treatments become possible, new types of group formation to solve social problems emerge, or overcoming the problems of social isolation, or even allowing groups of connected citizens or scientists to rapidly emerge. By connecting people we can connect and extend our thinking.

Data, programming and connectivity are already impacting the world our grandchildren will inherit. However, what about future generations?

I think the next generation technologies which will have the greatest impact concern the bandwidth to the brain. By this I don’t mean brain computer interfaces. Instead I mean the use of technology to enhance our senses, augment our intellect, draw on the collective cognitive efforts of many, or simply improve our experience of being alive.

I see the world our grandchildren will inherit as connecting our digital and physical worlds evermore closely. Not in some cyborg dystopian future but simply the next generation of the eye glass or contact lens, the use of touch with braille to read, pacemakers or cochlear implants.

Researchers, Engineers and Scientists around the world are looking at ways to enhance our senses for a myriad of reasons from correction to replacement.

Let us consider three of our senses. Namely, touch, hearing and sight.

Our sense of touch relies on a sensory system spread across and through our body and involves a large portion of the human brain to process and understand. It's related to our ability to sense pain, temperature or proprioception. Let’s take two real examples of why we might need to digitally augment this sense. First, lets consider the eye surgeon. A common eye operation is cataract removal due to clouding of the lens. The eye is numbed, cuts are made, tissue lifted and a pair of forceps are used to create a circular hole in the bag in which the lens sits. A probe is used to break up and emulsify the lens using ultrasound waves. Once complete a plastic foldable lens is inserted. This is a quick operation but witnessing this myself for the first time felt like an age. The fine motor control, ability to sense pressure or see flesh moving means the tools for training are not taking full advantage of haptic interfaces or other means to deliver an augmented sense of touch. Indeed, those training to undertake this surgery practice peeling the skin off a grape with forceps to train and emulate the experience.

A second example. Consider how you, your child or your grandchild have learnt to write. Has it changed in the last 10, 50 or 100 years? The handwriting we use today is rooted in the scripts associated with the Italian Renaissance. 300 years ago John Clark, an English writing master expected his student to get ‘an exact notion, or idea of a good letter by frequent and nice observation of a correct copy’ with imitation. Does that sound very different to how you learnt to write or how your grandchildren are learning? Of course, new teaching methods have improved how we instruct children to write but is there anything which helps them understand how to hold the pen, the pressure to apply, the movements to make. We have relied on sight and hearing to teach but not allowing them to feel the movement you are trying to explain. Here in St Andrews we are studying how we might sense how someone is writing from an instrumented pen. The motion, the pressure, the timing, the posture, following the lines, joining shapes, flow, the angles and hence trying to feedback information to the learner in subtle, meaningful and helpful ways. Our goal is to try and help steer ones learning and experience down the path to fluid and beautiful writing and away from the painful and illegible.
It’s clear that augmenting our sense of touch opens up new opportunities.

Our sense of hearing is often used to overcome the digital physical divide and for augmentation. Consider the Australian cochlear implant which is a surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard of hearing. Implanted into over a quarter of a million people it is a form of augmentation. You might think no one would be against this as it addresses a profound need but some are. The implantation of children with these devices has been described as "cultural genocide". For me, this is a computer, in every aspect I described before and it opens up the discussion of what other types of audio augmentation and enhancement might become commonplace and useful. Ambient alerts, navigation cues or the ability to listen to a language you do not understand and have it automatically translated in real time.

Finally, our sight, in many ways our primary sense. We know a large portion of the human brain is involved with our vision. Today when you look at much of our interaction with digital technologies it is in an eyes down manner. Take the time to look at those around you when next on a train or bus. Are they looking up and out at the world or are they transfixed with their little “window of interaction” with the digital world. Our ability to augment human vision has immediate medical needs for those who loose sight due to an accident for example. Researchers across the world are exploring the potential for the bionic eye. In general, a camera captures and sends images via a processor to a chip implanted under the skull. This chip stimulates the visual cortex via electrodes, allowing the brain to interpret the images. Such eyes are aimed at replacing lost vision but it’s clear both captured video and digital data will be blended together. How we might use head worn wearable displays is an area today of active industrial interest with wearable computing.

Here in St Andrews we have researchers looking to model the eye to understand how we see images, others looking at ways to measure distance to the display and hence adapting images to improve legibility or information awareness. We can imagine many other examples of displays that help health workers while their hands are busy, those navigating or people simply exploring a new town. Again, with sufficient processing we can imagine the universal translation scenario where you look at a sign in a foreign language and automatically see a translation, if you wish.

I’m sure some of these ideas will seem obvious or simple “the way the world should be” while others may be confronting. We should not shy away for ideas which challenge us, instead, we should debate and explore them.

I hope that in 600 years time, academics like myself and my colleagues, will be asking the questions society haven’t yet thought to ask to help further human knowledge for all our benefit.

UIST 2013 and ITS 2013 in October

2013-07-19T14:01:00.000+01:00

The St Andrews Human Computer Interaction research group is involved in the organisation of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology 2013, UIST 2013 and ITS 2013, the ACM Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2013 conferences.

I'm a general chair for each conference along with colleagues in Microsoft and the University of Helsinki, so quite a few busy months ahead of me!

PerDis 2014

2013-06-05T13:59:00.000+01:00

I will be the program chair for PerDis 2014, the Third International Symposium on Pervasive Displays in Copenhagen in June 2014.

PerDis 2013

2013-06-04T13:58:00.000+01:00

This week I was attending the Second International Symposium on Pervasive Displays at the Google campus in Mountain View, California. I am attending to present a paper co-authored with Jakub Dostal and Per Ola Kristensson in SACHI, along with being a session chair on the second day of the conference.

The paper is titled.
Dostal, J., Kristensson, P.O. and Quigley, A. 2013. Multi-view proxemics: distance and position sensitive interaction. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Pervasive Displays (PerDis 2013). ACM Press.

More details

Lots of activity at CHI 2013

2013-02-22T13:57:00.000+00:00

CHI is the premier international conference on human computer interaction, and this year’s event is looking to be the most exciting yet for the St Andrews Computer Human Interaction (SACHI) research group. See more details here: https://sachi.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/2013/02/sachi-changing-perspectives-at-chi-2013/

MobileHCI 2014

2013-01-15T13:55:00.000+00:00

Dr. Sara Diamond the President of the Ontario College of Art and Design University and I are the general co-chairs for MobileHCI 2014 the 16th International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction in Toronto, Canada.

MobileHCI 2013

2013-01-08T13:54:00.000+00:00

I am one on the Associate Chairs for MobileHCI 2013, the 15th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2013) which will be held in Munich, Germany August 27 – 30, 2013.

“MobileHCI is the world’s leading conference in the field of Human Computer Interaction concerned with portable and personal devices and with the services to which they enable access. MobileHCI provides a multidisciplinary forum for academics, hardware and software developers, designers and practitioners to discuss the challenges and potential solutions for effective interaction with and through mobile devices, applications, and services.”

http://www.mobilehci2013.org/