About me

I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Creative Computing at Coventry University, and a member of the Cogent Computing Applied Research Centre, a new applied research centre for pervasive computing where I specialise in pervasive usability.

Domains and technologies

I work in human-computer interaction, interaction design, and computer-supported collaborative work ('work' understood in its broadest sense). My research is about understanding and designing for technology-mediated social interaction across a diversity of contexts, and is based in the view that technology is about augmenting, enhancing and reconfiguring the ways we interact so that we can be and do new things. This involves working with a wide range of technologies from desktop-based applications to devices and arrangements that move 'beyond the desktop' into pervasive, ubiquitous, and ambient computing.

My main current interest is pervasive usability, i.e. the usability of pervasive computing systems. Pervasive usability generates a variety of challenges to traditional usability (see below) and addressing these challenges is at the core of my current research.

I also have a strong interest in theory for HCI and my work is informed by activity theory and external cognition in particular. I have also been influenced by the Scandinavian participatory design approach and its emphasis on 'tradition and transcendence'. Therefore my work characteristically (but not always) starts with observation and analysis of an existing activity followed by design and in-context evaluation of prototype new technologies.

I have been involved in a range of projects, most recently the Chawton House Project (part of the Equator IRC), where a key driver is pervasive usability. Pervasive usability implies the need to design and evaluate complex, novel technologies in and for the social-interactional contexts that they are part of, and this involves addressing multiple issues ranging from the difficulty of prototyping pervasive systems to how to include users in co-design.

Prior to this, my interest in understanding and supporting users in a variety of social-interactional contexts was represented across a range of projects, including the use of Lotus Notes to support collaboration in student group-work (The Activity Space, my DPhil work); design of visual systems for use in face-to-face sales transactions (the eSPACE project); and evaluation of how Voice over IP, an Internet audio conferencing technology, supports interaction in online multiplayer games (the InTouch project).