The journal special edition on ‘Creating Cool Technologies’  that emerged from the Cool Workshop at Chi 2012 has just been published. PsychnoNology is an open access journal so all the articles can be downloaded for free – it seems this is likely to be the future of academic publishing!
With support from my colleagues at UCLan, Simon Monk, and CPC I lead a Raspberry Pi design challenge with the second year computing students as part of their professional skills module. Students worked in teams to design a poster showing an innovative new product utilising the Raspberry Pi platform, each team then got 90 seconds and a single slide to present their idea. The students came up with some excellent ideas and feedback was very positive. Some students will be building their ideas in a day-long ‘hackathon’ even planned for later in November. UCLan Press Release.
The designing interactive technology for teens workshop at NordiCHI ran really well and we got through some really important topics as well as a host of interesting talks all in a morning. Big thanks to all that attended and the other organisers! The outputs from the workshop were a clear definition of ‘teens’ as a user population alongside identification of key challenges we need to explore as a research community. Further event are planned for CHI in Paris alongside a journal special issue at some point. Sadly I couldn’t stay on for the rest of NordiChi, my slides form the workshop are here.
Had a great time at British HCI in Birmingham, as usual some really interesting discussions and people. Keynotes from Patrick Baudisch and Gary Marsden went down well and cames from opposite ends of the HCI technical spectrum. Presented my paper on touch point overloading on the surface with children (slides) and got some really good question despite the presentation being the morning session after the social event!
The Science Festival at UCLan this year ran over 3 days with 1000s of school children and members of the public visiting. This year I ran the Arduino Egg and Spoon race from last year, this received a lot of interest which seemed to be down to the buzz around Raspberry Pi and new awareness of the exiting possibilities of simplified embedded prototyping platforms. I also ran a demonstrations of multi-touch tables I’ve developed, this has been developed to be very robust (child-proof…) and will be deployed in schools later in the year. I also setup a stand exploring the experience of 3D gaming for child users which is part of some on going work we’re doing with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. A massive thanks goes to the all of the ChiCI group that put in a lot of work helping out!
Teenagers are a unique but little studied user group for Interaction Design. The theme of this workshop is to investigate designing in the space occupied by those aged around 13 to 17, the population of teenagers who are undergoing significant changes mentally, physically and psychologically. The workshop call is here and the deadline for submissions is August 10th, contact me or any of the other organisers for further info.
My colleagues and I have recently validated MRes courses in Interaction Design and Child-Computer Interaction starting this year and with some fees-paid bursaries. This is a very exciting development for the expanding ChiCI group at UCLan! I lead the Interaction Design MRes (and MSc) course and Prof Janet Read leads Child-Computer Interaction – please get in touch if you are interested in applying!
Has a great time at CHI in Texas and met some really interesting people. Highlights were the Cool Accross Continents and Cultures workshop I co-organised which ran extremely well – a poster summarising the outputs is here and the workshop lead to a special edition of the PsychNology Journal on Cool. Also the Child-Computer Interaction SIG meeting was a useful networking opportunity and generated some ideas to move the community forwards (including a re-vamp of the IFIP IDC SIG web site). Other highlights included the launch of International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction (Elsevier),  playing table-tennis at the excellent Nordic CHI party, and getting a free Microsoft cowboy hat!
I’m organising at workshop at CHI2012 with the other guys from the ChiCI group. Motivated by our current work on understanding cool in UK schools, which wish to explore the meaning of cool across other continents, cultures and communities with the most excellent CHI community. Full details on the workshop web site, if you’d like to attend the deadline for 4 page position papers is 1st Feb – please contact me or Janet Read for any further info.
Had some very interesting discussions and debate at a workshop organised and run by the ChiCI team at the RCUK Digital Economy All Hands Conference in Northumbria. The workshop, ‘Creating a Winning Team: Teenagers actively Participating on the Digital Economy playing field‘, focussed on teen content creation and publishing and was based around a set of personas we developed through our work with teenagers in schools. I also presented my paper on Designing with Teens (slides).