Human-Computer Interaction
Dr Hilary Johnson, Prof Peter Johnson, Dr Eamonn O’Neill, Dr Leon Watts, Prof Stephen Payne
Our research is concerned with theoretical, empirical and practical aspects of the design, development and evaluation of computer systems to support work and leisure activities of individuals and groups. This area includes research in:
- Usability design and evaluation
- User models, learning and cognitive modelling
- Teamwork, communication, collaboration and collaborative environments
- Computer mediated communication
- Autonomous systems, situation awareness and safety-critical design
- Individual and collaborative creativity, entertainment and leisure
- Mobile, pervasive and ubiquitous computing
We have a long-standing interest in research issues related to understanding human tasks and activities, including collaboration, how these are influenced by Information and Communication Technologies and the associated implications for the design of future interactive systems to support human action. We are also interested in design per se - what kind of expressions of human concerns and capabilities and what kind of design processes, supported by what tools, allow human-centred computer systems to be developed?
Members of our group have backgrounds in psychology and other social sciences as well as in computer science. In addition we have close links with researchers in other departments, including Engineering and Psychology at Bath.
Current research projects are concerned with such issues as identity, trust and conflict mediation in co-present and distributed collaboration, the support of individual and group creative processes, the role of computer-mediated communication in the development and maintenance of friendships, the role of mobile and pervasive technology in enhancing people's actions and interactions in their environment, and the design and evaluation of human interaction with complex, dependable and autonomous systems.
Recent publications:
Johnson,H. & L.Carruthers (2006) Supporting creative and reflective processes. International Journal of Human Computer Studies, 64(10): 998-1030
O'Neill, E., Kostakos, V., Kindberg, T., Fatah gen. Schiek, A., Penn, A., Stanton Fraser, D. and Jones, T. (2006). Instrumenting the city: developing methods for observing and understanding the digital cityscape. UbiComp 2006, Springer LNCS 4206: 315-332.
Payne, S.J., Duggan, G. & Neth H. (2007). Discretionary task interleaving: heuristics for time allocation in cognitive foraging. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136(3): 370-388.
Billings, M & Watts, L. (2007). A safe space to vent: Conciliation and conflict in distributed teams. In Bannon et al. (Eds.) ECSCW 2007 Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Limerick, Ireland,
24-28 September 2007. Springer Verlag: 139-138.
Coughlan, T. & Johnson P. (2008). An Exploration of Constraints and End User Development in Environments for Creative Tasks. International Journal of Human Computer Interaction. 24,(5): 444-459.
Garzonis, S., Jones, S., Jay, T. and O'Neill, E. (2009). Auditory icon and earcon mobile service notifications: intuitiveness, learnability, memorability and preference. In Proceedings of CHI 2009 conference on human factors in computing systems, April 2009, Boston, USA, 1513-1522.
