Emerging technologies - in particular contemporary computational systems - have become ubiquitous and deeply integrated into our day-to-day life. The Human-Centered Computing research unit at Cardiff University (CHCC) examines the socio-technical impacts of emerging computing systems on individuals, communities and societies, and identifies ways that such innovations can be ethically designed to better support humans and our planet.
In addition, at CHCC we investigate hardware and software development issues. We combine hardware and software in the design of new interactions for users, which is geared towards enhancing positive experience (such as easy to use, easy to learn, utilising affordances, goal-driven), performance and accessibility.
At CHCC, we utilise the process of interaction design. This means:
- understanding the context of use
- gathering user requirements
- designing alternative ideas
- prototyping and evaluating new technologies by designing experiments
- collecting and analysing data and iteratively improving the design
- development and evaluation of systems through more participatory or inclusive design processes and user studies.
Our unit has extensive experience in utilising a variety of sensors in studying human behaviour, from embedded sensors on portable and wearable devices to eye trackers, and from portable EEG devices to motion capture devices. These technologies are evaluated in the wild, in the lab and in simulated environments combining a mix of lab and field-based methods.
Aims
We aim to expand our multi-disciplinary research collaborations nationally and internationally and grow to an internationally established research section in the next five to ten years. We hope to become the first established human-centered computing research group in Wales by 2025.
Research
We offer expertise in:
- user-centered design, participatory design, value-sensitive design, inclusive design, user-interface design, ethical design
- research methods in human-computer interaction
- ubiquitous and pervasive computing Collaborative Systems and Social Computing
- human communication with computing systems (utilising visual signal processing, computer vision and machine learning)
- human perception and deception detection
- multi-modal and multi-media interaction Interaction with large (geographic) data sets (through visualisation)
- interaction design for privacy technologies
- playful, mobile, embodied, tangible, robot and urban interactions
- empirical, conceptual and theoretical understanding of the context of use (such as practices, collaboration, communication) and technology appropriation
- design ethnography and short and long-term evaluations of technologies in situ
- information and Communication Technologies for Development Design for safety in complex socio-technical systems
- Sustainable Human-Computer Interaction
- user modelling
Projects
Project name: Centre for AI, Robotics and Human-Machine Systems
Funded by: WEFO-ERDF
Investigators: Professor Stuart Allen (Co-principal Investigator) and Dr Parisa Eslambolchilar (Co-investigator)
Project name: Leverhulme International Fellowship
Principal Investigator: Dr Parisa Eslambolchilar
Project name: Utilising Augmented Reality to Improve Mobility in People with Low Vision
Funded by: Guide Dogs
Principal Investigator: Dr Parisa Eslambolchilar
Project name: Using digitally captured vital signs data from mobile devices to study clinical behaviour and inform clinical practice to maintain patient safety
Funded by: Welsh Government
Investigators: Dr Liam Turner (Principal Investigator)
Project name: The impact of mobile technology in hospitals on patient care management and clinical practice
Funded by: Welsh Government
Investigators: Prof Alison Bullock (Principal investigator) and Dr Liam Turner (Co- investigator)
Project name: International Technology Alliance in Distributed Analytics and Information Sciences.
Funded by: Ministry of Defense
Investigators: Prof Alun Preece (Principal investigator), Dr Liam Turner (Co-investigator), Prof Roger Whitaker (Co-investigator)
Project name: Awareness and Monitoring of Personal Mobility to Improve Quality of Living at Home for the Elderly
Funded by: Welsh Government’s European Social Fund
Investigators: Dr Alia Abdelmoty
Project name: STAMINA: Strategies to Mitigate Nutritional Risks among mothers and infants under 2 years in low income urban households in Peru during COVID-19.
Funded by: UKRI GCRF/Newton Fund Agile Response
Investigators: Dr Emily Rousham (Principal investigator), Dr Nervo Verdezoto (Co-investigator
Project name: Understanding agricultural azole use, impacts on local water bodies and AMR: building an interdisciplinary evidence base in Devon and Bristol.
Funded by: Cabot Institute Innovation Fund (University of Bristol)
Investigators: Dr Susan Conlon (Principal investigator), Dr Nervo Verdezoto (Co-investigator))
Project name: Exploring antibiotic use practices in livestock production through a novel, game-based approach
Funded by: GW4 Alliance
Investigators Dr Matt Llloyd Jones (Principal investigator), Dr Nervo Verdezoto (Co- investigator)
Project name: Co-designing Community-based ICTs Interventions to Enhance Maternal and Child Health in South Africa
Funded by: UKRI GCRF/EPSRC
Investigators: Dr Nervo Verdezoto
Project name: New strategies to reduce anaemia and risk of overweight and obesity through complementary feeding of infants and young children in Peru.
Funded by: UKRI Newton Fund/MRC
Investigators: Dr Emily Rousham (Principal investigator), Dr Nervo Verdezoto (Co-investigator)
Meet the team
Lead researcher
Academic staff
Professor Alun Preece
Professor of Intelligent Systems Co-Director of the Security, Crime and Intelligence Innovation Institute
Professor Roger Whitaker
Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Enterprise, Professor of Collective Intelligence
Postgraduate students
Associated staff
Publications
- Verdezoto, N. et al. 2020. Indigenous women managing pregnancy complications in rural Ecuador. Presented at: 11th Nordic Conference on Human- Computer Interaction (NordiCHI 2020) Tallinn, Estonia 25-29 October 2020. NordiCHI '20: Proceedings of the 11th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Shaping Experiences, Shaping Society. Vol. 45. , pp.1-9. (10.1145/3419249.3420141)
- Meyer, J. et al., 2020. A life of data: Characteristics and challenges of very long term self-tracking for health and wellness. ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare 1 (2), pp.-. 11. (10.1145/3373719)
- Bagalkot, N. et al., 2020. Beyond health literacy: navigating boundaries and relationships during high-risk pregnancies. Presented at: 11th Nordic Conference on Human- Computer Interaction (NordiCHI 2020) Tallinn, Estonia 25-29 October 2020.
- Carlo, L. et al., 2020. Healthcare infrastructures in Ecuador: challenges, reflections and opportunities for digital health. Presented at: ACM Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2020) Online 17-20 June 2020.
- Turner, L. , Allen, S. and Whitaker, R. 2019. The influence of concurrent mobile notifications on individual responses. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 132 , pp.70-80. (10.1016/j.ijhcs.2019.07.011)
- Noe, B. et al. 2019. Identifying indicators of smartphone addiction through user-app interaction. Computers in Human Behavior 99 , pp.56-65. (10.1016/j.chb.2019.04.023)
- Jones, K. E. et al. 2019. Reducing anxiety for dental visits. Presented at: 17th IFIP TC 13 International Conference Paphos, Greece 2-6 September 2019. Published in: Lamas, D. et al., Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2019: 17th IFIP TC 13 International Conference, Paphos, Cyprus, September 2–6, 2019, Proceedings, Part IV. Vol. 11749.Lecture Notes in Computer Science Springer. , pp.659-663. (10.1007/978-3-030-29390-1_57)
- Crossley, S. G. M. et al., 2019. The tangibility of personalised 3D printed feedback may enhance youth's physical activity awareness, goal-setting and motivation. JMIR mHealth and uHealth 21 (6) e12067. (10.2196/12067)
- Chen, Y. et al., 2019. Unpacking the infrastructuring work of patients and caregivers around the world. Presented at: CHI 2019 4-9 May 2019. CHI EA '19: Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. (10.1145/3290607.3299021)
- Turner, L. D. et al. 2019. Evidence to support common application switching behaviour on smartphones. Royal Society Open Science 6 (3) 190018. (10.1098/rsos.190018)
- Crossley, S. G. M. et al., 2019. Perceptions of visualising physical activity as a 3D-printed object: Formative study. JMIR: Journal of Medical Internet Research 21 (1) e12064. (10.2196/12064)
- Keay-Bright, W. and Eslambolchilar, P. 2019. Imagining a digital future: how could we design for enchantment within the special education curriculum?. Presented at: International Association of Societies of Design Research Conference 2019 Manchester, UK 2-5 September 2019.
- Verdezoto, N. et al. 2019. Infrastructural artefacts in community health: a case study of pregnancy care infrastructures in south India. Presented at: The 7th International Conference on Infrastructures in Healthcare Vienna, Austria 30-31 May 2018. Infrahealth 2019 - Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Infrastructure in Healthcare 2019. Vol. 3.Reports of the European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies (EUSSET)(10.18420/ihc2019_006)
- Bagalkot, N. et al., 2018. Towards enhancing everyday pregnancy care. Presented at: IndiaHCI 2018 Bangalore, India 16-18 December 2018. IndiaHCI'18: Proceedings of the 9th Indian Conference on Human Computer Interaction. New York: Association for Computing Machinery. , pp.71-74. (10.1145/3297121.3297130)
- Crossley, S. G. M. et al., 2018. Understanding youth's ability to interpret 3D printed physical activity data and identify associated intensity levels (Preprint). JMIR (10.2196/11253)
- Asanza, V. et al., 2018. Finding a dynamical model of a social norm physical activity intervention. Presented at: 2017 IEEE Second Ecuador Technical Chapters Meeting (ETCM) Salinas 16-20 October 2017. 2017 IEEE Second Ecuador Technical Chapters Meeting (ETCM 2017). IEEE(10.1109/ETCM.2017.8247450)
- Turner, L. D. , Allen, S. M. and Whitaker, R. M. 2017. Reachable but not receptive: enhancing smartphone interruptibility prediction by modelling the extent of user engagement with notifications. Pervasive and Mobile Computing 40 , pp.480-494. (10.1016/j.pmcj.2017.01.011)
- Heintz, M. , Law, E. L. and Verdezoto, N. 2017. Comparing paper and software tool for participatory design from scratch. Presented at: 31st International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference (HCI 2017) Sunderland, England 3-6 July 2017. Published in: Hall, L. et al., HCI '17: Proceedings of the 31st British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction Conference. Swindon, GBR: BCS Learning & Development Ltd.. , pp.1-12. (10.14236/ewic/HCI2017.51)
- Stisen, A. and Verdezoto Dias, N. 2017. Clinical and non-clinical handovers: designing for critical moments. Presented at: CSCW '17: Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing Portland, US Feb 2017. CSCW '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. New York, US: Association for Computing Machinery. , pp.2166-2178. (10.1145/2998181.2998333)
- Meyer, J. and Eslambolchilar, P. 2017. Research challenges of emerging technologies supporting life-long health and wellbeing. Presented at: MMHealth 2017: 2nd Annual Workshop on Multimedia for Personal Health and Health Care USA 23 October 2017. Proceeding MMHealth '17: Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Multimedia for Personal Health and Health Care. , pp.27-34.
- Rasmussen, M. K. et al., 2017. Exploring the flexibility of everyday practices for shifting energy consumption through clockcast. Presented at: 29th Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (OzCHI 2017) Brisbane, Australia 28 November - 1 December 2017. OZCHI '17: Proceedings of the 29th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction. ACM. , pp.296-306. (10.1145/3152771.3152803)
Events
Our unit meets regularly on Thursdays at 10:00.
Seminars
During teaching terms we also have regular talks and seminars at Cybersecurity, Privacy and Human-Centred Computing Section on Wednesdays at 11:00.
To participate in any of these events please get in touch with us: eslambolchilarp@cardiff.ac.uk.
PhD and project supervision opportunities
All academic members of staff involved in the unit are open for PhD, MRes, MPhil, MSc or BSc project supervision. Please contact academic members of staff directly to discuss project ideas
If you are interested in doing a PhD with us and you are self-funded we have the following PhD ideas you can get involved in.
- Human-Building Interaction in a changing climate: delivering resilience in performance, wellbeing, health and safety.
- Audio target calibration and localisation in augmented reality
- Navigation and pathfinding while multi-tasking on smartphones
- Shape-changing artifacts for behaviour change addressing societal challenges
Schools
Next steps
Research that matters
Our research makes a difference to people’s lives as we work across disciplines to tackle major challenges facing society, the economy and our environment.
Postgraduate research
Our research degrees give the opportunity to investigate a specific topic in depth among field-leading researchers.
Our research impact
Our research case studies highlight some of the areas where we deliver positive research impact.