iSchool Research Seminars
Research Seminar Series - Spring 2013
All are welcome - no need to book.
All seminars take place in the Information School, Regent Court, Room 204, from 3:30pm to 4:30pm (unless otherwise stated), and will be followed by a coffee reception in the iSpace.
User Experience: How people make judgements about design quality
Professor Alistair Sutcliffe, University of Manchester & UCLIC, London
Wednesday 17th April
Models and theories of user experience (UX) range from generalised cognitive constructs such as pragmatics and hedonics proposed by Hassenzahl to contextual –situated approaches advocated by Wright and McCarthy among others. In the middle ground Lingaard, de Angeli & Sutcliffe argue that UX is a time dependent process of judgement influenced by several criteria ranging from functionality and content to interaction, usability and aesthetics. We know from several experiments and empirical studies that users’ overall judgement of experience is context dependent, i.e. influenced by their task and prior knowledge and that judgement is domain dependent e.g. for entertainment applications, aesthetics and interaction will dominate, whereas for business oriented domains, content, services and brand tend to be more important. In this talk I will review recent experiments we have carried out to investigate the relative importance of interaction design in user experience including new approaches to link UX measures to the reasons for user judgement derived from qualitative data. This will be followed by a discussion of research towards a theoretical model of UX that predicts which design qualities contribute to overall user satisfaction and engaging experience in interactive products.
Two theoretical approaches to understanding reader behaviour
Briony Birdi
Wednesday 24th April
In my reader-centred research I have frequently employed two theoretical approaches from two quite different disciplines, namely reader response theory from English Literature, and personal construct theory from Social Psychology. In this seminar I will explore the application of these two theories to research in reader attitudes and/or behaviour, showing how they can be adapted to make a valuable contribution to LIS research.
GIS analysis of the BBC Voices Project
Dr John Holliday
Wednesday 1st May
The recent BBC Voices project (www.bbc.co.uk/voices) has resulted in a wealth of linguistic data which illustrate the diversity of the British language. The Voices project includes over three hundred recordings made by BBC radio journalists between October 2004 and June 2005, the largest survey of the English language ever made. In addition, online surveys have been used to collect data on, amongst other things, the types of words that people use in everyday speech. The data collected help to illustrate the close relationship between the use of language and our geographical, social and cultural identity.
The Voices data have been analysed and characterised into three descriptor types:
· everyday words used for a selection of 38 terms or ‘concepts’, such as ‘playing truant’;
· a selection of features which characterise grammatical variation;
· a selection of lexical features which characterise phonetic variation.
Techniques in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have been used to further investigate the relationship between language and geographical identity in order to visually present and analyse this relationship. Clustering has been carried out on each of the three descriptor types. The clusters are presented on a map in order to determine if a relationship exists between geography and descriptor type and, if so, whether areas of natural language in the UK can be identified. The study also analyses the co-correlation between features, examining which combinations of dependent linguistic features can be used characterise each geographical area. Further work uses Bayesian Learning to build models for each of these areas of natural language. These models can then be tested in an attempt to identify the geographical identity of a test subject, essentially an automated ‘Professor Higgins’.
The Leeds Virtual Microscope
Dr Roy Ruddle, Alexander von Humboldt Fellow; Reader in Interactive Systems, and Director of Research, School of Computing, Leeds University, UK.
Wednesday 8th May
The Leeds Virtual Microscope is an interactive visualization system, capable of rendering gigapixel virtual slides onto high-resolution, wall-sized displays. I will describe the six years of research we have conducted, developing the Microscope, and evaluating its use for the diagnosis of cancer, the training of histopathology specialists, and the education of medical students. In particular I will focus on the solutions we have developed for the multi-scale navigation of these huge image datasets.
Research data management and libraries: current activities and future priorities
Dr Stephen Pinfield
Wednesday 15th May
This presentation reports research carried out at the end of 2012 to survey UK universities to understand in detail the ways in which libraries are currently involved in research data management (RDM) and the extent to which the development of RDM services is a strategic priority for them. The research shows that libraries were offering limited RDM services, with highest levels of activity in large research-intensive institutions. There were major challenges associated with skills gaps, resourcing and cultural change. However, libraries are currently involved in developing new institutional RDM policies and services, and see this as an important part of their future role. Priorities such as provision of RDM advisory and training services are emerging. A systematic comparison between these results and other recent studies will be presented in order to create a full picture of activities and trends. An innovation hype-cycle framework can usefully be deployed to understand possible futures and Abbott’s theory of professions used to gain an insight into how libraries are competing to extend their jurisdiction whilst at the same time working collaboratively with other stakeholders.