iSchool Research Seminars
Research Seminar Series - Winter to 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.
Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment?
Dr. Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Senior Research Scientist at OCLC Research
Wednesday 20th February
Abstract: Dr. Connaway will discuss a collaborative study with JISC and the University of Oxford, in collaboration with the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. The longitudinal study tracks US and UK participants’ shifts in their motivations and forms of engagement with technology and information as they transition between four educational stages. The quantitative and qualitative methods, including ethnographic methods that devote individual attention to the subjects, yield a very rich data set enabling multiple methods of analysis. Instead of reporting general information-seeking habits and technology use, this study explores how the subjects get their information based on the context and situation of their needs during an extended period of time, identifying if and how their behaviours change.
Dr. Lynn Silipigni Connaway leads the OCLC Research User Behavior Studies & Synthesis activities theme. Prior to joining OCLC Research, Lynn was the vice president of Research and Library Systems at NetLibrary. She also was director of the Library and Information Services Department at the University of Denver, where she taught several courses in library and information science. During her tenure there, Lynn conducted research on the subjects of organization and access of electronic documents, as well as the education of information professionals. She also has served on the faculty of the University of Missouri, Columbia and as a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
User Experience: How people make judgements about design quality
Professor Alistair Sutcliffe, University of Manchester & UCLIC, London
Wednesday 27th February
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.
Alistair Sutcliffe retired from the University of Manchester in 2012 but continues his research with colleagues in Lancaster and UCL, London. His research interests span a wide area within Human Computer Interaction and Software Engineering. In HCI particular interests are interaction theory, and user interface design methods for the web, multimedia, and safety critical systems; application of cognitive theory to design, and design of complex socio-technical systems. In software engineering he specialises in requirements engineering methods and tools, scenario based design, knowledge reuse and theories of domain knowledge. Alistair Sutcliffe is a leading member of both the international HCI and requirements engineering communities. He serves on the editorial boards of ACM-TOCHI, REJ and JASE. Alistair Sutcliffe is founder of IFIP TC-13 Working Group 13.2 ‘Methodology for User Centred Design’ and member of IFIP working groups 8.1 (information systems) and 2.9 (requirements engineering) and is the editor of the ISO standard 14915, on Multimedia user interface design. He has over 200 publications including five books and several edited volumes of papers and was awarded the IFIP silver core in 2000.