People and Technology Meeting Group

John McCarthy

John Groeger

Jurek Kirakowski

Eve Griffin

Vivien Rooney

Mary Joyce

Nóirín Curran

Peter Flynn

Anthony Yiu

Ruth Madigan

Steve Warren

Mary Galvin

Dr. John McCarthy, BA, MA, PhD

My research is concerned with understanding people's experience of emerging social, personal, and work technologies. This research is broadly pragmatic and socio-cultural and one of its aims is to inform the design of usable and enriching technologies. In 2004, I wrote a book with Peter Wright (Technology as Experience, MIT Press) that developed an account of human experience as simultaneously aesthetic, sensual, intellectual, and emotional, providing a theoretical basis for user experience research. In 2010, I wrote another book with Peter (Experience-centred design: Designers, users and communities in dialogue, Morgan Claypool), which focuses on methods of experience-centred design. Broadly speaking, this experience-centred design project aims to evaluate where HCI has gotten to in its attempts to understand users, especially in the light of design-led research in HCI and qualitative research in the social sciences. This research feeds back into my teaching in the areas of qualitative research, theory and psychology, and people and technology.

I am interested in supervising research projects that relate to the projects and areas outlined above: e.g. people's experiences with technology in interesting contexts (e.g. as I get older I have an emerging interest in the potential that technology has for older people and in health care settings), particular kinds of person-technology experiences (enchantment, intimacy), aesthetic aspects of interaction with and through information and communication technologies (e.g. social networks and mobile phones), user-centred service design (e.g. hospice care, school), and the design process itself.

Prof. John Groeger, BA, MA, PhD, C.Psychol., FBPsS

I am interested in how people become skilled operators of complex technology, and in particular how understanding cognition enables us to explain and predict performance when using technology in highly familiar, and also in novel settings. While at the Applied Psychology Unit in Cambridge (1985-1994), I was encouraged to take up the challenge understanding driver behaviour poses for psychology. Understanding Driving (Psychology Press, 2000), summarises reasonably well what I believe the major questions are, even if I would demur from some of the answers I then gave. The time I spent as Professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Surrey (1995-2008), afforded me the opportunity to extend this approach to over and underground train driving, in addition to rekindling interest in sleep, cognition and consciousness. I am Editor of Elsevier’s Transportation Research: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, and a former President of Traffic Psychology, a Division of the International Association of Applied Psychology. Over the twenty-five years in which I have studied this aspect of people and technology, my research has been generously supported by UK Research Councils, EU, insurers and Government departments in UK, US and Australia. The Road Safety Authority (RSA) recently awarded me my first ever Irish research grant, to study how drivers learn to handle hazards (Announcement available here). Recent people and technology related publications can be found below.

Recent relevant publications

Groeger, J.A. (2003). Trafficking in cognition. Transportation Research: Traffic Psychology & Behaviour. 4, 235-248.
Chapman, P. & Groeger., J.A. (2004). Risk and the recognition of driving situations. Applied Cognitive Psychology. 18, 1231-1249.
Groeger, J.A. , Clegg, B.A. & O’Shea, G. (2005). Conjunction searching of simulated railway signals: A cautionary note. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19, 973-984.
Groeger, J.A. (2006). Youthfulness, inexperience and sleep loss: the problems young drivers face and those they pose for us. Injury Prevention. 12(Suppl I):19–24.
Groeger, J.A. & Banks, A.P. (2007). Anticipating the Content and Circumstances of skill transfer: Unrealistic expectations of driver training and graduated licensing. Ergonomics, 50,1250-63.
Groeger, J.A. & Clegg, B.A. (2007). Changes in the rate of driving instruction: Learning to drive and the power law of practice. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 21(9), 1229-1244.
Gregory J.J., Stephens A.N., Steele N.A., Groeger J.A. (2009). The Effect of Upper Limb Immobilisation on Driving Safety. Injury. 40, 3, 253-256.
Stephens, A.N. & Groeger, J.A. (2009). Situational specificity of trait influences on drivers' appraisals and driving behaviour. Transportation Research: Traffic Psychology & Behaviour, 12, 29-39.

Dr. Jurek Kirakowski, MA, PhD

Jurek Kirakowski comes from a practical computer science and psychology background. His speciality is quantitative measurement in human-computer interaction and he has contributed numerous books, articles, and workshops to this theme. His major research goal has been to show and indeed prove how the quality of use of Information Technology products can, and should be, quantitatively measured in an objective manner in order to make the technology more effective. He is a Statutory Lecturer in the School of Applied Psychology where he teaches on methodology and statistics issues as well as HCI, and is also the director of the Human Factors Research Group. This group, which was founded in 1984, has developed three main objectives under his leadership: to expand and disseminate information about usability in the wider Information Technology community; to engage in innovative projects with industry in a consultancy capacity; and to develop reliable measurement tools. For the latter, Dr Kirakowski and his group have contributed the SUMI (Software Usability Measurement Inventory), and most recently the WAMMI (Web site Analysis and Measurement Inventory) questionnaires, which are both by now 'de-facto' standards in their respective areas.

Eve Griffin, BA

I graduated with a degree in Applied Psychology from UCC in 2003, and have recently submitted my PhD thesis for examination to the School of Applied Psychology, UCC. My PhD was concerned with investigating the quality of Internet relationships - investigating how and why people sustain relationships in online contexts. I am also interested in how language is constructed and used by people within Internet-mediated contexts. I also have a strong interest in HCI, questionnaire design, and peoples' experiences of social technology, and how this technology can affect relationship formation. I currently work as a Research Psychologist with the National Suicide Research Foundation in Cork City, where my role involves the coordination of the National Registry for Deliberate Self-Harm.

Vivien Rooney, BCL, H. Dip. Applied Psychology

Vivien Rooney studied Law as an undergraduate at UCC. Going on to study Psychology at postgraduate level, she was the 2006 recipient of the Peter Dempsey Award in Applied Psychology. Vivien is currently completing her doctorate in Applied Psychology, supported by a scholarship award from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS), 2007 to 2010.

Vivien's interests are in experiences with technology, specifically those involving personal relationships. Her doctorate concerns the experience of intimacy mediated by communication technology. This involves an exploration of the interplay between intimate relationships and emerging technology. The research is a longitudinal qualitative study of intimate relationships lived at a geographic distance. The study explores how and why technology is used within that context, the implications for intimacy lived at a distance, and the implications for technology use.

Other areas of interest include privacy and technology. For instance, how people make sense of their decisions regarding photograph sharing via technology. Qualitative research methods were used to develop an in-depth understanding of this process.

Papers:

Rooney, V. Social Relationships and Technology: is it possible to maintain intimate relationships in cyberspace? Proceedings of The British Psychological Society (Social Psychology Section Annual Conference, Winchester, UK, September 2010.
Foley, S. N. and Rooney, V. Qualitative Analysis for Trust Management: Towards a Model of Photograph Sharing Indiscretion. Proceedings of the 17th International Security Protocols Workshop, Cambridge, UK, April 2009. Springer Verlag, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, in press.
Rooney, V. and McCarthy J. Enhancing Human Computer Interaction through understanding Human Interaction. Proceedings of Irish Human-Computer Interaction Conference, September 2008.

Mary Joyce, BA, H. Dip Psych

Mary Joyce studied Music and Psychology at undergraduate level in UCC. She then went on to complete the Higher Diploma in Psychology, also at UCC. Mary is currently a PhD student in the School of Applied Psychology. Her research is concerned with the measurement of Internet attitudes and Internet self-efficacy. In particular, she is focused on developing standardised scales which measure these two constructs independent of one another. On development of these scales, she also hopes to investigate demographic differences (e.g. age, gender) in people's attitudes towards the Internet and their feelings of self-efficacy when using the Internet.

Mary has worked as a demonstrator for undergraduate modules in Statistics and Research Methods for the Applied Psychology course and also as a tutor for BA undergraduate Psychology modules in UCC.

Nóirín Curran, BA

Nóirín Curran holds a Bachelor of Applied Psychology degree from University College Cork. Since 2007, she has been a member of the People and Technology Meeting Group, the Human Factors Research Group, and a PhD student in UCC's School of Applied Psychology.

Currently, Nóirín's interests lie in the social aspect of games and gaming with particular attention to the area of Human Computer Interaction and specifically in communication and social interactions through online media such as online games and social networking sites. Within this context, her postgraduate research activity involves the study of immersion in role-playing games.

Previously, she has worked as a demonstrator for the Experimental Design and Statistical Applications module and the Research Methods in Psychology module for the undergraduate Applied Psychology course in UCC. Her previous research has been carried out in the user experience of tablet devices, the Quality Management System Six Sigma and other aspects of Human Computer Interaction.

Peter Flynn, MA, MICS

Peter is completing a part-time PhD in the usability of editing software for structured documents. While there are many systems available to do this, they all require an in-depth understanding of structural markup techniques, which makes it hard for them to find acceptance with authors. Peter is testing a number of changes to the editing interface to see if better semantic relevance can improve usability.

Peter originally studied languages, but switched to a business degree and worked for several years in the printing and publishing industry. An interest in computer typesetting led him into the IT business, from where he joined UCC and became Ireland's first webmaster. He now runs the Electronic Publishing Unit, providing support for e-documents and web services.

Anthony Yiu, BA

My name is Anthony Yiu and my area of interest would be about how to simulate human-human conversation by using Artificial Intelligence. There are several criticisms of using A.I. to simulate human conversation, for example the notion of intentionality, emotionality and common grounding etc. The general result from today’s most advance chatbots are still unconvincing. In this research, we are going to find out the basic elements that contribute to the unnaturalness of the conversation, and then a questionnaire/checklist would be constructed based on the data. The questionnaire/checklist will be used to evaluate four different chatbots that are based on different approaches. The first would be the original chatbot (Eliza). The second would be based on extremely large database (Encarta). The third would be based on Eliza plus emotional factors (personality forge) and the final one will be based on my assumption from researching in cognitive psychology.

Ruth Madigan, BA, MSc

My research is looking at driver behaviour, in particular the manner in which both novice and experienced drivers handle hazards encountered while driving. For the first study of my PhD, I have developed two types of hazard perception tests using UCC's Driving Simulator Laboratory. The second of these tests, which focuses on drivers' behavioural reactions to hazards in the driving simulator, has been found to discriminate between novice and experienced drivers who also differ in age.

Safe driving depends on the transfer of what is learned during driving training to a wider range of circumstances than could ever be encountered (Groeger & Banks, 2007). In order to investigate whether or not such transfer of learning can occur in a driving context I am developing a driver training programme which focuses on intense training in perception and control skills, along with training in situation awareness. Transfer of learning can then be assessed using the hazard perception tests that have been developed.

This research is funded by the Road Safety Authority of Ireland.

Steve Warren, BA, MSc.

Steve Warren graduated from UCC with a BA in Economics and Psychology, and then attended the University of Glasgow to complete a MSc in Psychological Studies. He has started his PhD this year, and is currently looking at computer-human interaction, and in particular how virtual worlds such as MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) can have a positive influence on personality. The majority of research on the influence MMORPGs hold over the player has been to investigate the negative effects, such as addiction and violence/aggression. Delving into developmental psychology, identity formation, life satisfaction and meaning in life, Steve is exploring ways in which these games can have a positive effect and change players for the better.

Mary Galvin, BA, H. Dip

Having completed a BA in Marketing and Languages in WIT and a Certificate in Business Studies at the IAE, Montpellier, France, Mary gained three years industry experience before returning to UCC to complete a Higher Diploma in Psychology. She is now pursuing a PhD in the School of Applied Psychology under the Digital Arts and Humanities Programme, which is funded under the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions Cycle 5. Her topic of interest is Autobiographical Narratives: The Potential of Digital Media to enrich the experiences of and explore the relationship between Memory and Identity.

Existing research on memory and digital media overlooks the aesthetic experience of artifactual forms of 'memory', and the potential of digital forms to play a role similar to, or distinctly different from, corporeal objects. To address this, Mary's research aims to understand the aesthetic experience of participants in memory ritual, particularly digitally-mediated memory rituals.

By developing an understanding of the psychological process underlying our experiences with our objects, the project aims to increase experience-centred design sensibilities and skills. The area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) which already benefits greatly from input from psychology can also benefit from an understanding of the psychological processes involved in cherishing objects as it will lead to the design of technologies to support people's practices with the things they cherish.