People and Technology Meeting Group

John McCarthy

My research is concerned with understanding people’s experience of emerging social, personal, and work technologies and their use of those technologies in sustaining relationships. 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. This was intended to provide conceptual foundations for experience-centred design in HCI. I am now working on the follow-up project, again with Peter, a methodologically oriented analysis of user research in user-centred design. Broadly speaking, this 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. qualitative research on 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.

Dr. Jurek Kirakowski

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 Department 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.

Mike Brown

I have studied at UCC for over eight years and have recently submitted my doctoral thesis titled "Applying Usability Heuristics to Computer Game Design". My research interests are quite varied and include computer game design, multi-modal design, usability and mix-method design. I'm currently involved in the writing of a book about user experience with computer games. My current research is investigating the impact of multi-modal input devices on human-computer interaction. I have taught in a variety of areas including introductory psychology, social psychology, statistical methods, research design and human-computer interaction. In my spare time I enjoy a wide range of gaming hobbies: role-playing games; computer games; war gaming and board games

Rob Comber

My research investigates users' experience of person-to-person interactions in mediated environments, particularly looking at social network sites (SNSs) and interested-based online communities. For my PhD research I have participated in two websites, Bebo and DeviantArt, as part of an extensive three year Virtual Ethnography, to better understanding people's friendships and how they are built, maintained or lost online. My thesis explores my time as a participant observer on these websites and unravels the shared experiences of users as they first learn to navigate a website and later navigate a social space. The analysis points to the role of friendships as primary facilitators of individuals’ online navigation and socially meaningful engagement. Furthermore, the research findings have begun to unfurl the complexities of online friendships and the experiences of connecting and ‘connectedness’ in social networks. I have received funding from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) to complete my research.

Mórna Ní Chonchúir

I am a final year PhD student working under Dr. John McCarthy. I graduated with an Honours Degree in Applied Psychology from UCC in 2002. My doctoral research centres on aesthetics in Interaction Design and theory with a view to informing and critically evaluating aesthetic design. My research examines the notion of agency and its evocation in Interaction Design literature on aesthetic experience. Specifically, in theory and applications devoted to designing such aesthetic experiences as beauty, enchantment, ambience and calmness. Analysis is both conceptual and empirical. Conceptual analysis critiques theory and application of aesthetic experience in Interaction Design literature. Empirical analysis then offers lived exemplars of aesthetic experiences, as a means of lending real-life relevance to conceptual claims. This empirical leg also finds root in what I see as a danger, manifest in Interaction Design literature, of shotgun annexations of aesthetic terms and experiences into design. In this sense, close, qualitative study of lived aesthetics has rhetorical value as a means of underscoring the value of careful dealings with aesthetic experiences which, by definition, resist simplification. A cultural psychological framework emphasising agency is applied to both analyses. Agency underscores peoples' situated, expressive, creative, sensuous faculties, elements underplayed when Interaction Design construes aesthetic experience as designable as opposed to emergent in-interaction. Thus, the agency framework is uniquely place to critique claims for the designability of aesthetic experience and the possible pitfalls of misusing such concepts.

More broadly, I am interested in the social and ethical implications of design. Design responsibility reflects an ever-growing attention to and critical thinking upon the possible impact of design and design theory - of conceptualising, creating, producing, using and putting artifacts into the world. These implications become particularly acute in the use of aesthetic concepts in design. As concepts whose value may lie in their emergent, complex quality, an added weight of responsibility falls upon design practice and comment in their dealings with aesthetic experiences.

This research is funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS)

Nóirí­n Curran

Nóirí­n Curran holds a Bachelor of Applied Psychology degree from University College Cork. Since September 2007, she has been a member of the Human Factors Research Group (HFRG) and a PhD track student in UCC's Department of Applied Psychology where she works as a demonstrator for the Experimental Design and Statistical Applications, and Research Methods in Psychology modules for the undergraduate Applied Psychology course. Her previous research in the HFRG has been carried out in the area of Quality Management Systems such as Six Sigma. 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 implications of digital interaction for role-playing games.

Anthony Yiu

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.