BIG PhD scholarships opportunities
About Us
Bristol Interaction and Graphics is united by a common interest in creative interdisciplinarity. We act as a hub for collaboration between social scientists, artists, scientists and engineers to combine efficient and aesthetic design. We are particularly interested in areas which couple the design of devices with deployment and evaluation in public settings. Members of the group have expertise in research areas spanning human-computer interaction, visual and tactile perception, imaging, visualisation and computer-supported collaboration.
Multisensory Interaction Design to Promote Social Engagement With and For People with Dementia
Most technology designed to support people with dementia tends to focus on functional impairments that characterize dementia, e.g. ensuring safety and security of dementia patients [1], at the expense of the experiential consequences of design choices [2]. Whereas, research that examines the use of technology as a means for supporting memory loss often place a significant emphasis on caregivers and family input (e.g. [3]) or decide on the technology without participants feedback or input (e.g. [4]). This can lead to assumptions being made about the issues people with dementia face and what technology is appropriate to address such issues, which in turn could compromise the suitably of technology for the individual. This PhD project will investigate the design and impact of interactive sensing technologies as a means to personalise and incorporate both active and passive multisensory feedback to support social engagement with and for people with dementia. In particular, it will apply a community-centered design methodology to leverage the use of intelligent sensing technologies and multisensory interaction in the monitoring of interpersonal behaviour and the design of multisensory feedback to support people with dementia to engage in Reminiscence Therapy in more meaningful ways with their families and caregivers.
Main Supervisor: Oussama Metatla
Contact: o.metatla@bristol.ac.uk
Voice User interfaces in Schools
What is the potential of commodity voice-based assitants, e.g. Amazon Echo, Google Home, for inclusive education? This PhD project will investigate how to design support for visually impaired and sighted children through voice-based technology. We are interested in undesrstanding and designing voice interaction to support inclusive pedagogy, and in how voice interaction can be augmented with with multisensory displays. The project will involve designing, developing and evalluating these technologies in school settings.
Main Supervisor: Oussama Metatla
Contact: o.metatla@bristol.ac.uk
Multisensory Displays for Mobility in Schools
How can we exploit multisensory display techniques (e.g. audio, haptics, smell, and thermal feedback) to support independent mobility of visually impaired children in mainstream schools? How can such multisensory display be designed to engage both sighted and visually impaired learners in schools. This PhD project will develop and evluate multisensory mobility support to promote playful non-visual spatial navigation in school settings.
Main Supervisor: Oussama Metatla
Contact: o.metatla@bristol.ac.uk
Crossmodal Principles in Inclusive Educational Technologies
There is increasing evidence that information we receive from one sensory modality (e.g. hearing) can influence how we perceive and interpret information we revceive from another sensory modality (e.g. tactile or visual interpretation). This PhD project will investigate how principles of crossmodal perception can be exploited to design educational technologies that are more inclusive of visually impaired and sighted learners.
Main Supervisor: Oussama Metatla
Contact: o.metatla@bristol.ac.uk
DYI Toolkits for Inclusive Education
Teachers and teaching assistants in mainstream schools often have to adapt learning materials so that they are accessible to visually impaired pupils. This PhD project will develop and evaluate a toolkit for supporting this prevalent maker culture in schools to allow for rapid prototyping of engaging multisensory learning materials.
Main Supervisor: Oussama Metatla
Contact: o.metatla@bristol.ac.uk
3D printing of electronics
We are currently working on printing techniques that use acoustics to printing conductive materials. Especially interesting is to investigate how to manipulate particles to improve structural cohesion and conductivity. We would also like to deploy and evaluate these new techniques in real design settings.
Main Supervisor: Mike Fraser
Contact: mike.fraser@bristol.ac.uk
Wearable gesture control
Our work involves integrating sensors into smart watches that detect hand movement/input and are calibrated and classified using machine learning. Signals we have used include ultrasound, infrared tomography, EMG and skin pressure. We are particularly interested in issues of fusion and complimentary of different sensor types, minimising power consumption and automated calibration.
Main Supervisor: Mike Fraser
Contact: mike.fraser@bristol.ac.uk
Human-participant experimental platforms for controlled studies 'in the wild'
We're interested in designing and building platforms which can support large-scale experimental studies 'in the wild'. This would include application of blockchain and agent-based modelling to design and control human-participants hypothesis testing in large scale 'live' data sets.
Main Supervisor: Mike Fraser
Contact: mike.fraser@bristol.ac.uk
Hacking Hearing Loss
This PhD would be a close collaboration with a hearing loss community group that is looking to "hack hearing loss." Through a bottom up approach to user centred design, the student would engage with this community to determine the needs for new or hacked hearing loss technologies and then engage with the community to develop the technology and disseminate it.
Main Supervisor: Aisling O'Kane
Contact: a.okane@bristol.ac.uk
Multi-Modal Engagement with Diabetes Data
This PhD would be in close collaboration with a diabetes technology start-up. Through engaging with people self managing their Type 1 diabetes with data, the student would design different inputs and output modalities for this data and start to look at ways people can classify their data in bespoke and personal ways.
Main Supervisor: Aisling O'Kane
Contact: a.okane@bristol.ac.uk
Translating Sign Language in Real Time
We are interested in how sign language might be translated in real time. This project would be using a user centred design process with people who use British Sign Language in their everyday lives. A PhD candidate should be interested in human-in-the-loop machine learning techniques, and have experience conducting participatory design and qualitative studies.
Main Supervisor: Aisling O'Kane
Contact: a.okane@bristol.ac.uk
Co-Designing Smart Homes
This PhD will be in close collaboration with the SPHERE project. Using the SPHERE system as a toolkit, this PhD would involve Co-Designing different set ups of the sensored home with bespoke user interfaces for different clinical conditions with both clinicians and end users.
Main Supervisor: Aisling O'Kane
Contact: a.okane@bristol.ac.uk
Hacking diabetes
This PhD would be exploratory in nature and be reactionary to the developments that are ongoing in the DIY diabetes hacker community. Through a bottom up approach, the student would be co designing technologies to support the design, debrief and dissemination of personal health technologies for the self management of type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
Main Supervisor: Aisling O'Kane
Contact: a.okane@bristol.ac.uk
Designing simulation software for shape-changing devices
We are interested in the design of shape-changing devices, e.g. imagine a phone curling its edges to transform into a controller when playing a game. Although there are developments in material and computer science to create such devices, there is a lack of simulation software allowing designers to create devices and simulate interaction before building real prototypes. The goal of this project is to fill in this gap. (design + software + user studies).
Main Supervisor: Anne Roudaut
Contact: anne.roudaut@bristol.ac.uk
Shape-changing fabric for behaviour changes
We are interested in the design of shape changing fabric, e.g. imagine a t-shirt stretching your back to invite you to take a better sitting posture, or contracting the fabric to give better support when running. The goal of this project is to explore different designs of actuated fabric, to build physical prototypes and evaluate them in user studies. (design + hardware + user studies).
Main Supervisor: Anne Roudaut
Contact: anne.roudaut@bristol.ac.uk
Free form display
We want to liberate displays from their flat and rigid envelopes and allow screens to be available on every surfaces, even the most complex topologies. The goal is to explore scenarios of free form displays, implement advanced prototypes and evaluate them through user studies. (design + hardware + user studies).
Main Supervisor: Anne Roudaut
Contact: anne.roudaut@bristol.ac.uk