PhD Thesis and Interact 2015

I haven’t updated my website in months, mostly because I’ve been focusing on finishing my PhD research. In May I started writing my thesis and I’m now approaching the end of it. With 60,000 words written and my first draft almost complete, I am almost there. It’s been an exciting couple of months writing that up and I’m looking forward to finishing. Not because I haven’t enjoyed it, but because it’s the most substantial piece of work I’ve ever undertaken and it’s exciting seeing it all come together into a single piece of writing.

Not much else has happened in that time, although I did get two submissions accepted to Interact 2015: a poster [1] and a demo [2]. Both describe interactive light feedback, something which has featured a lot in my recent PhD research. I describe interactive light feedback in more detail here. Interact is in Bamberg in Germany, this year, which I’m excited about visiting! Nearer to the time (mid-September) I’ll show more photos and maybe a video of the demo I’ll be giving at the conference.

[1] Towards In-Air Gesture Control of Household Appliances with Limited Displays
E. Freeman, S. Brewster, and V. Lantz.
In Interact 2015 Posters. 2015.

[2] Interactive Light Feedback: Illuminating Above-Device Gesture Interfaces
E. Freeman, S. Brewster, and V. Lantz.
In Interact 2015 Demos. 2015.

Posters, SICSA HCI and Second Year Viva

SICSA HCI Lanyard

June has gotten off to an exciting start! I won a poster presentation competition, got a poster paper into Mobile HCI ’14 and scheduled my annual progress review. I’ve arranged my 2nd year viva, which is an annual progress review for my PhD research. Finishing and submitting my report felt a little anticlimactic compared to last year; I suppose the first year review is much more important and by this stage it’s more of a checkpoint. Lately I’ve been writing and research planning a lot so I’m looking forward to getting back to actually doing research. Designing, making, all those fun things that make HCI awesome! Yesterday was the SICSA HCI yearly meetup, which was good fun. This year it was hosted by University of Dundee so travelling to Dundee was nice. I spent a lot of time there as a kid, especially around the university campus, so it was cool to go back there and see how everything has changed. Highlights of the day included keynotes from Miguel Nacenta and David Flatla. Miguel presented some really cool research and David was so damn entertaining! We also had a few posters and a demo from our group. I won the poster presentation competition, which was a nice surprise. My poster (below) gave a general overview of my PhD research and showed off a couple of projects.

SICSA HCI Poster
SICSA HCI ’14 Poster

Winning the poster competition must have been a good omen because I returned home to a notification from Mobile HCI saying my poster was accepted. That paper and poster are about two gesture design studies from the start of my PhD. I’ll post more about them another time.

Mobile HCI Doctoral Consortium

I’ve been accepted for the doctoral consortium at Mobile HCI ’14! I’m looking forward to it – it’ll be great to get a grilling from others and will help with my thesis, something which becomes increasingly daunting knowing that I’m halfway through my three years of PhD research.