
Simon RobinsonUniversity of Derby
Simon Robinson
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (102)
Internet of Things (IoT) technology is found in many homes. These systems enable tasks to be done more effectively or efficiently-e.g., securing property, monitoring and adjusting resources, tracking behaviours for well-being, and so on. The system presented here was designed with older adults; the vast majority of home IoT systems marketed to this...
What do pedestrian crossings, ATMs, elevators and ticket machines have in common? These are just a few of the ubiquitous yet essential elements of public-space infrastructure that rely on physical buttons or touchscreens; common interactions that, until recently, were considered perfectly safe to perform. This work investigates how we might integra...
Due to public concerns over touch-based disease transmission, tangible and embedded interfaces are perhaps the most unsuited technology during a pandemic. Even so, this case study documents the development and evaluation of such a system from early 2020 when people were told to avoid actions that might spread the virus (e.g., touch). Adding to the...
Active PinScreen is a tactile feedback grid that can be mounted on the back of a mobile device to give spatio-temporal direction information over multiple fingers, synchronised with the digital content on the phone's touchscreen. The main image shows a close-up view of the device's 1 mm diameter pins. The small nature of the Active PinScreen (as se...
In this paper, we review and describe how different pho-tovoltaic (PV) materials can be used for designing self-powered interfaces and interactions using indoor ambient light to both power the device and to detect simple shadow-based gestures. We consider seven points when comparing the material technologies: device efficiency, device stability, de...
The interactive, digital future with its seductive vision of
Internet-of-Things connected sensors, actuators and displays
comes at a high cost in terms of both energy demands and the
clutter it brings to the physical world. But what if such devices
were made of materials that enabled them to self-power their
interactive features? And, what if those...
“Designed in California” is a brand statement used by high-tech manufacturers to denote provenance and cachet of digital innovation and modernity. In this paper, we explore philosophically alternate design perspectives to those this statement embodies, reporting and reflecting on a long-term multi-sited project that seeks to diversify future-making...
Current haptic feedback techniques on handheld devices are applied to the finger pad or the palm of the user. These state-of-the-art approaches are coarse-grained and tend to be intrusive, rather than subtle. In contrast, we present a new feedback technique that applies stimuli around the periphery of the finger pulp, demonstrating how this can pro...
Mainstream digital interactions are spread over a plethora of devices and form-factors, from mobiles to laptops; printouts to large screens. For emergent users, however, such abundance of choice is rarely accessible or affordable. In particular, viewing mobile content on a larger screen, or printing out copies, is often not available. In this paper...
Touchscreens are the predominant medium for interactions with digital services; however, their current fixed form factor narrows the scope for rich physical interactions by limiting interaction possibilities to a single, planar surface. In this paper we introduce the concept of PickCells, a fully re-configurable device concept composed of cells, th...
This paper explores the use of conversational speech question and answer systems in the challenging context of public spaces in slums. A major part of this work is a comparison of the source and speed of the given responses; that is, either machine-powered and instant or human-powered and delayed. We examine these dimensions via a two-stage, multi-...
Digital painting is an increasingly popular medium of expression for many artists, yet when compared to its traditional equivalents of physical brushes and viscous paint it lacks a dimension of tangibility. We conducted observations and interviews with physical and digital artists, which gave us a strong understanding of the types of interactions u...
Being in nature is often regarded to be calming, relaxing and purifying. While technology has the potential to support engagement with nature, developing systems that provide support in an unobtrusive manner holds many challenges for interaction design. In this article, the authors describe their reflections around the NatureCHI workshop series. Th...
Being in nature is often regarded to be calming, relaxing and purifying. While technology has the potential to support engagement with nature, developing systems that provide support in an unobtrusive manner holds many challenges for interaction design. In this article, the articles describe their reflections around the NatureCHI workshop series. T...
We present APPropriate -- a novel mobile design to allow users to temporarily annex any Android device for their own use. APPropriate is a small, cheap storage pod, designed to be easily carried in a pocket or hidden within clothing. Its purpose is simple: to hold a copy of the local content an owner has on their mobile, liberating them from carryi...
Millions of homes worldwide enjoy access to digital content and services through smart speakers such as Amazon's Echo and Google's Home. Promotional materials and users' own videos typically show homes that have many well-resourced rooms, with good power and data infrastructures. Over the last several years, we have been working with slum communiti...
We present Tangible Drops, a visio-tactile display that for the first time provides physical visualization and tactile feedback using a planar liquid interface. It presents digital information interactively by tracing dynamic patterns on horizontal flat surfaces using liquid metal drops on a programmable electrode array. It provides tactile feedbac...
Mobile phones are the ubiquitous platform used by billions of people globally, every day. However, two concerns signal a pause for reflection and change. First, while mobiles have rapidly become indispensable, the effect that constant device use has on our lives, our experiences, and the interactions we have with others, has caused growing discomfo...
An actuated shape-changing interface with faster response and smaller pixel size using a liquid material can provide real time tangible interaction with the digital world in physical space. To this end, we demonstrate an interface that displays user-defined patterns dynamically using liquid metal droplets as programmable micro robots on a flat surf...
We present a programmable liquid matter which can dynamically transform its 2D shape into a variety of forms and present unique organic animations based on spatio-temporally controlled electric fields. We deployed a EGaIn (Gallium indium eutectic alloy) liquid metal as our smart liquid material since it features a superior electric conductivity in...
In this paper, we demonstrate a method for the dynamic 2D transformation of liquid matter and present unique organic animations based on spatio-temporally controlled electric fields. In particular, we deploy a droplet of liquid metal (Gallium indium eutectic alloy) in a 7x7 electrode array prototype system, featuring an integrated image tracking sy...
Being in nature is typically regarded to be calming, relaxing and purifying. When in nature, people often seek to be mobile through physical activity such as hiking. But also, nature provides an opportunity for meditative, mindful or inspiring experiences remote from urban everyday life. Mobile Technologies such as sports tracking technologies, ele...
This research forms part of a wider body of work focused around involving emergent users---those just beginning to get access to mobile devices---in the development and refinement of far-future technologies. In this paper we present an evaluation of a new type of deformable slider with emergent users, designed to investigate whether shape-changing...
Mainstream mobile interactions are focused around individual devices, with any collaboration happening via `the cloud'. We carried out design workshops with emergent users, revealing opportunities for novel collocated collaborative interactions. In this paper we present Better Together - a framework for disaggregating services, splitting interactio...
Over several years, our team has been involved in participatory design of novel future technologies with people in resource-constrained contexts in India and Kenya. A key motivator is to include these groups, who often have lower literacy, infrequent access to data connections, low exposure to technology, and other constraints, in the process of sh...
This work-in-progress presents early findings on using deformable interfaces with force input to enhance interactions with digital painting applications. Our prototype uses deformation to submerge controls to represent paint pots, and emerge controls to represent nibs. These controls can then be pressed or squeezed to change the colour or size used...
Many users value the ability to have quick and frequent sight of their mobiles when in public settings. However, in doing so, they expose themselves to potential risks, ranging from being targets of robbery to the more subtle social losses through being seen to be rude or inattentive to those around them. In nature, some animals can blend into thei...
Mobile and ubiquitous computing researchers have long envisioned future worlds for users in developed regions. Steered by such visions, they have innovated devices and services exploring the value of alternative propositions with and for individuals, groups and communities. Meanwhile, such radical and long-term explorations are uncommon for what ha...
This paper describes an approach to using physical-digital appropriation for navigation, piggybacking off the humble, ubiquitous barcode to facilitate cheap, scalable indoor wayfinding. We illustrate the technique by describing a prototype interface for navigating to specific books within a library. Our design—BookMark—provides visitors to the libr...
Rural developing regions are often defined in terms of their resource constraints, including limited technology exposure, lack of power, and low access to data connections (leading to an inability to access information from digital or physical sources), as well as being amongst the most socio-economically disadvantaged and least literate in their c...
This Special Issue focuses on the emerging use of wearable technologies for mobile collocated interactions. Rather than merely listing off the articles that follow, we wish to introduce this Special Issue by discussing the past, present, and future of this field in HCI through its theories, ongoing designs and research efforts, and emerging frame-...
In this paper we explore the potential for creating large pseudo-displays using posters instead of touchscreens. Interactive public displays are common in city centres, but may not be accessible to emergent users. However, the prevalence of increasingly smart, sensor-rich mobile devices offers an alternative. The PosterPointing concept uses physica...
Being in nature is typically regarded to be calming, relaxing and purifying. When in nature, people often seek physical activity like hiking, or meditative, mindful or inspiring experiences remote from the urban everyday life. However, the modern lifestyle easily extends technology use to all sectors of our everyday life, and e.g. the rise of sport...
In this paper we present the concept of Emergeables -- mobile surfaces that can deform or 'morph' to provide fully-actuated, tangible controls. Our goal in this work is to provide the flexibility of graphical touchscreens, coupled with the affordance and tactile benefits offered by physical widgets. In contrast to previous research in the area of d...
Apps are changing the world. If you work for a bank, an airline, an art gallery or a even a local coffee shop, you'll probably have helped create an app to connect and transact with your customers and visitors. As users, we consume these bite-sized chunks of digital goodness voraciously, with some estimates putting total app downloads to date at ov...
This Problem chapter, and the two Opportunity chapters that follow, argue for user experiences that let us become performers as we interact with our devices. We see how mobiles can be used both as props for socializing, and as stages for extravagant computing. We also look at how to ensure our designs accommodate the performances of everyday life,...
Many mobile apps seem to be aimed at solving people’s problems by giving them certain, explicit guidance and answers to smooth out everyday frictions. But, perhaps life’s joy is in the ambiguities, the gaps and the uncertainties. In this Opportunity chapter, we survey uncertainty as a design resource, with special emphasis on navigation.
Instead of mobiles getting in the way of performance, what if they can be props to enhance together-interaction? In this Opportunity chapter, we begin by thinking about how successful a mobile is in the simple “selfie” performance, and then move on to consider more advanced prop cases. What about using a set of mobiles as an ensemble to tell a grou...
This chapter introduces the ideas that drive the rest of the book. We argue for new approaches, using the relative lifelessness of current app designs to demonstrate how mobiles could be so much better. We outline the Problem and Opportunity chapters that we use to explore mobile interactions, and challenge you to begin right now with new thinking.
While the other Opportunity chapters about touch and feeling are centered on human activities, this chapter takes a distinct turn to the techie. We review a range of interaction technologies from tangible user interfaces to ultrahaptics to illustrate what advanced and emerging digital-physical materials might enable.
What if apps installed and uninstalled themselves on our phones depending on who and what we encountered—the phone itself becoming mindful of the moment? What about building phones as “physical browsers” rather than digitally focused devices? Or, more radically still, why not jettison apps all together and design around the notion of a “person” and...
In this Opportunity chapter, instead of putting technology at the centre of a user’s awareness, we first consider more peripheral approaches. How could you make your apps glanceable, or apply minimal interaction thinking? Then, we explore the usefulness of physical pointers, or wands, to allow people to remain in the physical world while accessing...
While there are many fitness apps, this Opportunity chapter asks you to step back and think about how physical activity and sport inform UX design. How do current apps accommodate being mobile rather than just being on a mobile? What about “hard to use” as a design principle, the effort being like a difficult run, the reward like the post race sati...
The first set of approaches we look at to provide face on interaction are heads-up displays and conversational interfaces. In this Opportunity chapter, we analyze the pros and cons of technologies such as Glass and Siri. While there are uses for these input/output styles we argue they can draw people deeper into the digital, or make them feel less...
This Problem chapter, and the two Opportunity chapters that follow, argue for a move away from heads-down, screen-focused interactions to more human, world-focused experiences. We begin by exploring how heads-up displays and speech could support us in more face on ways, but these approaches are ultimately not solutions. Instead, we see how glanceab...
This Opportunity chapter stands alone as a focus on the great and rich possibilities for innovation in developing regions worldwide. There is a vast untapped market for effective apps and services that truly fit the diverse contexts in which they are actually used. While many of the issues in this chapter are focused around resource constraints, we...
In this chapter we draw together the thoughts, arguments, and examples we’ve looked at throughout the book to highlight how you can take these ideas and put them into practice in your own work. We begin by summarizing how some of the key design techniques that we’ve explored can be used right now. Then, we look at how some of the more far-out think...
Fabrics and clothes protect us and express who we are. They can be stretched, tugged, patted, smoothed. They wear and tear and develop a patina of use over time. They provide, then, a much broader set of affordances and displays than today’s touch screens. In this Opportunity chapter, we explore how we might redesign apps, visualizations and gestur...
Mess in the physical world has lots of advantages—it platforms personal expression, enables personalized and effective organization and search, can spark creative interaction and exploration, and so on. In this Opportunity chapter, we illustrate how relaxing your over-tidy, clinical designs can enhance app designs and services.
This Problem chapter, and the four Opportunity chapters that follow, explore and argue for mobile user experiences that truly recruit our human senses and abilities. Through the focus areas of food, fashion, fitness, and materials, we challenge you to reconsider apps that simply focus on glassy touch screens. Instead, we demonstrate how more engagi...
In other chapters, we’ve encouraged you to think of others and being together. In this Opportunity chapter, we begin by unpacking what being together means, considering notions of space and identity. Then, using a framework that makes you think about the receiver as well as the sender of any communication, you’ll be challenged to think of alternati...
In this Opportunity chapter, we consider what food—its form, preparation, eating and effects can teach us about experience design. Studying food and eating is a useful way to inspire UX as it involves the whole spectrum of behavioral, intellectual and emotional responses.
This Problem chapter, and the two Opportunity chapters that follow, argue for new forms of interaction that take a more mindful perspective toward day-to-day life. We discuss how our phones—originally designed for distance communication—are unfortunately still oriented in this way, despite this not being appropriate. We explore how taking a fresh l...
This Problem chapter, and the two Opportunity chapters that follow, explore the benefit of supporting clutter in mobile interaction. We argue for designs that are less rigid, allowing for messiness and creative, personal expression. We also look at how experimentation and uncertainty can free users from their reliance on their devices, and in the p...
In this Opportunity chapter, we take performance to the next level, looking at how users and their mobiles might be deployed in highly visible, audible ways in public. Would users be embarrassed? What sorts of the new experiences are possible? In addition we present a detailed case-study from our own work concerned with engaging the public in herit...
Digital markers such as barcodes and QR codes are ubiquitous. However, these codes are normally used only for retrieving a small amount of information, such as a product identifier or a web link. Much previous work has investigated the value of associating digital content with physical objects in everyday scenarios, but has so far relied primarily...
Apps are changing the world. If you work for a bank, an airline, an art gallery or a even a local coffee shop, you'll probably have helped create an app to connect and transact with your customers and visitors. As users, we consume these bite-sized chunks of digital goodness voraciously, with some estimates putting total app downloads to date at ov...
Our work explores using plants as an interaction material to extend and disrupt existing notions of HCI. We focus in particular on how the affordances and properties of plants can be utilised for enhanced physical and emotional interaction between people and computers, with our core motive being to find methods of enriching user engagement. Moreove...
Research on mobile collocated interactions has been looking at situations in which collocated users engage in collaborative activities using their mobile devices, thus going from personal/individual toward shared/multiuser experiences and interactions. However, computers are getting smaller, more powerful, and closer to our bodies. Therefore, mobil...
Current uses of smartwatches are focused solely around the wearer's content, viewed by the wearer alone. When worn on a wrist, however, watches are often visible to many other people, making it easy to quickly glance at their displays. We explore the possibility of extending smartwatch interactions to turn personal wearables into more public displa...
This course presents opportunities within the space of digital reading systems for supporting better readability and accessibility than current approaches. A wide range of material will be covered, from dedicated e-reading devices to best practices for presenting reading material on screens and in apps. The course will review the history and flow o...
In this paper we present a novel interface for collaborative creation of evolving audio-visual documents. PaperChains allows users to sketch on paper and then augment with digital audio, allowing both the physical and digital objects to evolve simultaneously over time. The technique we have developed focuses on affordability and accessibility in it...
Heritage sites are an important part of understanding our role in history. They have the potential to teach us important lessons, such as where we came from and subsequently, the people it has made us today. As members of a large, heritage-led, regeneration project, we are working with the Hafod-Morfa Copperworks, a heritage site in the Lower Swans...
We reflect on long trials of two prototype social media systems in rural South Africa and their biases towards certain communication practices on information sharing. We designed the systems to assist people in low-income communities to share locally relevant information. Both involve communal displays, to record, store and share media, and users c...
In this paper we present a novel interaction technique that helps to make textual information more accessible to those with low or no textual literacy skills. AudioCanvas allows cameraphone users to interact directly with their own photos of printed media to receive audio feedback or narration. The use of a remote telephone-based service also allow...
Barcodes are all around us--on books, groceries and other products--but these everyday markers are typically used for a single focused purpose. In this paper we explore the concept of "piggybacking" on ubiquitous markers to facilitate indoor navigation. Our initial probe--BookMark--allows library visitors to scan any nearby book to provide a custom...
In this paper we introduce TicQR -- a photo-based checkbox-enabled interface which bridges the physical and digital document domains, allowing automatic download or processing of useful data from paper documents. There is a long demonstrated need for people to be able to connect between printed material and digital information and services. By usin...
We consider practices that sustain social and physical environments beyond those dominating sustainable HCI discourse. We describe links between walking, sociality, and using resources in a case study of community-based, solar, cellphone charging in villages in South Africa's Eastern Cape. Like 360 million rural Africans, inhabitants of these villa...
In this paper we introduce Acoustic Quick Response codes to facilitate sharing between Interactive Voice Response (IVR) service users. IVRs are telephone-based, and similar to the world wide web in many aspects, but currently lack support for content sharing. Our approach uses 'audio codes' to let people share their call positions, and allows calle...
We consider practices that sustain social and physical environments beyond those dominating sustainable HCI. We describe links between walking, sociality and using resources in a case -study of community-based, solar, cellphone charging in villages in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. Like 360 million rural Africans, inhabitants of these villages are po...
There are many obvious challenges for researchers in a new environment, particularly if this involves working in an unfamiliar, underdeveloped part of the world such as India. In new devices, common interaction paradigms such as swipe to scroll or pinch to zoom, are often accepted as standard and put into interfaces on the assumption that people wi...
Mobile collocated interactions offer a way to disconnect from the network for a while and take a break. This handheld-supported downtime could provide the necessary space to nurture human relationships and make room for reflection. For people to fully benefit from mobile collocated interactions, they must open up and start seeing their personal dev...
In this article, we describe a novel approach to pedestrian navigation using bearing-based haptic feedback. People are guided
in the general direction of their destination via a minimal directional cue, but additional exploration is stimulated by varying
feedback based on the potential for taking alternative routes. This extreme navigation method r...
In this paper we consider the current and future use of cameraphones in the context of rural South Africa, where many people do not have access to the latest models and ICT infrastructure is poor. We report a new study of cameraphone use in this setting, and the design and testing of a novel application for creating rich multimedia narratives and m...
In this article we describe a novel approach to collaborative video authoring using handheld projectors. PicoTales are created by sketching story elements on a projector+phone prototype, and then animated by moving the projected image. Movements are captured using motion sensor data, rather than visual or other tracking methods, allowing interactio...
Ten years ago we were on the verge of having cameras built into our mobile phones, but knew very little about what to expect or how they would be used. Now we are faced with the same unknowns with mobile projector phones. This research seeks to explore how people will want to use such technology, how they will feel when using it, and what social ef...
Much of the mobile work by HCI researchers explores a future world populated by high-end devices and relatively affluent users. This paper turns to consider the hundreds of millions of people for whom such sophistication will not be realised for many years to come. In developing world contexts, people will continue to rely on voice-primary interact...