Research
The Centre undertakes internationally recognised research into the design of socio-technical systems. The £2 million of research income earned in the last 3 years most comes from the UK's Research Councils (EPSRC and ESRC) and European Union's Framework 5 programme. We undertake basic and applied research. Most basic research is funded by the Research Councils and European Union while applied research is funded from a range of sources including charities (e.g. Royal National Institute for the Blind, Guide Dogs for the Blind, Royal National Institute for the Deaf) and bilateral partners (e.g. NATS, JISC).
Currently there are 11 research projects running in the Centre. The coverage of these projects requires us to adopt a multi-disciplinary research approach. Staff and students have backgrounds in systems engineering, software engineering, human-computer interaction, psychology, social science, artificial intelligence and management science.
Research areas
Our research into the design of socio-technical systems can be divided into 3 areas:
User-centred requirements engineering
Our research on user-centred requirements engineering aims to develop new theories of requirements for complex socio-technical systems, i.e. systems composed of people and technology, and to apply these theories to design new requirements processes, techniques and tools that we evaluate through their industrial application. We are currently researching how to use scenarios in user-centred requirements processes, model-based discovery and analysis of emergent properties of complex socio-technical systems, creativity as integral to requirements processes, and how new paradigms such as web services impact on requirements.
Inclusive Design and Social Aspects of Computing
We continue our research on Inclusive Design by accentuating issues related to the elderly and the disabled. Current areas of concentration include mathematical modeling of web browsing behaviour of senior citizens and the study of web navigation for people with dyslexia and people with dementia. Our research in Inclusive Design also looks at cultural dimensions of on-line collaborations which also links to our continuing interest in the Social Aspects of Computing where we stress the use of analytic (e.g. Social Network
Analysis) and theoretical (e.g. Activity Theory) methods to analyse empathic and computer game communities.
Interaction Design and Research
We conduct studies of individual and collaborative work in challenging fields ranging from healthcare to computer games, develop and apply theoretical approaches to modelling work, design and prototype innovative interfaces and investigate and develop usability evaluation techniques. Our research activities are supported by state-of-the-art facilities in our new Interaction Laboratory.
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