You get a PHD thesis for this ?

Honestly. Don't get me wrong this is a very good masters project, the stats look good, it's reasonably referenced, clear question but basically the topic its " do people prefer automatic checkouts over real people? ". This is a 'significant contribution to knowledge in the field ?  Is this what business studies people think is a real contribution to knowledge ? This is not a PHD this is a good masters project gone horribly horribly wrong. 

I am all too clearly reminded of the time I spent in a business school course on innovation , listening in horror to business students ( all of whom were working for major companies at the time ) while they ernestly discussed the merits of investing in a perpetual motion machine. In response to my shock the response was "it's not a perpetual motion machine it's a free air energy device"  (no the patent office doesn't allow them either).

File under disappointed. 

Live at interactive tables and surfaces

We have had a nice talk from Jeff Han 

Now into mix of user studies and cool hardware 

Jeff Han doing demo

Lovely bath time interaction

And fantastic multi touch table with tangibles ( get out your Xmas wish list) 

Tangible Calendar

Very nice tangible calendar.



Lego calendar by Vitamins from Vitamins on Vimeo.

Which Merge is best

Why not take part in an experiment - look at these to presentations on Merge sort and tell me what you think at the end of it. 

Merge secret sauce  and the other version  

Merge sort B (all in one) 
Now tell me your preferance...

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Getting the Right Design and the Design Right: Testing Many Is Better Than One

This is a really good paper and the first one I've seen which has been quoted in a business context. 

Getting the Right Design and the Design Right: Testing Many Is Better Than One

We present a study comparing usability testing of a single interface versus three functionally equivalent but stylistically distinct designs. We found that when presented with a single design, users give significantly higher ratings and were more reluctant to criticize than when presented with the same design in a group of three. Our results imply that by presenting users with alternative design solutions, subjective ratings are less prone to inflation and give rise to more and stronger criticisms when appropriate. Contrary to our expectations, our results also suggest that usability testing by itself, even when multiple designs are presented, is not an effective vehicle for soliciting constructive suggestions about how to improve the design from end users. It is a means to identify problems, not provide solutions.

[ down load here ]  

Lancaster experiment

Yesterday was a good if exhausting trip to Lancaster to scan the display sites before the experiment begins in October. 

M369 launch

Picture from the new algorithms course tutor briefing . 

$99 Eye tracker

This was suggested by an eagle eyed reader of this blog. A $99 eye tracker that also can be embeded in to a screen/tablet. Obviously we have used eye trackers for research but now it could be used as part of the user interface. Will people worry that they will get offers of very cheap software in exchange for recording their eye movements as they work/play ? 

Yvonne's Tedx Talk!

Oh I just found Yvonne's Tedx Talk! 
A nice talk about getting technology to get people to communicate with each other - rather than the other way around. I like this as now I think about it, it is a strong a theme through her work. 



Lovely to see Jon in the vidieo - ( he comes over really well doesn't he ? ) 
Points for mindful...

Roger McNamee

Kind of intreasting talk from 2011 Roger McNamee talking about the capitalist/venture capitalist view of the future. 

Looking at the death of Microsoft and Google...  the rise of Apple, more importantly looks at the power of HTML 5 and predicting the rise of creativity. Look out for some good quotes. I like his vision of computing about being primarily about interaction.

Any surface a multi-touch system

I found a link to a start up which seems to be selling a system to do the whole projector/kinet sensor and then turn it into a windows 8 multi-touch signal ( I think ) 
http://www.ubi-interactive.com


Amazing how quick things go from idea to laboratory to commercial application these days.

All that is lacking is apps of course.

The joy of data visualisation

After a week of report writing ... I'm back and came across this.