Tom Rodden
University of Nottingham, UK
Biography
Tom Rodden is Professor of Interactive Systems at the Mixed Reality Laboratory (MRL at the University of Nottingham. Prof. Rodden’s research interests are centred on howusers interact with and through computer systems. He has published iwdely in the areas of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Ubiquitous Computing.
Since 2001 Prof. Rodden has been director of the Equator IRC that brings together 8 different research institutes in the UK. The Equator IRC is a six-year programme of research to explore new technologies that interweave the physical and digtal worlds. Equator is supported by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
Abstract
Equator is an Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) – a large scale, collaborative venture spanning eight partners and multiple disciplines including Computer Science, Electronics, Social Science, Psychology, Art and Design and Architecture and Planning. The goals of Equator are to create new devices and software platform to interweave the physical and digital worlds; to establish new methods for designing and evaluating these technologies; and to bring these technologies and methods together in a series of practical projects that directly engage users in the research process. The approach is defined by the following characteristics.
Adopting a balanced view of digital and the physical – Equator is not only concerned with how the digital can be accessed from or overlaid on the physical, but is also focused on how the physical appears to the digital.
Methods for understanding experience – Equator will combine expertise in established design methods, especially ethnography, with emerging methods from art and design and architecture and planning.
Engaging users – Equator will carry out a series of large-scale practical experiments that directly involve the public and user-organisations such as museums, performance groups, community support groups, schools.
Equator is structured around three long-term fundamental research challenges that combine with a series of practical user experience projects. The
research challenges explore long-term underlying technical and methodological issues. This talk will introduce the IRC and describe our experiences of building Ubiquitous computing in the real world.