Human Computer Interaction: FIT Lab

Reshaping the future - Human interaction

The Future Interaction Technology Laboratory (FIT Lab) is the College of Science’s Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) group. Opened in 2006 by Professor Harold Thimbleby, the FIT Lab has since grown to become internationally recognised as a world-leading centre for HCI research forging collaborations with industry partners such as Microsoft Research, Google, the BBC, IBM, Nokia, and the NHS.

The goal of the FIT Lab is to put people at the heart of technological innovation – to create platforms, devices and services that are not just functional, but usable, efficient and enjoyable. Much of our research involves working directly with end-users to study, plan, design and create new interactions appropriate for their contexts. HCI is a multidisciplinary field that spans beyond computer science into areas including psychology, sociology, health, ethnography, design, human factors, engineering and linguistics and therefore, involves a significant of collaborations with other disciplines within the University and beyond.

Research councils and industry stakeholders have funded the work conducted in the FIT Lab – over the past decade, this has included over £15 million pounds of EPSRC funding. These projects have enabled the group to make significant, recognised, world-leading impacts on the research community ranging from theoretical frameworks to deep understandings of novel algorithms.

Areas of Expertise

Our areas of expertise include:

Foundations and Futures:

Internet of Things
Eyes-off Interaction
Deformable devices
VR/AR
Gaming
Haptics
Robotics
Self-powered interfaces
Autonomous vehicles
Brain-computer interfaces

The Digital Divide:

HCI4D
Emergent User settings
Resource-constraints
Appropriate technologies for contexts

IVR systems
Speech interfaces
Safety-conscious interfaces
Low-end devices
Internet-independent devices

Health:

Digital health, medical error
Older people, disability
Wearables for well-being
ML-based disease diagnostics
Cloud-based medical wearables

Affiliated Staff

Academic Staff:

Alan Dix
Matt Jones
Harold Thimbleby
Jennifer Pearson
Simon Robinson
Deepak Sahoo
Stephen Lindsay
Tom Owen

Research Staff:

Thomas Reitmaier
Doon MacDonald
Krishna Seunarine
Yogesh Menna
Chi Zhang

Research Students:

Cameron Steer
Gavin Bailey
Osian Smith
Shashank Ahire

Collaborative / Industry Partners

Alfred-Wegener-Institut (Germany)
AP Marine (Cyprus)
AZTI (Spain)
Conceptshed (UK)
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC-ICM, Spain)
Deltares (Netherlands)
Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (Crete, Greece)
Horn Point Laboratory, University of Maryland (USA)
Københavns Universitet (Denmark)
Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK)
Station de Biologique de Roscoff, Sorbonne Université (France)
The Conversation (UK)
Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)

Associated Research Projects

Current:

EPSRC Grant EP/R044929/1(£1,006,664): Not-Equal: NetworkPlus on Social Justice through the Digital Economy

EPSRC Grant EP/R032750/1 (£738,112): PV-Interfaces: Self-Powered Interfaces and Interactions via Photovoltaic Surfaces
EPSRC Grant EP/N013948/1 (£822,223): Breaking the Glass: Multimodal, Malleable Interactive Mobile surfaces for Hands-In Interactions
EPSRC Grant EP/M022722/1 (£3,091,610): The CHERISH-DE Centre - Challenging Human Environments and Research Impact for a Sustainable and Healthy Digital Economy

Previous:

EPSRC Grant EP/M00421X/1 (£710,784): Reshaping the Expected Future
EPSRC Grant EP/G059063/1 (£5,820,840): CHI+MED: Multidisciplinary Computer-Human Interaction research for the design and safe use of interactive medical devices
EPSRC Grant EP/J000604/2 (£1,053,172): Scaling the Rural Enterprise
EPSRC Grant EP/G003971/1 (£361,993): UCLIC / FIT Lab PLATFORM: Healthy interactive systems : Resilient, Usable and Appropriate Systems in Healthcare
EPSRC Grant EP/I00064X/1 (£254,586): Taking on the Teenagers
EPSRC Grant EP/H02302X/1 (£1,050,295): IDEAS Factory - Detecting Terrorist Activities: Shades of Grey - Towards a Science of Interventions for Eliciting and Detecting Notable Behaviours
EPSRC Grant EP/H042806/1 (£1,467,704): Sandpit: PATINA: Personal Architectonics Through INteractions with Artefacts
EPSRC Grant EP/L019272/1 (£96,680): Discipline Hopping into Healthcare
EPSRC Grant EP/K004549/1 (£493,092): The Global Hub in Medical Technologies and NanoHealth at Swansea University
EPSRC Grant EP/I00145X/1 (£790,239): Swansea University :: Bringing People Together
EPSRC Grant EP/I001778/1 (£134,610): Bridging the Rural Divide
EPSRC Grant EP/G061882/1 (£906,522): Point of care nanotechnology for early blood clot detection and characterisation in disease screening, theranostic and self monitoring applications
EPSRC Grant EP/F035071/1 (£33,826): ISIS: Protecting children in online social networks
EPSRC Grant EP/F020031/1 (£606,346): Formally-based tools for user interface analysis and design
EPSRC Grant EP/H042857/2 (£365,151): Community-generated media for the next billion
EPSRC Grant EP/E042171/1 (£273,603): Multimodal, Negotiated Interaction in Mobile Scenarios
EPSRC Grant EP/E006418/1 (£79,359): Bridging the Global Digital Divide Network
EPSRC Grant EP/H017895/1 (£14,823): USA research trip: San Francisco, Pittsburgh, San Diego, Houston
EPSRC Grant EP/F059116/1 (£176,183): A state of the art information-driven health care demonstrator: Combining advanced technologies in the gastro-intestinal field
EPSRC Grant EP/F041217/1 (£260,699): Document Triage in the Information Seeking Process
EPSRC Grant EP/E006396/1 (£79,817): StoryBank: Sharing stories across digital divides
EPSRC Grant EP/H010394/1 (£16,437): Telling the StoryBank: An Exhibit for the British Science Association, Festival of Science 2009

Facilities

The FIT Lab boasts its own co-creation space as well as two user experience laboratories and two maker spaces which include the following equipment:

Ultimaker 3D printer
Resin 3D printer
Laser Cutter
3D scanner
CNC machine
Electronics equipment (e.g., soldering irons, multimeters etc.)
Workshop equipment (e.g., drills, sanders, saws, chisels etc.)
Electronic components (e.g., arduino kits, prototyping boards, sensors etc.)
Photographic equipment (e.g., SLRs, tripods, projectors, video cameras etc.)

Publications

Foundations and Futures:
A Liquid Tangible Display for Mobile Colour Mixing
Steer, S. Robinson, J. Pearson, D. Sahoo, I. Mabbett, M. Jones. Accepted to appear in Proceedings of MobileHCI 2018, Barcelona, September 2018.

o Tangible Drops: A Visio-Tactile Display Using Actuated Liquid-Metal Droplets
D. Sahoo, T. Neate, Y. Tokuda, J. Pearson, S. Robinson, S. Subramanian, M. Jones. In Proceedings of CHI 2018 (Paper No. 177), Montreal, April 2018.

Sparkle: Hover Feedback with Touchable Electric Arcs.

Spelmezan, Daniel., Sahoo, Deepak Ranjan. & Subramanian, Sriram. (2017). In Proceedings of CHI 2017, 3705-3717. Denver, May 2017

Metamaterial bricks and quantization of meta-surfaces.
The Digital Divide:

Make Yourself at Phone: Reimagining Mobile Interaction Architectures With Emergent Users
Robinson, J. Pearson, T. Reitmaier, S. Ahire, M. Jones. In Proceedings of CHI 2018(Paper No. 407), Montreal, April 2018.
Revisiting “Hole in the Wall Computing”: Private Smart Speakers and Public Slum Settings
Robinson, J. Pearson, S. Ahire, R. Ahirwar, B. Bhikne, N. Maravi, M. Jones. In Proceedings of CHI 2018(Paper No. 498), Montreal, April 2018.
Better Together: Disaggregating Mobile Services for Emergent Users
Robinson, J. Pearson, M. Jones, A. Joshi, S. Ahire. In Proceedings of MobileHCI 2017(Article 44), Vienna, September 2017.
Evaluating Deformable Devices with Emergent Users
Pearson, S. Robinson, C. Coutrix, M. Jones. In Proceedings of MobileHCI 2017(Article 14), Vienna, September 2017.

Drinkwater, Bruce W. & Subramanian, Sriram, In Nature Communications, 8, 14608, 2017.

o BookMark: Appropriating Existing Infrastructure to Facilitate Scalable Indoor Navigation
J. Pearson, S. Robinson, M. Jones. IJHCS 103(3): 22–34, 2017.

o Emergeables: Deformable Displays for Continuous Eyes-Free Mobile Interaction
S. Robinson, C. Coutrix, J. Pearson, J. Rosso, M. Torquato, L. Nigay, M. Jones. In Proceedings of CHI 2016 (pages 3793–3805), San Jose, May 2016. Awarded honourable mention.

o It’s About Time: Smartwatches as Public Displays
J. Pearson, S. Robinson, M. Jones. In Proceedings of CHI 2015 (pages 1257–1266), Seoul, April 2015.

o There’s Not An App for That: Mobile User Experience Design for Life
Simon Robinson, Gary Marsden and Matt Jones.

Chameleon Devices: Investigating More Secure and Discreet Mobile Interactions via Active Camouflaging

Pearson, S. Robinson, M. Jones, A. Joshi, S. Ahire, D. Sahoo, S. Subramanian. In Proceedings of CHI 2017(pages 5184–5196), Denver, May 2017. Awarded honourable mention.
Rich Digital Collaborations in a Small Rural Community.
Health:

A. Dix, A. Malizia, T. Turchi, S. Gill, G. Loudon, R. Morris, A. Chamberlain and A. Bellucci, Chapter 20 in Collaboration Meets Interactive Spaces, C. Anslow et al. (eds.), Springer. pp 463-483, 2016/2017

o PaperChains: Dynamic Sketch+Voice Annotations
J. Pearson, S. Robinson, M. Jones. In Proceedings of CSCW 2015 (pages 383–392), Vancouver, March 2015.

o Beyond “Yesterday’s Tomorrow”: Future-Focused Mobile Interaction Design By and For Emergent Users
M. Jones, S. Robinson, J. Pearson, M. Joshi, D. Raju, C. Mbogo, S. Wangari, A. Joshi, E. Cutrell, R. Harper. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 21(1): 157–171, 2017.

o Exploring Low-Cost, Internet-Free Information Access for Resource-Constrained Communities
J. Pearson, S. Robinson, M. Jones. TOCHI 23(6), Article 36, 2016.

Verbal Design: A Participatory Design Approach with Illiterate Patient User Groups.

Zeb, Kehkashan., Lindsay, Stephen., Shahid, Suleman. & Jones, Matt. (2018). Presented at DIS '18 Companion Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference Companion Publication on Designing Interactive Systems, 271-275. Hong Kong, China, June 2018

Misunderstanding IT: Hospital cybersecurity and software problems reach the courts.

Thimbleby, Harold, In Digital Evidence and Electronic Signature Law Review, 15, 11-32, 2018

Cybersecurity problems in a typical hospital (and probably in all of them).

Thimbleby, H., In Proceedings of the 25th Safety-Critical Systems Symposium, 415-439.Developments in System Safety Engineering [SCSC-135], 2017.

Attitudes towards Attention and Ageing

Jenkins, A., Eslambolchilar, P., Lindsay, S., Hare, M., Thornton, I. & Tales, A. In International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction, 8(2), 47-68, 2016

Unreliable numbers: error and harm induced by bad design can be reduced by better design.

Thimbleby, Harold., Oladimeji, Patrick. & Cairns, Paul, In Journal of The Royal Society Interface 12(110), 2015.

ConCap: Designing to Empower Individual Reflection on Chronic Conditions using Mobile Apps

Tom Owen, J. Pearson, H. Thimbleby, G. Buchanan: In proceedings of Mobile HCI 2015, Copenhagen, Denmark, August 2015

Project Contact

Jennifer Pearson: j.pearson@swansea.ac.uk

External Project Websites

http://fitlab.eu