derek
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Posts by derek
LiSC are hosting a Windows Phone Camp
Feb 10th
Last September we developed a new module for year 3 and MComp students within the School of Computer Science at Lincoln called ‘Social Applications Development’. As the name entails, the module is about the design and implementation of social applications, on mobile platforms, with content that sits at the core of LiSC’s research concepts. With students enrolled on the module from different degree programmes with a diverse range of programming skills we carefully considered the different mobile platforms out there for developing social apps on. The most popular of course are the iPhone and Android platforms, however we considered the barriers to developing for these platforms too high given the range of development skills the enrolled students had. To this end we chose the emerging Windows Phone 7 (WP7) platform which offered comparable hardware and application development opportunities to both Android and iPhone. The clincher was the ease of developing for WP7 (over Android and iPhone) and the familiarity of Visual Studio for most of the students. Fast forward 6 months and the student feedback on the module has been very positive, despite some initial resistance at the beginning in the choice of platform, most students now agree it is a good platform to develop for. The legacy of the previous ‘Windows Mobile’ operating system is something that may be difficult to entirely shake off for Microsoft – WP7 is an entirely new mobile OS, built from the ground up for contemporary digital lifestyles and takes nothing from previous Windows Mobile platforms.
To further enhance the students experience of the module we are hosting a Windows Phone 7 (WP7) workshop with Microsoft on Wednesday March 7th @1pm-5pm – by registering and coming along you could be in with a chance to win a brand new Nokia Lumia 800 on the day! The event will take place in the Lincoln School of Computer Science in room MC3204 (Comp Lab B), and will include presentations by Microsoft on WP7 followed by a coding session then finishing the day off with pizza. If you are interested (you don’t have to be enrolled on the Social Applications Development module) then it would be helpful to familiarise yourself with developing for WP7 using Visual Studio 2010 and the WP7 ‘Mango’ SDK, by doing so you will get more out of the workshop. All machines in room MC3204 are installed with the prerequisite tools if you want to get a head start!
Northern User Experience Event – Social Media & Energy Use Behaviour Change
Dec 2nd
The nice folks over at the Northern User Experience (NUX) group recently invited me along to do a talk and interactive session on social media + energy behaviour change at their stylish space at the Round Foundry Media Centre in Leeds. The talk was part of the Leeds Digital Festival and also aligned itself with the World Usability Day theme of:
“Designing with an intentional outcome of sparking change in how people behave, communicate, and do things in the world”
So who are NUX? Their membership is diverse and dynamic and spans disciplines such as HCI, information design, usability, user experience and development with a vast amount of industry and academic experience to tap into. A meeting normally takes place every month on a specified subject with an open invitation to all interested and is headed up by Keith Doyle. Check out the latest news from NUX on their events page or follow hashtag #nuxuk on Twitter.
The format of the session comprised my talk of around 40 minutes followed by an interactive task, in total it lasted 2 hours. I presented 3 case studies, two for domestic energy and one promoting physical activity that used the same social media approach as the energy studies. I noted one of the first tweets after I started the presentation was “Strong Lincolnshire accent tonight #nuxuk”, knew right away I was in good company. The energy studies presented (Wattsup and Power Ballads) delivered innovative energy feedback through social media, specifically the Facebook platform. Wattsup and Power Ballads case studies are great examples of social media + energy feedback synergies for the domestic domain, even more timely now as major energy utility company Opower is using the same approach and commercialising ‘social energy’ into a product. However, let it be said that we at LiSC were early innovators of social-energy research and delivered Wattsup back in 2009, see here and here! As with most of our completed work at LiSC, both the Wattsup and Power Ballads work is in the public domain as published peer-reviewed papers available from here and here.
All present enjoyed the unique and engaging user experience the domestic energy studies provided with plenty of questions put forward. To finish the presentation I briefly spoke of our Electro-Magnates project investigating organisational energy, and how the challenges in an organisational environment are different from the domestic domain. Also noticed some of the developers present enjoyed the adoption of opendata and discovery of tools such as Yahoo’s YQL for scraping data. At the end of the presentation there was some agreement that the first step of designing any energy app was to name it using a witty pun, this approach is carved in stone at LiSC with many hours spent getting it just right, or just plain wrong….
After the presentation I facilitated an interactive session with the goal to design (via paper prototyping) an energy visualisation for a specific theme and target user group. Each group would then present their work at the end of the session by doing a 1 minute elevator pitch, with a vote to decide the winners. Four groups then set about doing the task with beer on tap, which never fails to stir up a healthy dose of creativity. After some cracking of the whip pen was put to paper. Prizes were placed on a pedestal at the front of the room, 1st Box of Jelly Babies and 2nd Box of Heroes. I know what I prefer.
So how did they do? Not bad at all actually. The take home message was to realise how difficult energy is to understand in terms of usage due to its intangible nature. Attempting to design a visual representation of energy consumption with a view for reductions is no easy task. The table below shows the themes and target users each group had to design for, great to see the ‘witty pun’ naming convention style was present, kudos.
| Group | Theme | User Group | App/Visualisation Name |
| 1 | University | Academics | Tune In Turn Off |
| 2 | Household | Older Adults | Just In Case |
| 3 | Organisation | Administration | Power Rangers |
| 4 | Organisation | Employees | Appliance Alliance |
First prize went to ‘Power Rangers’ – a visualisation that brazenly adorned a departmental manager’s avatar with items of super hero clothing if their department’s energy consumption is being reduced, but also removes the clothing if usage rises. Inter-departmental managerial super heroes are compared in a league table. At first glance it would be pretty easy to see which departments are doing well……
I had an enjoyable time during the talk and felt it was well received from the feedback at the end and through the on-going tweets. NUX are a great community to be involved with and have their fingers on the pulse of the latest developments in design, HCI and user experience. I’d thoroughly recommended anyone who is doing anything interesting in these fields to check them out, and also with a view to doing a talk as they are currently looking for new ideas.
As usual no visit outside my usual haunt of Sheffield would be complete without sampling a few beers. First stop was ‘The Hop’ pub with a nice selection on cask where I tried Osset Brewery’s Silver King and Excelsior pale ales. On my way home I stopped at the Midnight Bell and tried Leeds Pale and Blue Moon, I’m not a fan of Blue Moon, despite labelling itself a North American Craft Beer its basically a very fruity wheat beer.
Derek
Organisational Change for Sustainability Workshop
Nov 21st
As a researcher on our sustainablity project – Electro Magnates – I have always been pro-active in looking for potential collaboration opportunities with other universities doing similar work to our own in the sustainability field, particularly when parallels of behaviour change and technology are present. At a recent CABOT energy workshop in Bristol which Shaun and I attended, we met some great people from both academic and industry backgrounds with a keen interest in energy use demand, covering both the residential and commercial sectors.
Of particular note were the folks from Sustain , a carbon reduction company who specialise in reducing energy consumption in organisations and who have a partnership with Bristol University. During discussion at the workshop with Rachel Freeman, a Research Engineer at Sustain and also based at Bristol University, we found that hers and our own energy work at Lincoln had many parallels with research direction and goals. In light of this we are jointly organising a workshop to investigate the theme of ‘Organisational Change for Sustainability’. So far we have had a good level of interest and it promises to be an interesting day. The workshop is scheduled to run on Thursday 8th December 10am-4pm at Bristol University, more information available here. If you would like to attend the workshop or would like more information then please contact Rachel Freeman at Rachel.Freeman@sustain.co.uk or Derek Foster at defoster@lincoln.ac.uk.
Derek
Open Data Bonanza
Jul 10th
There has been much talk recently of the potential use and impact of open data at LiSC including our attendance at an open data master class and a visit from Tony Hirst, a leading UK open data advocate, at a joint LiSC and LNCD meeting. This short(ish!) post gives a brief overview of these two events.
Open Data Master Classes
With large amounts of open data now being published at both the local and national government level on sites such as data.gov.uk and data.london.gov.uk there is huge scope for developers to create innovative ‘mashups’ that provide useful services for citizens. In order to make these open data sets usable and interactive normally has the prerequisite of sufficient development skills, thereby significantly raising the barrier for individuals with no development skills to successfully leverage open data sets in meaningful fashion. To help address this, the Horizon Research Institute has developed a series of Open Data Master Classes delivered by lecturers from academia, government and business.
Andy Garbett and I attended the class at Nottingham University and thoroughly enjoyed the presentations and opportunity to network. The class was themed around integrating maps with open data with presentations from Ordnance Survey and the Royal Geographical Society. A few key messages on open data from the presentations were ‘Discoverability’ and ‘Sense Making’ – is the open data easy to find and catalogued appropriately? Is it actually useful data being published? There was also mention of ‘Fear of Misunderstanding’ as a barrier to publishing open data with the perspective being negative inferences being made to the source of the data. We only have to look at the divisive press when UK crime data was released.
Overall we found the class to be engaging with great speakers delivering a range of perspectives from the technical to the ethical. Andy and I made some rough collaborative notes during the class which you can view here. You can also download the master class handbook from here and if you are keen to participate you can catch the last master class at the University of Reading on July 21st.
In keeping with tradition and Nottingham’s sterling reputation for first class breweries, we stopped off for a few ales before heading home where I sampled the excellent Nottingham Rock Bitter1. Being of slight disposition, Andy could only manage a half pint in haste.
LiSC and LNCD Meeting
LiSC had a joint meeting with the new LNCD group with a wall to wall turn out including staff from Journalism and ICT interested in open data. We had guest speaker Tony Hirst from the OU telling us all about his open data interests which are primarily focussed on HE generated data with other interests in visualising social networks. Tony is passionate about moving open data and research out of academic/government silos for public engagement in wider culture and society. However he believes that the public needs a greater understanding of statistics in order to make an informed decision on representations and sense making of open data. Tony also spoke of the interesting term ‘Data Burdens’ which relate to single data lists produced by government to help prevent duplication and collection of open data sets. This is a good indicator that open data collection and publication is being taken seriously by the government and in turn helping drive transparency. We are relatively new to open data at LiSC and having Tony at the table for Q & A was very informative, thanks Tony!
1. Nottingham Brewery (2008) Rock Bitter, available from http://www.nottinghambrewery.com/rock.html
Smart Energy and the Internet of Things
Jun 12th
It’s been a while since I last posted so have likely gone overboard with content, but here goes anyway! I recently attended the ‘Smart Energy: generation, supply and consumption’ workshop held by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) which was focused on the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) and what the implications and possibilities are for the energy sector. The workshop was well attended with almost 70 delegates split roughly 50/50 between people from industry and academia. For LiSC this was a great opportunity to see how both sides are collaborating towards innovating and commercialising in the domain of the IoT and energy. For connected devices such as smart meters it brings new experiences for consumers in how they can better understand and act on their energy consumption across a range of devices; from washing machines to mobile phones to vehicles. So first of all, what is this IoT all about?
The IoT is the idea of practically any object, including people, sharing information (via networked sensors) about their current state; for example location, energy usage or activity data sent to the cloud that can enhance our physical and digital experiences. It could be argued that the IoT is the latest evolution of ubiquitous/pervasive computing now being realised by inexpensive sensors and technology platforms that weren’t available as little as a few years ago. Adam Greenfield’s insightful book ‘Everyware’ published back in 2005 is a good read, albeit rather verbose, on the concept of IoT and the interaction of citizens with omnipresent networked devices. In a recent interview he admits the book didn’t see the iPhone coming and the rapid game-changing experience that came with it, but really, who could have foreseen that in its entirety? Last year I was lucky enough to participate in a ‘Walkshop’ (a quirky spin on the workshop) by Adam in the city of Oulu, Finland whilst attending the UBI Summer School. Each Walkshop involves a tour of a city with a view to finding the various networked devices in the city urbanscape and attempt to decipher (as a group) their purpose and impact on citizens. In Oulu we found wind powered storm covers, obscured cameras, large interactive situated displays, pedestrian crossing sensors embedded in pavements and the usual plethora of CCTV cameras. Interestingly, when we turned our own sensors (cameras) on a street facing CCTV camera we invited the attentions of an irate security guard intent on being aggressive towards our ‘sousvelliance’….
Ed Borden from Pachube recently posted a succinct overview of the IoT over on the Pachube blog titled ‘The Open Data Steamroller’ and includes the nice illustration below of what the IoT is by moving away from ‘closed’ machine to machine data silos over to open data for consumption. LiSC’s Electro-Magnates project utilises the Pachube platform to store near-real time energy data from the University of Lincoln, effectively opening up the data for public consumption using open standards. We hope to have a few more universities on board with us shortly to push their energy data to Pachube and are in talks with Lincolnshire County Council as they will have nearly 1000 smart meters coming online over the summer from the county’s schools. In addition to our own open data efforts at LiSC, Joss Winn, also from Lincoln University is co-ordinating a team working towards making various components of university-generated data open and ready for consuming via API’s.
The TSB Smart Energy workshop was worth attending and generated some useful data for our Electro-Magnates project. With the workshop having a strong industry presence there was discussion based around the potential creation of new business models that can benefit consumers more to optimise their energy usage. For example a smart meter connected to the IoT could allow a consumer to regularly change their tariff simply by selecting a new deal online and downloading the tariff to the smart meter instantly. Fine grain control of appliances by smart meters could be enabled to control/recommend which times energy-intensive devices can be used to limit peak demand and cost. Another task at the workshop was to envisage the types of objects we would like to see connected by the IoT. Aside from the obvious choices such as fridges, washing machines and heating there was some outside the box thinking with the top three non-energy object choices being people, animals and vehicles, something we at LiSC are actively aware of and will discuss a little shortly! Perhaps the most hotly debated topic at the workshop were the privacy and security issues surrounding energy data from smart meters, do the utilities own the data or the householder? More importantly, does the householder have complete access and control over their energy data? These are important questions for the consumers and will no doubt be parleyed with for some time.
At LiSC we are no strangers to the IoT revolution and have ran several studies that incorporate it with the inclusion of open datasets. Maurizio Pilu, a lead technologist at the TSB, said in his keynote at the workshop that when you mix the IoT with open datasets then “magic will happen”. We couldn’t agree more as this is exactly what lots of our own research does! Our domestic energy research has used various IoT devices such as the Wattson energy monitor and the Current Cost Bridge then mashed the energy data from these devices with datasets from social media networks and music services to enhance the end-users digital and lifestyle experiences. We also demonstrated the use of an embodied IoT agent (Nabaztag) providing aversive feedback on energy consumption. Other recent IoT innovations from our group include the Fearsquare and the forthcoming Tweeting Cats projects. Fearsquare mashes UK crime data with location data from mobile devices, thereby creating a unique experience and an opportunity to investigate citizens’ perceptions of crime in their daily localities. Through our links with animal behaviour experts we are looking at ways to enhance human-animal interaction through RFID tags worn by cats which expose eating/toileting behaviours and also through social media to increase connectedness between humans and companion animals.
Around the world the power of the IoT is helping empower citizens, in New York for example public sensors are being used to inform residents when the sewage system is close to overflow and to make an informed decision on their water usage. In Japan citizens are empowered by aggregating crowd-sourced radiation sensor data and calling for more evacuations in some areas. Plants are even benefiting from the IoT by giving them the right amount of water and light. These examples just highlight the diversity and huge untapped potential in creating unique user experiences by mixing IoT sensor data with open datasets.
I don’t think any blog post of mine would be complete without a mention of beer! After the workshop I made an obligatory visit to the Euston Tap and sampled the Meantime IPA on tap, a great beer. They also had the friendly face of Brewdog on display with their Ripetide and Hardcore IPA, both excellent beers!
Derek
Electro-Magnates – Public Energy API and Project Progress
Mar 20th
It has been quite a while since we posted an update on our Electro-Magnates project so here goes! The project is progressing along nicely and has reached another ‘technical’ milestone. Using Windows Communication Foundation, we have built a Restful API that exposes the University of Lincoln’s near-real-time energy consumption data in either XML or JSON formats. Exposing the energy data using open formats is one of the project’s core deliverables and follows the ethic that only good can come of data transparency. Having the data ‘online and out there’ allows the potential for tapping into the creativity of developers, designers and anybody who knows a little bit of basic programming. The API has granularity at the building level (for now) and energy data consumed (KWh) at half-hour intervals.
Although the API is built and ready for consumption, it will be released at an appropriate time in the project’s timeline in the near future. And there’s more! By building our own API we have the benefit of designing it to meet the needs of the project and that of any requested features, we also understand the benefits of an ‘internet of things’ service in the ‘cloud’. To this end we are about halfway through the development of automatically syncing the energy data to Pachube, described by themselves as ‘a data brokerage platform for the internet of things’. With Lincoln’s energy data also on Pachube developers will have access to Pachube’s feature-rich API for consuming the data, its community and its growing set of ‘ready-to-go’ applications (desktop and online widgets) built by the community. Readiness with Pachube is just a few weeks away; again the availability of the Pachube energy feeds to the public will be released in the near future.
In other Electro-Magnates work we are collaborating with Oxford University to run three ‘energy themed’ workshops across Lincoln, Oxford and De Montfort universities. The Lincoln workshop is planned for May 17th, other dates to follow. The workshops are primarily part of Oxford’s JiSC funded project into the effectiveness of innovative energy usage ‘info-graphics’ to change consumption behaviours. The JiSC project complements the ‘energy visualisation’ work component of Electro-Magnates hence a collaborative effort with the workshops, with findings shared with each project.
More progress updates on Electro-Magnates will be posted over the coming months! In the meantime you can follow the project’s Twitter feed and Facebook group.
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Bluetooth – Quietly Ubiquitous
Feb 15th
Last year we had a discussion over the use of Bluetooth technologies and how we could potentially utilise them to create context aware mobile applications including games and sensor-ware. Current and emerging sensor technologies are always of interest at LiSC in their potential to enable new experiences for end users and can assist in supporting lifestyle choices. A quick check revealed that much work has already been done in investigating the proliferation and ubiquitiness of Bluetooth enabled devices, see Lavelle et al (2007) here and Kostakos et al here.
However, being the inquisitive folks that we are, we installed our own Bluetooth scanner in a residential area in Sheffield to give us an idea on how popular Bluetooth enabled devices were in the area. We didn’t expect a great deal of devices to be found but after only 3 months (Feb – May 2010) we had picked up 13785 unique devices across 20 categories. Bluetooth appears to have become quietly ubiquitous in the scanned area for a myriad of uses from car entertainment systems to mobile printers. It certainly gave our group food for thought and we couldn’t help but think there may be life yet in teh’Bluetooth for innovative studies.
HEFCE LGM Conference – Electro-Magnates
Feb 1st
Shaun and I recently attended the HEFCE LGM 2011 Conference in London at the stately Royal Society of Medicine buildings. At the event we presented our LGM funded Electro-Magnates project, participated in a Q & A panel, carried out a poster session and took part in workshops. The poster can be viewed here and the presentation here. Many other LGM funded projects were presented at various phases of development, the dissemination of which gave us a useful insight into the diverse range of projects the LGM element of HEFCE will fund. Altogether it turned it to be a busy but informative day with much interest from other delegates in our project.
Some interesting projects were presented, particularly the aptly named Carbon Brainprint project being run by Cranfield University. The project looks at the research contributions universities make across the public and private sector in reducing emissions. This is the type of project that LiSC would be well suited to in a collaborative partnership with our new engineering department when it opens.
 Presentation |
 Shaun on Q & A panel, slightly pasty but on form |
Despite a much compressed trip we still managed to sample some Indian cuisine in Euston’s Drummond Rd which plays host to at least a dozen Indian restaurants and cafes in a short 100m strip. Unfortunately, despite the chicken chilli with green chillies being branded ‘extra hot’, it had a rather lacklustre kick to it which even a Bombay Badboy could best. We also chanced upon a great real ale house, The Euston Tap, the twin counterpart of the northern Sheffield Tap which is well worth a visit with not a single lager-shandy-tops in sight.
Upon leaving the restaurant we spotted a full rack of Boris Bikes in a distinctly unused state. This reminded me of the Pedal-Mania RewiredState project designed to spur on the even dispersal of the bikes to other locations and to promote fitness. However, I can’t imagine jumping on one of them after a curry and a few bottles of fizzy Mongoose beer.
 Unused full rack of Boris Bikes in Euston |
 Fizzy Mongoose Indian beer |
Journal Club 21.1.2011 – User-Centred Design and Sherlock Holmes
Jan 27th
With many of our research projects employing HCI research methods, we had a light discussion on one of HCI’s core concepts: user-centred design. To stimulate discussion we took a look at the interesting paper, ‘Pastiche scenarios: Fiction as a resource for user centred design’ by Blythe & Wright (2006), available from here.
The paper looks at an alternative method to build an understanding of target users of systems in the tasks they do and the scenarios that bring about the need for these tasks. The proposed method is the creative use of well-known fictional characters, such as Sherlock Holmes or Bridget Jones, in creating personas and scenarios over the standard ‘static’ methods of rolling out some basic statistics such as demographics and job title. This approach can make the process of UCD a lot more fun and lead to an enriched understanding of the users needs, desires and cultural issues. In particular, their use could be helpful for the types of studies we do here at LiSC that involve real people in real environments instead of tightly controlled lab studies.
Examples of our projects that could benefit from the use of pistache scenarios are ENACT and Electro-Magnates, both of which will involve a diverse range of pariticpants touching upon sensitive aspects of their well-being and lifestyles.
A new cake made its debut appearance, the Sticky Toffee with butterscotch cream, it sure gave the Carrot and Walnut cake a run for its money.
NordiCHI 2010 – Reykjavik, October 16 – 20
Aug 30th
LiSC will be presenting a paper at the main track of the NordiCHI 2010 conference in Reykjavik, Iceland. Despite being held to ransom by Iceland’s volcano at CHI 2010 we are confident the volcano will behave itself while we are there.
The paper is titled “Wattsup?: Motivating reductions in domestic energy consumption using social networks”. The paper is based on the findings of a pilot study using home smart meters to assist in reducing energy consumption and will be presented by myself, Derek Foster.
Sé þig þar!