All Hands on DEC - April 2008
- Festival site goes live
- Tesco sponsor FoDI
- BIT students launch Uni-Verse
- DEC Psychology update
- Introduction to Forensic Psychology Course
- Human Factors & Ergonomics Society
- Inspirational Nature
- Using the internet to support psychology and enhance well-being
- Annual Undergraduate Student Conference
- Anglepoise sets students eco design challenge
- Command Wessex
- International Networking for Young Scientists: Smart Technology Research Centre collaborates with Wroclaw Technical University, Poland.
- Nigerian Chief visits DEC
- PhD students present posters
- International student recruitment publications
- Quick Pitch put to the test
- Simon Phelps in the news
- How to submit future stories
- Next Newsletter
Festival of Design & Innovation Website
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The Festival of Design & Innovation website has attracted in excess of 1200 visitors and over 6000 page views since its launch on 1 April. Visitors have ranged from places as far a field as Australia, the Philippines, Japan and Saudi Arabia. |
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The website provides key information on the Festival, including dates and opening times, as well as information on each course displaying at the event. This is the first time that the Festival has been supported by a full range of online media, which also includes a blog (you can find it at http://festivalofdesigninnovation.blogspot.com ) and Festival Facebook group.
The Festival team aim to provide students with every available tool to keep them involved with the process of organising the Festival. Online media also provides an effective way for us to maximise the Festival as a showcase to encourage student recruitment and raise our profile to relevant industry, so far we have received excellent feedback.
Visit the site at www.festival.bournemouth.ac.uk
Tesco sponsor FoDI
This year Tesco will be sponsoring the Festival of Design & Innovation. This is great news for the Festival, and it is hoped that Tesco will continue to support the event over the coming years.
Thom Breslin and Maz Galley from Tesco's design department visited DEC on 23 April and presented a talk to over 150 DEC design students.
The visit was part of the first step towards DEC building links with design at Tesco through placements, projects, graduate employment and other opportunities. Thom said: "We are looking for new designers that are creative, innovative and have the hunger to challenge an organisation as big as Tesco."
Thom, who is Head of Design at Tesco, and Maz, Design Executive, presented an informative talk, which provided a real insight into design at Tesco. Currently, Tesco's team of around 30 designers work in the areas of store design, industrial design, product design, fashion design, interior design and graphic design. At any one time the team typically has around 200 design projects in progress. The team prototype every design and have a space the size of an aircraft hanger specifically to build and trial each design concept that they work on. Everything that Tesco designs needs to be environmentally sustainable, and they currently have for eco-stores.
Thom and Maz will return to DEC on 26 June for the opening night of the Festival of Design & Innovation.
BIT students launch Uni-Verse
Second year Business Information Technology students welcomed guests from JPMorgan Chase on 28 March to the launch of their simulated business activity, Uni-Verse.
Uni-Verse is a social networking site which enables students and staff to share information within the University. The students set themselves the ambitious target "to be better than Facebook."
The students aim to launch Uni-Verse across other UK universities in the future. You can find out more information at www.uni-verse.org.uk . The Uni-Verse activity was sponsored by the Daily Echo and featured in the Dorset Business section on 1 April.
DEC Psychology update
Our Psychology colleagues here in DEC have been extremely busy of late, here is a round-up of some of the activities that they have been involved in:
CHI 2008
Linda Hole and Oliver Williams presented a workshop paper at the ACM conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2008) in Florence at the beginning of April.
The workshop examined how to provide tools to support developers wishing to design products which provide engaging user experiences. Linda and Oliver's paper on Emotion Sampling was in the Top 12, which meant that they were given extra time to present further details of their work on a lightweight, iterative user experience (UX) evaluation tool to an international audience of both academics and product developers. A representative of the US-based Sandia National Laboratories expressed strong interest in the work, and has invited Linda and Oliver to collaborate with them to evaluate user experiences in games.
Linda is now preparing the final draft of her paper accepted for CREATE 2008 in London in June, jointly run by the Ergonomics Society HCI Group and the British Computer Society's Interaction Group. CREATE 2008 (Creative inventions and innovations for everyday HCI) is a two-day conference about creating innovative interactions, whether digital consumer products, interactive services or interaction paradigms.
This year's theme is 'Embedding people-centred design in the process of innovation' and participants will attend from the commercial, public, government and research sectors. It again addresses the question: How do we work together as designers and HCI specialists to come up with people-centred design, and how do we work with others to make our designs a reality?
At the CHI 2008 Symposium on 'Secrets, Lies and Computer Mediated Communication' Dr Jacqui Taylor presented a talk entitled 'Qualitative methods for classifying and detecting online identity deception.'
On her return from the conference Jacqui reported: "It was a fantastic experience. There were over 2000 delegates so there was a lot going on from 8am until 10pm . It brought together some very wide-ranging areas and it included presentations from designers, artists, psychologists, sociology, business, health professionals, as well as the traditional computing and ICT researchers and practitioners."
Introduction to Forensic Psychology Course
Dr David Heathcote and Dr Chris Cowley will be delivering a new short course entitled 'Introduction to Forensic Psychology.' The course starts on 7 May and will run over 10 weekly sessions.
Both Dr Heathcote and Dr Cowley have considerable experience of teaching Forensic Psychology and this fascinating course is suitable for anyone interested in learning more about the subject. The course has been accredited by the Bar Council and the weekly sessions cover subjects including lie detection, offender profiling and forensic hypnosis.
For more information, or to book a place on the course, please contact Norman Stock on extension 65575 .
Human Factors & Ergonomics Society
Professor Sine McDougall will be presenting two papers at the Human Factors & Ergonomics Society Conference in New York this September. Along with her colleague Dr Irene Reppa from Swansea University, Sine will be looking into the effects of aesthetic appeal on user performance, addressing questions such as, "We all know how appealing the IPod is and that we like to use it, but what cognitive processes underpin it?."
Inspirational Nature
Dr Paul Stevens presented a talk at Lancaster University from to 3 April, entitled 'Inspirational Nature: Harnessing passion, inspiration and creativity for nature conservation' event.
Dr Stevens was the only psychologist to present at the conference, and talked through his ideas on "Ecological Intelligence: the capacity to reason in ecological terms."
The aim of the conference was to bring together nature conservation practitioners, senior executives and volunteers. This is a fairly new subject area for UK psychology and Dr Stevens' presentation attracted significant praise from fellow delegates.
Using the internet to support psychology and enhance well-being
Dr Jacqui Taylor is currently organising a conference in collaboration with the University of Southampton . The working title for the conference is 'Using the Internet to support psychology and enhance well-being.' The conference will be taking place over two dates, one at Southampton and one at BU. If you are interested in either attending the conference or presenting please contact Jacqui Taylor.
Annual Undergraduate Student Conference
Students from eight universities across the South of England came together at the University of Winchester on 16 April for the Annual Undergraduate Student Conference in Psychology, sponsored by the British Psychological Society.
Professor Nick Braisby opened the proceedings with 'The Mysteries of Consciousness: Zombies and Delusions' and Dr Darren Langridge 'Speaking the Unspeakable' provided an insight into 'SM and the Eroticisation of Pain'.
Psychology at BU was well represented by four BSc (Hons) Psychology & Computing students - Jane Askew, James Taylor, Gary Smith and John Payne - who gave interesting and confident presentations outlining the aims and findings from their final year dissertations.
Anglepoise sets students eco design challenge
Anglepoise Ltd visited DEC on 22 April to set our design students an eco challenge. Over a hundred Product Design students were briefed by the company on the details of the project which will involve them working in groups of seven to design an eco light. The groups will have five weeks to work on their designs and will present their solutions on 16 May to a panel made up by Anglepoise and BU staff.
The project provides a great opportunity for DEC and its design students to become involved with Anglepoise. Anglepoise began designing their distinctive lamps over 70 years ago and is very much a family business, now focusing on their design heritage.
Command Wessex
The first of two free Command Wessex seminars took place on the 16 April with DEC and the South West Manufacturing and Advisory Service supporting. A very informative presentation was given on 'The regional economy and future prospects' by Nigel Jump, Chief Economist for the South West Regional Development Agency. The seminars take place at the Dudsbury Golf Club with drinks and food being served prior to the main presentation. DEC-based Colin Hewitt-Bell from the Higher Skills project said: "It was a very enjoyable event, with some good opportunities for networking as well".
The next seminar will be on the 4 June with a presentation by Andrew Smith, Head of Manufacturing at Numatic International entitled 'Planning for Insanity'. For further details please contact Norman Stock.
International Networking for Young Scientists: Smart Technology Research Centre collaborates with Wroclaw Technical University, Poland.
The Smart Technology Research Centre have recently co-organised a British Council funded workshop in collaboration with the Institute of Information Science and Engineering from Wroclaw Technical University , Brighton University and KES International. The workshop took place at Wroclaw Technical University and was entitled, 'Knowledge Processing and Reasoning for Information Society.' This very successful event within the British Council's International Networking for Young Scientists initiative has given a great opportunity for a group of five PhD students from STRC to interact with other scientists and engineers from Polish universities. Professor Bogdan Gabrys delivered a keynote speech at the workshop and three of our PhD students (Mark Eastwood, Petr Kadlec and Christiane Lemke) contributed with very well received research papers. The workshop also resulted in an edited book with Prof Gabrys acting as one of the co-editors.
Professor Gabrys has been invited to return to Wroclaw Technical University on the 5 and 6 May to give a series of lectures on Smart Adaptive Systems. This is not the first collaborative venture between the two universities as the Computational Intelligence Research Group (now a part of the STRC) has previously collaborated with Wroclaw Technical University on a recently completed EU funded Coordination Action project on Nature-inspired Smart Information Systems (NiSIS) and continue joint conference, workshop and journal editing activities within the KES International Research Organisation (www.kesinternational.org) . The Smart Technology Research Centre is currently working towards establishing more comprehensive links with Wroclaw in both research and educational collaborations in the area of Computational Intelligence.
Nigerian Chief visits DEC
Report back on the Niger Delta project by Norman Stock
For some time now we have been in discussions with the Niger Delta Development Initiative and the Youth Development Initiative. We have been looking at a couple of projects, one to try and reduce the impact of malaria and the other to create an off-grid micro-generator system. This last project is looking to create a small electricity generator set that would not be dependant on one specific fuel, but would enable electric lighting to be made available in remote areas. You might wonder why, since Nigeria is a major oil producer, they don't just use a petrol or a diesel generator. The strange paradox is that, although they produce oil, they have almost no refining capacity so petrol and diesel fuels are not that widely available.
On 14 April we had a meeting with two of the Nigerian participants in the discussions, Chief Westham Adehor and Barrister Kingsley Burutu Otuaro. As a result of the meeting, we are compiling a proposal which we all hope will secure some funding within Nigeria to progress the micro-generator project. Progress is also being made on the malaria project.
PhD students present posters
DEC PhD students participated in a poster presentation competition on 23 April in the Thomas Hardy Suite. The event featured posters from over 15 students. Judging panels made up by members from each research centre had the difficult task of deciding on the eventual winners.
After much deliberation the winners were announced as follows:
Year 1 was a tie between Angel Torres from the Sustainable Design Research Centre and Bryce Dyer from the Design Simulation Research Centre.
Year 2 winner was Alec Banks from the Software Systems Research Centre, with Iavokos Tzanakis from the Sustainable Design Research centre highly commended.
Year 3 and above winner was Mark Eastwood from the Smart Technology Research Centre.
The event was such a success that it is planned to be repeated next year.
International student recruitment publications
The Strategic Plan highlights the importance of International student recruitment. With this in mind, two new publications will be produced over the summer to support the international student recruitment drive for 2009 entry.
To complement the Undergraduate Prospectus 2009 and the Foundation Degree Prospectus 2009, the Undergraduate International Student Information Guide 2009 will be produced. This publication will contain the full course listings shown in the Undergraduate and Foundation Degree prospectuses, with supplementary information pitched specifically at prospective international undergraduate students. This will be ready in time for the annual undergraduate British Council mailing which marks the beginning of the UG international recruitment cycle in July.
The second publication is the Postgraduate International Student Information Guide 2009. This publication will contain general information about BU written specifically for an international PG readership, School and Academic profiles, as well as full course listings. This will be ready in time for the annual postgraduate British Council mailing and exhibition freight deadlines in August.
Quick Pitch put to the test
The Gelert Quick Pitch SS tent designed by Product Design graduate Fran Conrad was featured on Channel 5's 'The Gadget Show' on 7 April.
The tent was tested alongside two much higher priced tents in the 'Wild Challenge' section of the show. The tents were subjected to torrents of water, showers of mud and high winds. We are happy to report that the single skin Quick Pitch performed well despite being subjected to these extreme conditions.
A researcher for the show commented: "We were pleasantly surprised by the tent."
Simon Phelps in the news
This month The Times featured an article on Computer Aided Product Design graduate Simon Phelps. The focus of the article was on Simon's entrepreneurial spirit and his experience while on the Flying Start Global Fellowship programme, which he took part in for six months last year in America .
Simon has received help from BU Innovations to further develop his Floodstop flood barrier, and has recently taken his first significant order for the product. However, Simon is giving nothing away about the order, other than that it was to a government department.
Click on the link to read the article The Times - Design lifts barriers to success
How to submit future stories
If you have a story you would like included in the next issue of "all hands on DEC" please send it to Emma Bennett . Each month the next deadline will be found at the bottom of the newsletter and a document can be found in the 'I drive' (I:\DEC\Private\Marketing\All Hands on DEC) with all copy/story deadlines for the rest of the year.
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Story deadline is: 15 May 2008
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