Boriana Koleva's Project Ideas: 

My research area is the field of Human Computer Interaction with a particular emphasis on mixed reality interfaces.  In general I am happy to supervise any projects with an HCI and/or novel interface component.

Some ideas for projects I would be interested in supervising:  

Hybrid Gifts

The project will explore novel forms of hybrid gifts, which flexibly combine physical artefacts with digital media to deliver powerful gifting experiences. In particular, the opportunities of AR and VR technologies can be investigated to interleave the physical and the digital to create hybrid gifts that are valued by receivers.

Mixed Reality Applications 

Development and evaluation of mixed reality applications for education, gaming, city and museum visiting. Such an application can be constructed using platforms such as Vuforia (http://www.instantreality.org/). 

Mobile Computing 

Using mobile devices (mobile phones or tablets) and positioning technologies (e.g. GPS) to create applications such as:

-       Mobile guides for cities and museum environments

-       Mobile learning

-       Combining mobile devices with embedded computers (e.g. using a mobile phone to reveal content on a surface or using a mobile phone as an input device to browse content on a large shared display

-       Mobile gaming

-       Storytelling on/with mobile devices

 

Aesthetic Visual Codes 

Aestheticodes have evolved through a collaboration between computer scientists and ceramic designers to develop aesthetic patterns that embed multiple visual codes and can decorate a wide variety of objects. For more information on Artcodes see:  http://www.artcodes.co.uk/. Working with a restaurant we have produced a prototype sets of tableware and a mobile app to enhance a dining experience. Some ideas for projects include:

-       Usability studies of the invisible interactions with complex patterns and different cues that show where the codes are

-       Exploration of further physical deployments of Aestheticodes - objects on objects, other surfaces

-       Extending the current authoring interface to make it more usable (possible integration with AppFurnace)

-       Creating an authoring tool that enables codes to be easily copied, refined, tweaked, patterned and tested

Tangible Interfaces

These are interfaces which exploit physical-world modalities of interaction; the user usually interacts with the computer by manipulating physical objects. Such interfaces can be easily constructed with the Phidgets toolkit. This includes 2 Touch Sensors,  2 Force Sensors , 2 Slider Sensors,  2 Light Sensors, 1 Dual Axis Accelerometer, Coloured  LEDs, Pushbuttons, 4 servo motors and a USB RFID reader (+ USB board for connecting all these input and output components to the computer). For more information on the Phidgets toolkit see http://www.phidgets.com/ and for examples of projects see http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/grouplab/phidgets/gallery/index.html.