Sarah Sharples' Ideas

Some ideas for specific projects:

• Technologies to support serendipity – Serendipity, or the creation or note of unexpected connections, can be potentially supported by technology. A project SerenA (Chance encounters in the space of ideas) is investigating these issues and a project could prototype specific technologies to support serendipity, or investigate particular user requirements for technologies in this context.
• Understanding source of information/position data - Many technologies, particularly mobile technologies, combine different data sources to communicate information. This information may be about a range of things such as the weather, current location, news, research findings, travel information etc. There are two issues to consider here – firstly, do users understand the source or provenance of information that is presented, and secondly, does this understanding influence their choice of action or behaviour. This could be in a range of application contexts, including travel or personal data.
• Perception of privacy and security in shared data - Various technologies (e.g. twitter, facebook etc.) allow analysis and sharing of information in both an anonymised and identifiable manner. This project would specifically prototype some systems for the purposes of eliciting views on the privacy and security issues associated with using that data in a range of different contexts.
• Technologies to support collaboration - A number of technologies both implicitly and explicitly support collaboration, whether through enabling more effective co-located communication or allowing people to communicate when they are in different locations, or even have never met. This project would consider different task scenarios for use of such technologies and evaluate the impact of them in these tasks.