Gareth runs seminar in Singapore

Gareth will be running a seminar on ‘Design Thinking’ by invitation of the Institute of Systems, Science, Singapore today. Gareth will be exploring the ways in which creative design thinking processes can have benefits well outside the domains from which the techniques originated.

Steve giving a public lecture

Designing for the Flintstones: How the Products of the Future Might be Better Designed

WEDNESDAY 14 MARCH 2012
5.45pm for 6pm start
Cardiff School of Art & Design
CSM Building, Llandaff Campus

Professor Steve Gill, Cardiff School of Art & Design
We live in a world of ubiquitous computing. Computers are in our cameras, iPods, ovens, washing machines, our children’s toys and even in their birthday cards. The phones in our pockets today have millions of times the memory of the computer in the Apollo lunar capsules. Yet many of these computer embedded products are deeply unsatisfactory. Part of the reason is that to all intents and purposes we are cave people with senses and emotions evolved to interact with the physical world in complex and overlapping ways.

In this lecture Professor Gill explores some of the reasons we have so many poorly designed products in our lives and how the situation might be addressed through better understanding of the cave people inside us all.

To book your place on any of the UWIC Professorial and Inaugural lectures, please complete the onlinebooking form or contact: Caryn Blunt, Tel: 029 2041 6052 or email: pandilectures@cardiffmet.ac.uk

Places are free of charge on a first come, first serve basis and are open to the General Public.

UWIC operates a 24 hour parking system – please pay and display 50p on the evening of the lecture

Clara Watkins joins PAIPR

We are delighted to welcome Clara to the team. Clara comes to us courtesy of a Cardiff Met a PhD scholarship. She is being supervised by Gareth, Steve and Prof. Judith Hall from Cardiff Medical School. Clara will be looking into how rapid prototype led ethnographic analysis can be used in the developments of culturally appropriate health product interventions in rural Zambia.

Alessio Malezia gives talk

Alessio Malizia from Departamento de Informática, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid gave a talk on the development of human computer interaction tools working via a projected multi-touch surface developed as part of a PhD by Andrea Bellucci. The talk was well attended, attracting an audience of about 100 students and staff.

Gareth in Norway

Gareth is at the University of Agder, Norway today, as a consultant on  the development of  a postgraduate course on management of a research project.

Gareth visits Stanford

Gareth visits Stanford’s Design School today on a trip intended to allow the exchange of ideas on design teaching and innovation research.

Steve contributes to the development of Vision-Space

Vision Space is based on a completely new way of modelling perception and how we represent visual experience. By studying the work of artists such as Van Gogh and Cézanne, John Jupe, a UWIC Academic Associate, has developed a range of insights into how we see in three dimensions. This involves a new range of monocular proximity cues and then the incorporation of binocular information within that spatial scenario. Jupe has demonstrated that it is possible to radically improve our spatial perception of still and moving images by exploiting the distinction between the relatively ordered information available to central vision and a 3D field of disordered information in peripheral vision.

Steve joins John and Prof. Rob Pepperell, who has undertaken extensive research in human perception and cognition, particularly in the field of visual indeterminacy. Together they will develop further insights into how we perceive the world around us and how we might develop and exploit it in practical ways through computer embedded product design and development. The team plans to develop the core of a series of world class research and enterprise collaborations. Steve’s particular role in the team will be the development of real world product applications. In the last six months Jupe, Pepperell and Gill have won a Knowledge Economy Skills Scholarship (KESS) PhD Scholarship, two Strategic Insight Partnerships (SIPs) and a KESS Access to Masters Scheme studentship. UWIC have already recognised the commercial potential of the work through the purchase of a 10% stake in the IP holding company.