RCUK Award
Fernando Loizides has been awarded an RCUK National Science and Engineering Week award.
The RCUK Public Engagement with Research Team announces its award scheme to support public engagement activities in National Science and Engineering Week 2010 (12-21 March). All seven Research Councils are involved in supporting the scheme and funds of up to £2,000 are available to successful applicants. The focus of these awards is to support practising researchers funded by the Research Councils working in any academic discipline who wish to engage the public with issues relating to science and engineering.
This project aims to raise public awareness of novel technological interaction techniques and equip individuals and institutions, with the knowledge needed to create these tools themselves. Increasingly, ubiquitous novel interfaces give the user a more engaging experience (e.g. Nintendo Wii and interactive whiteboards). We propose immersing users into the world of how these interfaces are created and experimented with. Furthermore, we aim to teach users how they can exploit such technologies to create devices at the fraction of the price of the commercial equivalent. The technologies will be demonstrated and taught, for the participants to be able to reproduce them at home or at school. These include eye tracking, multi-touch surfaces, interactive 3D virtual reality head tracking glasses and interactive whiteboards. Schools and individuals will benefit with the knowledge of how to integrate these technologies into their environment themselves and will be able to go back and transfer the skills learned to a wider audience.
The project will engage the public through hands-on activities, bridging the gap between the academic and non-academic world. The technology we will present is widely available yet unknown (and seemingly unapproachable) to the common user. By presentations, workshop activities and working with teachers and schools this technology can be integrated into several lives at home and at school. Thus, the transferable skills of creating these tools can also engage further audiences after the week of workshops and presentations are complete. By giving people the opportunity to experience and interact with this technology we can also receive good feedback into potential research to be carried out by the members of the academic cycle in the future. The outcomes and the relationships formed by the project will be used as a continuous feedback into the success and evolution of these technologies into new environments and with different ways. This will allow for the writing of experiences and further projects targeted and the non-specialist public yet with capability presented for advanced user-centred design, development and research.