Digital+Media+and+Interaction+Design

=__**Digital Media and Interaction Design**__= This page has three main sections:

• Use this to find out which member of staff has the right expertise to supervise the type of project that you want to do. Carry out some research into your topic, and then arrange to meet the relevant member of staff to discuss further.
 * Staff Interests** shows a list of members of staff in the subject group, and some keywords that identify their areas of interest.

• If one of these interests you, read the requirements for a project in that area, carry out some background research and then arrange to meet the relevant member of staff to discuss further.
 * Broad Project Ideas** provides some outline ideas for projects that you can use to develop a more specific idea for your project

• These are detailed and well-defined, and you should know immediately whether any of these are of interest to you. If so, carry out some background research into the topic and then arrange to meet the relevant member of staff as soon as possible.
 * Specific Project Ideas**



Staff Interests

 * Professor David Benyon, C58: New forms of human-computer interaction, Companions
 * Dr Malcolm Rutter, C67: Microprocessor Applications, HCI, Multimedia, Music and Sound, Educational Techniques, Tutoring and Learning Systems, Signal Processing, Adaptive Systems
 * Gregory Leplatre, C48: I will only supervise 3D projects and, depending on the level of interest for these projects, I probably won't be able to supervise them all myself. However, if you do a 3D related project and I'm not your supervisor, I can arrange to meet with you regularly to discuss your progress. Make sure you discuss your idea with me before the end of the semester! You definitely don't want to wait until September to decide what you are going to do in your honours project.
 * Ingi Helgason, D32: Interaction design; User experience; Exploratory & imaginative interactions; Visual & graphic communication, Online publishing; Online marketing and branding; Interfaces to social networking and social media; Interactive documentary. @http://complexpleasures.wordpress.com/about-me/
 * Brian Davison, C56: Energy usage, generation and monitoring. Mobile app development using Android. Location-based games (mobile, GPS, etc.). Data/information visualisation.
 * Tom McEwan, C47: Creating new digital markets, business applications of Digital Media, socially-embedded technology (see eusset.eu), professional competency, UX, education & technology. I have commercial and teaching experience of audio, video, 3D and web content management.
 * Dr Laura Muir, C60, User-centred design, Visual information seeking behaviour (eye tracking), Usability/accessibility of information systems.

Prof David Benyon
__Artificial Companions__ There is scope for project ideas to be developed around artificial companions e.g. for the elderly. This would be suitable for good students able to prototype concepts in Flash or similar.

__Human Computer Interaction__ There are many interesting projects that can be undertaken in the general area of HCI. If you have an interest in people and new technologies and how to use them, come and have a chat. Areas of interest include: • Navigation of Information Spaces - using our knowledge of how to design cities and other areas of the built environment to design better web sites • Pervasive computing and HCI. What happens when we are surrounded by tiny computers that can all talk to each other? How will we know what is going on? • Development methods. What is the best way to go about developing human-computer systems? The computer needs to be carefully programmed. The people want to be flexible. How can be reconcile these two issues? • Future Visions. Imagine wholly novel interfaces such as the gesture interface in Minority Report or the human interaction with robots as in AI or I Robot. What can you come up with?

__Concepts of Companions: intelligent interfaces to the internet__ Outline: Projects associated with EU companions project. Details are at [|www.napier.ac.uk/companions] Students are expected to develop ideas of companions as 'intelligent, personalised persistent, multimodal interfaces to the internet and to build and evaluate prototype systems Deliverables: prototype companion + evaluation Required Resources: Must be able and inventive student keen to explore new forms of human-computer interaction Skillsets: Prototyping in Flash or similar

Multi-touch and gesture-based interaction There are a limited number of projects in the area of human-computer interaction (HCI) using the very latest technologies. We have access to a large multi-touch table and wall-sized displays in the Faculty’s ‘Future Meeting Room’. Novel forms of interaction can be developed and evaluated in the room. Students should be good programmers and interested in using PyMT (python for multi-touch). Develop new forms of interaction and new types of user interface. Other opportunities are available for students wanting to look at gesture-based interaction, perhaps by interacting with large displays through mobile phones. The ability to source and implement appropriate interaction methods is critical.

Dr Malcolm Rutter
Please follow this link to view my broad project ideas: []

Brian Davison
__Energy usage, generation and monitoring__ Projects in this area would typically involve the processing of an incoming stream of data which is displayed in a useful format on a Web page or on a handheld device. There are opportunities here for anyone with an interest in renewable energy, a reasonable level of programming ability and a good grasp of HCI.

__ Mobile apps and location-based games __ Location-based games make use of mobile platforms and GPS to allow players to interact within a geographical area. Games might be based on conventions drawn from a range of existing activities including treasure hunts, orienteering and geocaching, and may or may not include a narrative element. An example of this type of development is Coderace which was run as a public competition event in August 2012.

__ Data/information visualisation __ Data or information in numeric or text format is often difficult to understand whereas presentation in visual form can be much more intuitive. Projects in this area would require a source of data, and some general ideas about how that data could be presented. The range of technologies is very wide, and so could suit many different skill sets. I am particularly interested in projects where information could be presented in a timeline format or those which address issues with open data, linked data or large technical datasets.

=Specific Project Ideas =

Dr Malcolm Rutter
__<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Contrasting Multimedia Approaches to Celtic Storytelling __ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Style: Investigation of available methodologies, Investigation of available techniques, construction of application, evaluation against a competing application. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Outline: Multimedia is not merely something that runs on a computer. The first question to ask of any storytelling application is “can it seriously compete with a book?” MP3 players...talking books, handheld DVD players... the first investigation could be the trade-off of production cost against true entertainment. Would it be possible to evaluate immersion?...and is there a serious difference between the most effective solution and the most <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">marketable? <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This project can go in many fruitful directions. Many students only think about evaluation at the end of the project. In this case evaluation will make the difference between a typical 'build' project and an excellent investigation with many lessons learned.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tom McEwan **
There are lots of project possibilities that could help with my voluntary work for external bodies such as BCS, eusset.eu, usabilitynews.com, uxcf.org - in particular in creating effective, useful and social interactive media and services. As well as getting your work into the public eye, you will have the chance to interact with members of the relevant committees eg [] which may in turn help you gain employment and/or postgraduate possibilities
 * Outward-facing:**

I am responsible for the Quality Procedures in the school, and these are currently very paper-based and bureaucratic. I am interested in ideas for more interactive ways of, for example, comparing old and new versions of a module descriptor or a programme spec in order to scrutinise and approve the proposed changes. As well as giving an interesting insight into how organisations work, you would be able to tell future employers how you used interactive media to make an organisation more effective and efficient.
 * Inward-facing:**

I have a dodgy past as a professional singer-songwriter with various traces of this as tgmcewan on wordpress.org, soundcloud, reverbnation, youtube, myspace etc and a php database on [] - I'm interested in ideas for how a musician's output can be communicated via social media <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Home Page
 * Personal interest:**

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Brian Davison
__Visualising local authority data__ Edinburgh City Council collects large amounts of data and is always keen to discuss new way that data can be used, presented or exploited. A project in this area would explore the challenges of using Open Data, select a particular area of interest based on Council data, and would create an experimental visualisation that adds value to existing Council services, either for the public user or for the Council itself.

__<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">Improvisor __ Technologies such as PowerPoint are widely used in education, but are only suitable for planned, linear presentations. This limits the presenter's ability to adapt the material for a specific audience. This project would develop a system for managing a collection of smaller content items consisting of individual diagrams or slides which would be tagged with metadata. Using the standard voice recognition features in Windows, the system would constantly monitor the presenter's words and provide a dynamic list of assets which the presenter can choose from. This is a complex project that would involve the integration of several component systems, and would provide a challenge for a sufficiently motivated student.

__ Coderace version n __ Running Coderace as a public event has identified a number of improvements that could be made. Some are fundamental to the way the game works and would involve a major re-write, while others are more incremental. An Honours or MSc project could be built around one or more of these modifications. Coderace is built in Java using the Android development kit, and a project in this area would be suitable for a strong software engineering student.

__ Coderace monitor version n __ The Coderace application itself runs on an Android device, but there is also a Web-based interface for following the progress of a game. The monitor follows many of the conventions of the game itself, but provides more information for spectators. The Coderace monitor is built using HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and MySQL and a project in this area would therefore suit a strong Web developer.

__ Comparative timelines __ Open source technology already exists which allows you to present a dataset on a timeline (eg Simile). However, it would be useful to be able to generate timeline representations according to the user's preferences (restricted to a particular time range, for example), and also to be able to select more than one dataset to compare them. This project would make use of the Simile widget and would also make use of a central database repository. The skills required would therefore include relational database design, Web technologies (especially Javascript) and PHP.