Oxford Brookes University, Headington Campus, Gipsy
Lane, Oxford. OX3 0BP. UK. Tel: 44 (0)1865 741111
Department
Role in the project:
- Leader of: WP4 Evaluation
Staff:
Description:
to be completed
Expertise
The Speech Project, based in the Intelligent Systems Research Group in the Department of Computing has an excellent reputation for leading research into speech based interface design for older adults. The group led by Dr Mary Zajicek developed BrookesTalk a voice Web browser, which won a medal in the British Computer Society Awards for Innovation together with awards from Microsoft and ONCE the Spanish Association For the Blind. Innovation focused on features which help users to build strategies for interaction. Development of BrookesTalk and other pilot systems was carried out using the rapid prototyping techniques and early user based scenarios, and recent work with Toyota Information Systems and Stanford University on in-car speech systems involves in depth analysis of users' emotional state. Experience in these three areas will enrich and inform evaluation in WP4.
In particular:
The group has extensive experience of running evaluation studies particularly for applications where user satisfaction and performance are less tangible as in applications for collaborative learning. The group has worked with a range of different user groups and has particular expertise in evaluating the emotional impact of interface design
- Experience of user involvement and rapid prototyping, and detailed system evaluation for example in the development of BrookesTalk a Web browser for visually impaired people (BrookesTalk, 2005), The Voice Activated Booking System built in Voice XML (Zajicek et al, 2004), BrookesJog and in-car speech systems.
- Experience of using speech and multimodality to guide user behaviour at the interface (Zajicek and Hall, 2000) (Zajicek and Morrissey, 2003)
- Experience of design implications of interaction for children (Read et al, 2004)
- Experience in analysis and discussion of dissemination of interaction results (Zajicek, 2004)
- Experience of designing for attention (without agents) in Voice XML Voice Activated Booking System for older adults (Zajicek et al, 2004)
- Experience of assessment of emotional state latterly with in-car speech systems (Jonsson et al, 2005) where emotional state is a key factor in the evaluation of the effectiveness of an interface.
- Familiarity with the use of extreme programming