Projects
Below are my projects for 2013
My interests:
I'm happy to supervise anything related to how technology design impact on emotion, behaviour and cognition. Specific projects are below.
Office Hour: Wednesday 12-1pm
Email:b.r.cowan@cs.bham.ac.uk
Proposed Projects:
The role of user perceptions in human-computer dialogue behaviour: Involves designing basic dialogue system, recruiting participants, running experiment session and statistical analysis using either R or SPSS.
Suggested Readings:
- Branigan, H.P. et al (2011). The role of beliefs in lexical alignment: Evidence from dialogs with humans and computers. Cognition, 121, 41-57
- Cowan, B.R., Branigan, H.P., & Beale, R. (2012). Investigating the impact of interlocutor voice on syntactic alignment in human-computer dialogue. Proceedings of BCS HCI 2012, Birmingham, UK, 39-48.
Using the Emotional stroop task to investigate anxiety towards technology: Involves coding an online version of the stroop task (using Python) as well as statistical analysis using either R or SPSS.
Suggested Readings:
- Williams, J., Matthews, A., & Macleod, C. (1996). The emotional stroop task and psychopathology. Psychological Bulletin, 120, 3-24.
- Cowan, B.R., & Jack, M.A. (2011). Exploring the wiki user experience: The effects of training spaces on novice user usability and anxiety towards wiki editing. Interacting with Computers. 117-128
- Hassenzahl, M., & Tractinsky, N. (2006). User experience- a research agenda. Behaviour & Information Technology, 25(2), 91–97.
Personality as a predictor of user experience Involves deployment of online questionnaires to judge the user experience of a chosen interface as well as the user's personality. Statistical analysis using R or SPSS will be needed.
Suggested Readings:
- Matthews, G., Deary, I., & Whiteman, M. (2003). Personality Traits; Second Edition. Chapters 1, 4 & 9. Cambridge University Press
- Hassenzahl, M., & Tractinsky, N. (2006). User experience- a research agenda. Behaviour & Information Technology, 25(2), 91–97.
The development of habits in human-computer interaction Involves designing and developing basic technology to identify what aspects of the interface impact the execution of habitual actions.
Suggested Readings:
- Wood, W., & Neal, D. T. (2007). A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface. Psychological Review, 114(4), 843–863.
- Lally, P., Van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009.
All of these projects may lead to publication.