Push Away the Smartphone

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Figure pushing an image of a smartphone away

Investigating Methods to Counter Problematic Smartphone Use Are you concerned about how much of your time your phone steals? If so, what can you do about it if you don’t want to – or can’t – use self-control or restrictive measures? We will be presenting our research in a LBW poster session at CHI in Glasgow in 2019. With my co-researchers Jose Ingacio Rocca, Ben Cowan and Russell Beale, we trialled the use of a nonconscious behaviour change technique, approach bias retraining, on a Tabletop surface. We examined whether repeated actions of pushing away smartphones and pulling books towards you … More

Fixing Fleeting Reflections: open science, 19th centry style

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Did you know that photography was an early open science project? On 19 August 1839, the French government made the secret of making daguerrotypes “free to the world” as a gift. Daguerrotypes are specially-treated metal plates that can store an image it’s exposed to. Treating the plates with developing chemicals reveals the picture. Their name comes from their inventor, Monsieur Louis Daguerre. In the early daguerrotype days, you’d need to say cheese for around 10 minutes to give enough time for the image to burn onto the plates so it could be developed, perhaps why Louis looks a little bemused in … More

Dolphins can secretly use your phone to order 3,000 cans of tuna!

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cartoon dolphin trying to eat a tin of tuna

Do you have a smart device or smart assistant on your phone? If you also have a pet dolphin, you might need to keep an eye on your shopping lists. Since some dolphin chatter is inaudible, Flippy may have been ordering tuna without you noticing. Researchers at the SSSLab in China have worked out how to use completely inaudible voice commands to activate smart devices and assistants. The commands are inaudible to humans because they are very high frequency sounds. Humans can hear stuff in the range between 20 Hz to 20 kHz, but we are especially attuned to sounds … More

Why is my cat green? Signalling danger to the future. With cats.

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Imagine you’re 100 years in the future, exploring a deserted landscape with your trusty cat sidekick. Your cat suddenly turns green. What does it mean? Hopefully, you’ll remember the song your grandma taught you as a kid. Your cat is green because you have stumbled across some nuclear waste. Time to scarper, and maybe reward your newly green cat with some fish. More

Browser gender nudges?

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Our culture is infused with stereotypes, and their ubiquity can make them hard to spot. But stereotypes contribute to solidifying the status quo and make things hard to change. For example, I’m interested in gender balance in computer science. If people tend to associate men with technical jobs more than women, they tend to appoint and reward men more. And if you’re female, you might unconsciously assume that technical jobs are not for you. More