Category: talks

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

Subliminal priming

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At the MobileHCI conference this year, I talked about my research into subliminal priming as a potential vehicle for behaviour change. Subliminal priming is where you show someone a piece of information (the prime) that affects later judgements or actions despite them not being able to tell you what the information was. More

Anti-surveillance technology

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In 2017, I gave a talk at CHI (the big HCI conference) that explored how advertisers are targeting our subconscious, and what technology can do about it. It was partly inspired by  some (old!) science fiction: Walden 2, a utopian science fiction book by the psychologist B F Skinner written in 1945, and Huxley’s Brave New World Revisited from 1958, reflecting on the real-world developments that echoed his dystopian classic written in 1931. More

Zombies, Cakes & Goddam People

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On Saturday, I gave a talk at the University of Birmingham Women in Tech conference, based on 3 key quotes. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic Arthur C. Clarke If it weren’t for the people, the god-damn people … always getting tangled up in the machinery. If it weren’t for them, the world would be an engineer’s paradise. Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano I have in me both north and south polarities; … the deepest Analysis, with brilliant Imagination forever playing on the surface of those grave & fathomless depths. Ada Lovelace, 1844 (Letter to Michael Faraday) More