This page illustrates projects I have led or collaborated on in the past. I am highly experienced in multi-disciplinary projects in both academia and industry. Outputs for most of these projects can be found on the publications page, or else get in touch if you can't find what you were looking for.

Building a New Bank

At Atom bank we are building a bank that exists only on your mobile device. This is an effort to make banking on the move more useful to people based on the knowledge that people increasingly bank online and rarely visit their local bank branch. The challenge is to enable people to manage their money on their mobile in way that balances usability, security, trust and presents a great experience.

Spontaneous and Secure Financial Delegation

In everyday life people often need to rely on other people to gain access to cash, buy items, or pay for services. Current mechanisms for delegating access to finances (e.g. powers of attorney) are a blunt instrument for the kind of flexible and spontaneous delegation that people often need. In this project we mapped out challenges facing helpers and those who are helped to workaround a lack of provision for delegation, and designed a helper card and accompanying mobile app as one potental solution.

User Identification on Mobile Devices via Smart Watch

SwipeID is a method of identifying supervisor users across a set of touch-based devices by correlating data from a wrist-worn inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a corresponding touchscreen interaction. This approach naturally supports access at the time and point of contact and does not require any additional hardware on the client devices. Collaboration with Ahmed Kharuffa and Microsoft Research.

Speeching

People with Parkinson's disease are likely to develop speech problems, however do not always seek help from speech therapists. In this project we explore the potential for online platforms to facilitate the gathering of speech intelligibility judgments from an online crowd to support everyday improvement of speech problems and identify opportunties for digital self-care. Collaboration with Roisin Mcnaney.

Experience-centred security and privacy

Traditional measures of usability can only generate a limited understanding of how security and privacy mechanisms fit (or are likely to fit) into people's lives. This project aims to conceptually integrate work on user experience with the topic of privacy and security, along with the identification of research methods to reveal experiential qualities of security and privacy technologies. See Invisible Design.

PayWise

Internet banking does not support the financial practices of people living on a low income. PayWise is a system implmented on a Raspberry Pi that is designed to support financial planning and budgeting via a HD TV. We developed design methods for new payment methods and a prototype. Collaboration with John Vines, Andrew Monk, London Rebuilding Society and the UK Payments Council.

Postervote

PosterVote is an hardware platform (and accompanying web site) that allows sustainable and spontaneous electronic voting to support social movements to engage in community action. The PosterVote hardware consists of a thin, flexible circuit board with 5 buttons and 5 LEDs to be placed at the back of a normal paper poster. Collaboration with Vasilis Vlachokyriakos and others.

User Authentication on Mobile Devices

Ubiquitous computing technologies, such as mobile devices, present new challenges and opportunities to the process of user authentication. In this project we explore user interfaces and interaction techniques to support the design of user authentication mechanisms better suited to the mobile context. Involved collaborations with the University of Munich and Nokia Research.

Crowdsourcing and Surveillance

Crowdsourcing has been applied to a number of problems that are difficult for computers to solve. In this project we are developing platforms to better understand the trend of placing CCTV video online and asking online communities to watch it and identify events of interest. We conduct quantitative experiments and consider the privacy implications of visual surveillance in our digital society.


Biometric Daemon

The Biometric Daemon is a personal device to securely remind users of their PINs. It registers the traits of its owner, such as gait (through use of an accelerometer), and fingerprints (through a built in reader), also a gesture password, recognised by a gyroscope. The device provides a means of remembering security information without compromising it.

Digital Banking for Eightysomethings

Banking technologies do not serve those who have the greatest need of new financial technology or services. We carried out participatory design workshops to understand the banking practices of people over the age of 80. Project page is here. We developed digital cheques, where cheques were cleared by the crowd, and deployed our own community cheque scheme.

Pickpocket

Pickpocket is a twist on traditional file sharing where users are able to steal files from each other. Users are warned when others are looking through their files -- aka their pocket -- and alerted when someone tries to steal something. If users are fast enough, they can prevent the theft. Collaboration with the Socio-Digital Systems group (now Human Experience and Design) at Microsoft Research.

Multi-Touch Authentication on Tabletops

We designed a number of novel authentication schemes that exploit the features of multi-touch interaction to inhibit shoulder surfing. One of these, Pressure-Grid, stood out, enhancing resistance when participants used it to enter both PINs and graphical passwords. Collaboration with David Kim, Jonathan Hook, Pam Briggs and others. A video describing some of the designs is here.

Eye Tracking Interactions

When entering sensitive information in public, sensitive information might be leaked to casual observers. We designed software (and physical housing) for a Tobii x50 eye tracker to allow users to enter credentials using gaze-contingent interactions. We conducted an experiment in a virtual reality suite to test usability in the presence of distractions typical to the nearest ATM.

Tabletop Interaction in Museums

Museums often have a limited range of digital technologies. In this project we created a bespoke table and instrumented it with PhidgetRFID sensors, and allowed users to navigate projected content based upon the location of an RFID-augmented object from the period of time under exploration. Collaboration with Jayne Wallace and Lindsay Allason-Jones OBE.

Graphical Passwords

The need to remember multiple strong alphanumeric passwords flies in the face of the limits of human cognition. This project invovled onducting experiments to determine the security and usability of novel user authentication designs, that don't rely upon text passwords. This project was covered by international news and online media e.g. Daily Mail, Slashdot, BBC and more.


The Ambient Kitchen

A pervasive computing prototyping environment designed to support people with dementia to perform everyday tasks around the kitchen. Situated in the Culture Lab, we instrumented the kitchen work surfaces with RFID sensors, added pressure sensors to the floor and accelerometers to various kitchen appliances. The kitchen serves as a platform for activity recognition and ubicomp research.