Humans and technology

Human visual perception

Dr Ken Scott-Brown specialises in human visual perception, specifically the effectiveness of CCTV technology surveillance systems.  The findings will affect policy and practice for the police and, in the longer term, could be used to aid public understanding of CCTV and its strengths and limitations.

The research team are concerned with the human interface for CCTV, the actual observer of the information.  Issues such as ‘change blindness’ demonstrate how attention can be misdirected and people can fail to spot dramatic changes, illustrating that there is a lot more going on than viewers can actually take in.

The researchers are looking at the effect of additional distractions, observation patterns through eye movement, search strategies, and decision-making conducted under conditions of uncertainty.  

Data information and knowledge management 

Researchers from the School of Computing & Engineering Systems are researching the area of data information and knowledge management.

This is an extremely large research area which covers everything to do with how we control and manage information.  Abertay’s researchers are interested in knowledge and information engineering, which is about how we build and maintain information repositories as a means of supporting intelligent querying and providing personalised information to users.  Essentially this means developing systems that are smart and adaptive so that they change representation relative to the user, the environment and the situation.

Dr Colin Cartwright is researching usability of displays, specialising in those used in unusual situations, primarily outdoors.  These can range from handheld portable devices to displays in a jet fighter’s cockpit.

Dr Cartwright, working with other UK researchers, is attempting to create a scale of usability, to help determine accurate specifications and therefore costs, for any type of display. The scale would consider many different aspects such as the age of the user, severity of conditions, whether or not the users need to be trained, and what kind of information will be displayed. 

This research is unique in that the group hope to produce a scale that covers activities rather than a specification determined for a particular industry.  Dr Cartwright’s current research project, Endview, is co-ordinated by GE Electronics.