I’m afraid that I’ve now signed up my quotas of MSc student
projects for summer 2010 and 3rd year undergraduate projects for the
2010-11 session and have no more supervision slots available.
Steve Benford, Mixed Reality Laboratory
The following ideas might be adapted to both third year BSc individual projects or Masters projects.
Detecting boredom from mobile phone use
An important issue for the design of
mobile services is being able to predict when it is best to interrupt users
with content. In short, when might people be most receptive to a new
mobile experience? One obvious possibility is when they are bored. And what do
people do when they are bored? They play with their phones. This project will
carry out studies to determine what kinds of mobile phone behaviours might
possibly indicate boredom and subsequent to this, whether it might be possible
to spot these behaviours solely by analyzing patterns of interaction on the
phone. It will also consider privacy issues concerning the circumstances
under which it might be acceptable to release this information to service
providers to that they can tailor interactions with mobile users.
Using location-based services and social networking to encouraging hitch hiking
Hitching used to be a
popular form of cheap travel, especially for students who needed to travel up
and down the country. However, hitching appears to
declined in popularity, perhaps due to fears about safety (for hitchers and
drivers) or maybe due to its unpredictability. This project will explore how a
combination of location-based services and social networking might reinvigorate
hitching. Hitchers hold out their digital thumbs (mobile phones) to request a
lift causing their locations and intended journeys to be matched against those
of approaching drivers who might give possibly them a lift. Social networking
technology is then used to make mutually acceptable recommendations, for
example driver-hitcher pairs who might share common interests, have some
‘friends of friends’ connection, or have an impeccable record for safety, good
manners.
Usability study of Web CT
This project will design
and conduct a usability study of the University’s Web CT eLearning system from
the point of view of both students and staff.
This project will explore the potential of mobile blogging to help students prepare for visits between Nottingham’s various international campuses. The initial focus will be on how to support students at Ningbo preparing to spend time at Nottingham. The project will consider how the technology can be used to support collaboration between students who plan to visit Nottingham, those who are currently here, and possibly those who previously visited and have since returned. The project will analyse user requirements, built a and prototype and carry out a formative evaluation of this.
This project
is to design, implement and evaluate a location-aware film tour-guide for
Nottingham that runs on a mobile device such as a handheld computer. The
content could be based around various well known films that are set or were shot
around the city. The tool would allow people to replay video clips, text and
audio when at different locations. It might use GPS, although a simpler
possibility would be to enable people to report their own locations (e.g., by
entering a text string, selecting from a list or clicking on a map). It might
be for pedestrians, drivers or perhaps even cyclists.
The Thrill
project has recently developed a ‘personal and wearable telemetry system’ that
captures video and also physiological data (e.g., heart rate) from
rollercoaster riders. The aim is to develop a system to make short souvenir
videos of a ride by using the heart-rate data to automatically select and then
stitch together the ‘best’ moments from the video. The project could involve
analysing the data to see whether biosensing is a
good indicator of those best moments or could be more technically focused on
ways of indexing the video under the assumption that it is.
Tune recommender
system for Irish music sessions
When Irish
musicians play together in a traditional session they often string a series of
tunes together to form a set. This involves figuring out which tunes fit
together (based upon timing, key, style and other factors) and also figuring
out who else might know the tunes and be able to join in. The project would let
musicians programme playlists of their favourite tunes into the phones, ipods or other personal devices. The application would then
compare different players’ lists and come up with suggestions for good sets of
common tunes. Other features might be to be able to exchange recordings,
music etc and so learn each others tunes too.
Patchy
mobile phone coverage is a constant annoyance when travelling on trains. This
project will build a map of coverage (perhaps a paper map or maybe an
interactive map on the phone) that will convey coverage and likely connectivity
to travellers and help them predict when to make calls. This might involve
getting people to log mobile phone connectivity using phones with GPS receivers
(we have these), developing ides for how best to visualise the results, and
then testing this out.
Day of the
Figurines is a text-messaging adventure game for mobile phones that has so far
been played by over 700 players. One comment from players is that they want
better ways of being able to review their history of messages with the game and
of comparing their experience with others. All of the text messages are in fact
stored in a database. The aim of the project is to design, implement and
evaluate an interface for exploring the history of Day of the Figurines. This
would probably be web-based.
This project
is to design, implement and evaluate a new text conferencing tool that aims to
support more democratic participation. Each participant is given a ‘talk
budget’ which may be refreshed from time to time. When this runs out they can
no longer talk, unless another participant donates some of their remaining
budget to them.