Digital Library
I manage the JISC project: Usability and Contemporary User Experience in Digital Libraries (UX2.0). I also undertake interaction design and web development for the project. Find out more about UX2.0:
- Project sites: JISC | UX2.0 website
- Twitter (project) (ID: ux2)
The project also underpins the digital library services for Enabling Grids for E-SciencE (EGEE) and NeSC, facilitating content for grid computing and e-science training purposes. The services (library@nesc, EGEE Library) are based on custom-built web applications and engineered systems from off-the-shelf and open source products such as Fedora Repository, Orbeon Forms, Solr, CAS.
Current interests: Interaction Design (IxD), UI patterns, Web 2.0, Faceted Searching, Model-view-controller (MVC) (Ruby on Rails, Java), AJAX/Javascript frameworks. Also into music, running, hill walking, photography, cinema.
Previously.., Ph.D., Post-Doc
Some of the projects I've completed at the University of Edinburgh involved technological developments of resource discovery services and metadata interoperability - metadata+ (also manager), d+ (also manager) and DEVIL.
While writing up PhD thesis, I took up a post-doctoral research fellowship at the School of the Built Environment, Napier University. I submitted the thesis and defended the PhD ~ Computer Extraction of Human Faces ~ at De-Montfort University (CSE Department). The work focused on a prerequisite in facial recognition technology, i.e detecting human faces in video sequences via a novel cost-effective segmentation algorithm. The research was also related to the final year project of my undergraduate studies at the University of Nottingham (model-based coding of 3D human heads). Collaborating with Erik Hjelmås, part of the thesis was published in a paper: Face Detection: A Survey. It was the first comprehensive survey paper in the subject.
At Napier, I established a research unit investigating the implications of electronic commerce for the property and construction sector. The work was exploratory and culminated in a report commissioned by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and other publications. My favourite among the publications was a piece co-written with my colleague Dr Adarkwah Antwi: "Brains over brawn.com" published the Estates Gazette, probably the earliest mention of 'dot.com' in any publications. The RICS report was later made into a video involving a shooting session at the Channel4 HQ and memorising a long script!