HomeNews and Additional Work

Jump to teaching, grants, community or design and development.

Show all updates

Recent news, talks, press, awards and events

2024:
- Apr.: Awarded honourable mention at CHI 2024 for our work on spoken technologies for unwritten languages
- Feb: Featured in AI Fringe perspectives report AI for everyone
- Jan: Launched the UnMute Toolkit in Guwahati, India
2023:
- Dec.:
  - Invited talk as part of RAI UK's Responsible AI Webinar Series
  - Workshop with Université Grenoble Alpes: How do new technologies in citizens' hands challenge risk and vulnerability management?
  - Awarded RAI UK Impact Accelerator grant Amplify: Empowering Underserved Voices in Spoken Language Interaction (PI)
- Nov.: Appointed as REF Impact Lead for Computer Science at Swansea
- Oct.: Selected as a Conference Ambassador for Wales
- Sept.: Nominated for a Research Culture Award for Collaboration for previous work with MASI
- July:
  - MRes student Andew Pulsipher received the Highly Commended Award in the School of Mathematics and Computer Science
  - Invited talk on Streamlining assessment and feedback management using the Canvas API at SALT 2023 – see slides (PDF)
  - Invited talk at City, University of London
- June: Co-chair (with Anke Dittmar) of EICS Late-Breaking Results
- Apr.:
  - Elected as a member of Swansea University's Senate
  - Developed CHI Bingo for SIGCHI to help connect people at CHI 2023
  - Full paper and Case Study accepted for publication at CHI 2023
- Mar.: Invited talk at University of Bristol
- Jan: Invited talk and interview at Machine Learning Summer School (MLSS 2023), Stellenbosch, South Africa.
2022:
- Dec.: PhD student Pranjal Jain won a runner-up prize at the ACM SIGCHI Symposium for HCI and Friends, Mumbai
- Oct.: MSc student Ryan Lucas won best overall Swansea Computer Science MSc project award
- July: Recipient of a Swansea University student nominated Excellence in Learning and Teaching award
- May:
  - MRes student Andrew Pulsipher won first place at the Swansea University Three Minute Thesis competition
  - REF 2021 ranked 100% of our impact work as world-leading and internationally excellent
- Apr.: Awarded honourable mention at CHI 2022 for our work on touchless public space interactions
- Mar.: Our Telescopr VR/AR exhibits were deployed as part of Swansea's new Copr Bay developments
- Jan.: Appointed as a MASI Research Entrepreneur to drive transdisciplinary research across Swansea University
2021:
- Oct.: Workshops with croft farmers near Ullapool as part of our Smart Small Farms project
- Aug.: Appointed Head of Swansea University's Human-Computer Interaction Research Group; the FIT Lab
- June: The Orígenes open source heritage recovery platform was featured as a Swansea University research highlight in Towards Interculturality
- May: Our work was submitted as one of the Computer Science department's REF Impact Case Studies
- April/May: Our research was highlighted and featured in events and panels over several days of the CHERISH-DE Festival of Ideas
- Jan.:
  - Our work on smart speakers in public places and robots that print with everyday material was featured as a Swansea University research highlight, video and feature on human-centred technology
  - Invited talk at King’s College London: Smart Speakers in Slum Settings: Combining Machine and Human Speech Assistance in Public Spaces
2020:
- Nov.: Lookout, our interactive public space "future binoculars" about Swansea city centre developments was launched, inspired by the Telescopr project. Also covered by WalesOnline
- Sept.: Awarded Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy
- Mar.: Two articles (English and Spanish) about our work on restoring indigenous peoples' access to historical documentation and memories published in The Conversation: 500 years after Ferdinand Magellan landed in Patagonia, there’s nothing to celebrate for its indigenous peoples
- Feb.: Awarded EPSRC grant UnMute: Opening Spoken Language Interaction to the Currently Unheard (Swansea PI)
- Jan.: Gave an invited demonstration of our Not Designed in California research and open-source toolkits over three days of TechFest 2020 in Mumbai, India. Featured in Hindustan Times and Loksatta
2019:
- Nov.: Organised the Swansea University Computer Science Student Colloquium at Gregynog
- July: Winner in the Connection with Society category of the 2019 Research as Art awards for our StreetWise work, and runner up with our Sustainabot project.
- June: Our Dharavi public space smart speaker work was featured on BBC Digital Planet (clip starts around 12:35)
- May:
  - Awarded honourable mention at CHI 2019 for Sustainabot, our material-printing robot. Also featured on hackster.io
  - PickCells, our cell-composed displays work, was featured in New Scientist
- March: Featured in EPSRC's report on A decade of success in the Digital Economy
- Jan.:
  - Interviewed by BBC's Science Cafe, along with Rory Cellan Jones, Vic Grout and Adam Walton, to think about potential future technology advances in 2019 and beyond
  - Jan.: Organised the Swansea University Computer Science Student Colloquium at Gregynog
2018:
- Dec.:
  - Our public space audio research was demonstrated in a panel at the UK Department for International Trade's India-UK FutureTech Festival in Delhi
  - Our work on smart speakers in public places in Dharavi, Mumbai was highlighted in a CHERISH-DE video
- Nov.: Hosted Scott Jenson as part of our Founding the Foundry series of visitors, talks and workshops
- Oct.:
  - Launched the Digital Inclusion Toolkit in Cape Town, South Africa
  - Moved into the brand new Computational Foundry on the Bay Campus, Swansea University. Get in touch and come visit us!
- July:
  - Hosted Ben Shneiderman and Jenny Preece as part of our Founding the Foundry series of visitors, talks and workshops
  - Our work on deploying smart speakers in Dharavi was featured by NDTV, ABP News (see video) and India Education Diary, among others
- June:
  - Hosted Susan Dray as part of our Founding the Foundry series of visitors, talks and workshops, including the third SIGCHI Across Borders event
  - Part of The Trouble with Mobile Phones event at Cheltenham Science Festival, featured on BBC Tech Tent
- May: Co-taught the course Mobile UX – The Next Ten Years? in addition to co-authoring three papers at CHI 2018
- April: Exhibited our interactive VR exhibit Telescopr as part of the Man Engine's visits to the National Waterfront Museum and the Hafod-Morfa copperworks
- Jan.: Organised the Swansea University Computer Science Student Colloquium at Gregynog
2017:
- Oct.: Our work on Programmable Liquid Matter, published at ISS 2017 (see publication PDF) was featured in ACM TechNews, Phys.org, Sci-News, and many more
- Sept.: Part of the team running the new Hololec mixed reality learning environment. See also the news coverage of the facility
- July:
  - Winner of the Inspiration award, with Jennifer Pearson, Matt Jones and Thomas Reitmaier in the 2017 Research as Art Competition. A second image (with Tim Neate, Deepak Sahoo and Jennifer Pearson) was also Highly Commended. See the accompanying BBC News article, and the full set of winning images. Also featured in The Conversation and Yahoo News, amongst others
  - Co-organised and ran the third Summit in Mumbai for our research project Reshaping the Expected Future
- June: Launched our open source Better Together Toolkit that seamlessly links multiple mobiles for disaggregation of services in Cape Town, South Africa, at codeX and University of Cape Town
- May:
  - Presented our work on multi-device interaction, disappearing devices and the future of display surfaces at the Hay Festival
  - Awarded honourable mention for our CHI paper about devices that blend in to their surroundings, and best case study for our work with the Physical Web with emergent users in Nairobi and Mumbai
- March:
  - Launched our open source Better Together Toolkit that seamlessly links multiple mobiles for disaggregation of services in Bangalore, India. Featured in The Times of India, The Hindu, The Indian Express, The Better India, The DQ Week and India Education Diary, among others.
  - Presented our deformable devices work at the NESTA Digital Innovation in the Arts showcase, Cardiff
- Feb.: Awarded Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy
- Jan.: Our work deploying Physical Web beacons in Dharavi was featured in The Times of India, Business Standard, The Hindu, Mumbai Mirror, Quartz India and Catch News, amongst other venues.
2016:
- Dec.: Co-organised and ran a workshop on Itinerative Design at IndiaHCI 2016
- Nov.: Organised the Swansea University Computer Science Student Colloquium at Gregynog
- Sept.:
  - Demonstrated our deformable devices research at the British Science Festival as part of the talk Touching the Future. The work was also featured on BBC Click (World Service radio) and BBC Radio Wales
  - Our work on Emergeables (see paper) was featured on BBC Click and in the South Wales Evening Post
- June: Co-organised and ran the second Summit in Cape Town for our research project Reshaping the Expected Future. See also the accompanying report and video
- May: Co-organised a course and workshop in addition to our paper (awarded honourable mention) at CHI 2016
2015:
- Nov.: Organised the Swansea University Computer Science Student Colloquium at Gregynog
- Oct.: Organised the Swansea University Computer Science Maker Competition
- Aug.: Co-organised a tutorial and workshop as well as presenting our paper at MobileHCI 2015
- June:
  - Co-organised and ran the launch Summit in Bangalore for our research project Reshaping the Expected Future (see news article)
  - Winner (with Jennifer Pearson and Matt Jones) of The BBC Research and Development Award for Outstanding Impact on Professions, Practices and Services at the Swansea Impact Awards
- April: Co-organised a course and workshop as well as our paper at CHI 2015
- March:
  - Mentor at the Symposium and Hackathon in Social Media and Interaction, Cambridge
  - Invited demo at Brynmill Primary School as part of British Science Week
- Jan.:
  - Organised the Swansea University Computer Science Student Colloquium at Gregynog
  - “Change Champion” for Swansea University College of Science, and ongoing co-lead of the Science Together theme
2014:
- Dec.: Book “There’s Not An App for That” released (co-authored with Matt Jones and Gary Marsden) – available from Amazon; more details at changetheworldux.com
- Oct.: Organised the Swansea University Computer Science Maker Competition
- Sept.: Awarded third prize for best paper at IARIGAI 2014 for our AudioCanvas work
- July:
  - Invited demo at the Digital Democracy: Alive to Engagement event at the Wales Millennium Centre
  - Invited talk (see video) at Imperial College London as part of the Digital Technologies for Sustainable Local Agri-Food Systems event
- May: Featured on Gizmodo and various other media venues with our barcode-based indoor navigation work and the accompanying app: BookMark
- April: Part of the team developing the official CHI Bingo app for CHI 2014
- Feb.: Invited talk at TechHub Swansea's User Experience workshop about our mobile work in resource constrained environments
2013:
- Nov.: Organised the Swansea University Computer Science Student Colloquium at Gregynog
- Oct.: Helped organise the Swansea University Computer Science Maker Competition
- July: Invited demo at BBC Media City for the launch of the BBC UX Research Partnership
- March: Managed and coordinated the Cape Town launch event for our Community Media Toolkit
- Jan.: Continued support and development of the Com-Phone and Com-Tablet Android applications as part of the open-source (see GitHub) Community Media Toolkit
2012:
- July: Managed and coordinated the London launch event for our Community Media Toolkit
- May: Internship at IBM Research India (New Delhi) working on interactions for the Spoken Web
2011:
- May: Invited talk at CHI 2011 course on Interaction Design for Development
- March: Presentation about our recent work on pico projection as part of the IBM Smarter Planet Comes to You Tour
2010:
- Sept.: Featured in New Scientist magazine and nominated for best paper at MobileHCI 2010 for our haptic navigation work
- June – Aug.: Internship at IBM Research India (New Delhi) working on interactions for the Spoken Web. Chosen as a featured intern project for 2010
- April: Attended CHI 2010 Doctoral Consortium to present thesis research: Heads-up Engagement with the Real World: Multimodal Techniques for Bridging the Physical-Digital Divide
- March: Invited demo at Museum Interfaces, Spaces, Technologies workshop (summary and programme (PDF)), Cambridge University
2009:
- Nov.: Joint talk with Jen Pearson at the annual undergraduate computer science colloquium to present and promote research by members of the FIT Lab
- Sept.:
  - Winner of best paper at MobileHCI 2009 for our Sweep-Shake work
  - Part of the group organising Telling StoryBank: Stories across the global digital divide at the British Science Festival
  - Presented invited demo Haptics while moving at the BCS HCI 2009 Open House Festival of Interactive Technology
- June: Member of the working group and presenter at the British Science Association Postgraduate Researchers’ Science Day (summary programme (PDF))
- April: Figure design featured on the front cover of Mobile Technology for Children: Designing for Interaction and Learning
2008:
- April: Refined and redeveloped the StoryBank system as part of the Rhondda Lives! project for Valleys Kids. Presented the new video kiosk at the public screening event

Teaching and supervision

Current:
- Director of the MSc year of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Enhancing Human Interactions and Collaborations with Data and Intelligence Driven Systems and linked 1-year MSc Human-Centred Big Data and Artificial Intelligence
- Human-Centred Perspectives and Methods (CSCM69)
- Human-Centred Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Project (CSPM40)
- Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction (CS-200)
Previous:
- 2013–2020: Gregynog undergraduate project colloquium (part of CSP301 and CSP354)
- 2014–2019: Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction (CS-200)
- 2014–2016: Mobile Interaction Design (CS-349/CS-M29)
Postgraduate research students, current, previous and examined:

Grants and funding

Ongoing:
- EPSRC grant “UnMute: Opening Spoken Language Interaction to the Currently Unheard” (2020–2024, Swansea PI)
- RAI UK grant “Amplify: Empowering Underserved Voices in Spoken Language Interaction” (2023–2025, PI)
- EPSRC/Microsoft iCASE PhD studentship “Disability-First Dataset Creation in Low-Resource Communities” (2021–2025, Co-Supervisor)
- MASI International Visiting Fellowship to support a visit by David Frohlich (Co-applicant)
- MASI funding to co-develop a fitness app (Co-applicant)
2023:
- EPSRC grant “Rethinking Public Technology in a COVID-19 Era” (2021–2023, Co-PI)
2022:
- MASI Summer of Hope funding to run events in Swansea and Lancaster
- Swansea University GCRF grant Human Centred AI and Big Data for A Better Life (Co-PI)
- EPSRC grant “PV-Interfaces: Self-Powered Interfaces and Interactions via Photovoltaic Surfaces” (2018–2022, Co-Investigator)
- HCI and Security Capital Equipment grant to enhance student project provision
2021:
- Not-Equal Network+ grant for work on Smart Small Farms (Co-Investigator)
- CHERISH-DE Escalator grant to create interactive VR installations in public places (Co-applicant)
2020:
- EPSRC grant “Breaking the Glass: Multimodal, Malleable Interactive Mobile surfaces for Hands-In Interactions” (2016–2020, Collaborator)
- CHERISH-DE secondment for a collaboration with Admiral Group
- CHERISH-DE secondment for further work around advanced sensors (Co-applicant)
2019:
- Research Impact Fund grant to create public space speech installations (Co-applicant)
- CHERISH-DE Escalator grant to support public space speech installations (Co-applicant)
- International Visitor Scheme grant to support a collaboration with Jessica Cauchard around human-robot interaction
- Research Impact Fund grant to support a secondment around advanced sensors (Co-applicant)
- CHERISH-DE secondment around advanced sensors (Co-applicant)
2018:
- EPSRC Capital Award in Support of Early Career Researchers (Co-Investigator)
- CHERISH-DE Escalator grant to support an indigenous digital histories platform (Co-applicant)
- REF Impact grant to support public space speech installation research (Co-applicant)
2017:
- CHERISH-DE Escalator grant to create an interactive VR installation in the Hafod-Morfa Copperworks (Co-applicant)
- Impact Acceleration Award to fund multi-device mobile work (Co-applicant)
- Global Challenges Research Fund Award: Empowering Base of Pyramid Users through the Physical Web (Co-applicant)
2016:
- CHERISH-DE International Mobility grant to support continued work with IIT-Bombay, Mumbai (Co-applicant)
- Research Enabling Fund grant for continued partnership with Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble (Co-applicant)
- Google IoT Technology Research Award for Physical Web research (Co-applicant).
2015:
- EPSRC grant “Re-shaping the Expected Future: Novel Interaction Techniques for Base of the Pyramid Users and Challenges to the Orthodoxy for the Rest of the World” (2015–2019, Researcher Co-Investigator)
- Strategic Impact Partnership with Rowanvale Books (Co-applicant)
2014:
- Bridging the Gaps grant for prospective partnership with Grenoble universities (Co-applicant)

Patents

US9041562B2 & US9047059B2: Controlling a Voice Site Using Non Standard Haptic Commands. S. Robinson, A. Jain, N. Rajput

Community, committees, reviewing, service

Co-organiser of:
- Where Art Meets Technology workshop at CHI 2020 (DOI; PDF)
- A ‘Live’ Document for Emergent User Research workshop at IndiaHCI 2019 (PDF)
- NatureCHI workshop series. The workshop has been held at MobileHCI 2017 (DOI; PDF) and CHI 2016 (DOI; PDF). See also the IJMHCI review article (DOI; PDF)
- Mobile Collocated Interactions with Wearables workshop at MobileHCI 2015 (DOI; PDF)
- Mobile Collocated Interactions workshop at CHI 2015 (DOI; PDF)
Co-instructor for:
- Mobile UX – The Next Ten Years? at CHI 2018 (DOI; PDF)
- Itinerative Design: A Hands-On Course at IndiaHCI 2016
- Mobile UX: Breaking the Glass to Richer User Experiences course at CHI 2016 (DOI; PDF)
- Mobile UX: Breaking the Glass to Richer User Experiences tutorial at MobileHCI 2015 (DOI; PDF)
- Interaction Design for Reading Devices and Apps course at CHI 2015 (DOI; PDF)
Chair / Co-chair of:
- EICS 2023 Late-Breaking Work (with Anke Dittmar)
- IndiaHCI 2020 Papers (with Venkatesh Rajamanickam and Sayan Sarcar)
- MobileHCI 2019 Doctoral Consortium (with Jessica Cauchard)
- MobileHCI 2017 Workshops (with Julie R. Williamson)
- XRCI Open 2016 Human Computer Interaction Track
Co-Editor-in-Chief (with Julie R. Williamson) of mUX: The Journal of Mobile User Experience (2015–2017)
Program Committee member for:
- IndiaHCI 2022
- CHI 2023, 2021 and 2018
- CUI 2020
- MobileHCI 2017
- AfriCHI 2016
- Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM) 2015–2017
- DE Sustainable Society Network+ Symposium and Hackathon in Social Media and Interaction
- MobileHCI 2014 Doctoral Consortium (panel member)
- NordiCHI 2014 workshop Personal or Social? Designing Mobile Interactions for Co-located Interaction
- ECSCW 2013 workshop Designing Mobile Face-to-Face Group Interactions
- ECIR 2011 workshop Information Management and Retrieval in Mobile Adhoc Societies
Reviewing for CHI, TOCHI CSCW, UIST, Ubicomp, MobileHCI, INTERACT, DIS, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, NordiCHI, IUI, MUM, APCHI, SICDC, IndiaHCI, CUI, Computers in Human Behavior and more
Internal:
- Member of Swansea University Computer Science Department's Ethics and Risk Assessment Committee
- Member of the Computational Foundry Athena SWAN team
- CHERISH-DE Escalator fund and Crucible panel member
- Innovation and R&D theme co-lead for Swansea University's Digital Strategy
- Change Champion as part of the Science Together working group for the College of Science's 2020 vision
- Co-organiser of the Gregynog undergraduate colloquium and College of Science maker competition
- Co-founder of the Computational Foundry's Knowledge Exchange Forum
Member of the EPSRC Peer Review College

Theses and related items

S. Robinson, Eyes-Off Physically Grounded Mobile Interaction. PhD Thesis, Swansea University, October 2012.
- Download (PDF) |
- BibTeX,
- Scholar |
- Slides (PDF),
S. Robinson, Heads-up Engagement with the Real World: Multimodal Techniques for Bridging the Physical-Digital Divide. In CHI 2010 Doctoral Consortium (pages 2895–2898), Atlanta, April 2010.
- Download (PDF) |
- DOI,
- BibTeX,
- Scholar |
- Slides (PDF),
- Poster (PDF)
S. Robinson, Fusing the Physical and Digital: Making Maps using Gestures and Sensors. MSc Dissertation, FIT Lab, University of Wales, Swansea, July 2008.
S. Robinson, A Pen-Based Interactive Graphing Tool. BSc Dissertation, Computer Science Department, University of Wales, Swansea, May 2006.

Selected design and development work

Android apps, all of which are open source (see all apps):

Com-Phone Story Maker – Digital storytelling creation and sharing with a simple but powerful interface
Better Together – Flexible separation and sharing of a system's interface over multiple devices
BookMark – Better navigation around Swansea University Library (Park Campus)
APPropriate – Easily pick-up-and-use any other Android device with your own data
There's Not an App for That – To (ironically) accompany our book

Other open source projects:

Email OAuth 2.0 proxy – add OAuth 2.0 authentication transparently to IMAP/POP/SMTP clients that don't support it
Canvas Helpers – various Python and browser scripts to simplify and speed up common Canvas tasks
Swansea University Intranet Utilities – a collection of Python and browser scripts to improve the Swansea University intranet(s) and related systems (email for access)
e:Vision Utilities – a browser userscript to improve e:Vision usability
Outlook Calendar Signature Add-in – easily add an email signature to calendar invitations sent from Outlook
Tooey – turn any Python console script into an interactive text-based user interface
ATP link cleaner – a browser extension to filter O365 ATP Safe Links and prompt before navigating to them
WWA shortcuts – a browser extension to help add your own custom keyboard shortcuts to Word Web App
Back button disabler – a simple browser extension to disable the back button on selected websites

Various websites and toolkits, such as: