Anja Thieme

In this collaboration with SilverCloud Health, we explored how AI can be used to enhance digital mental health services that deliver cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT). Using probabilistic machine learning frameworks, the aim is to identify new routes for personalizing treatments and improving client outcomes.

This project uses AI technology to create an interactive, computer-vision based system that can augment people’s own capabilities in meaningful ways. For example, amplify existing skills and abilities to help people do more (see interactions article). It follows a deeply human-centred approach to AI innovation.

Ethnographic video research exploring in rich detail how people who are blind or low vision build an understanding of different everyday contexts. The work demonstrates in particular how ability negotiations are often accomplished with, and through, other people; and are closely bound up with personal relationships.

Torino is a physical programming language for teaching basic programming constructs and computational thinking to children age 7-11, inclusive of children with vision impairment. Following a user-centred approach, Torino is sought to enable collaborative learning experiences that are imaginative, engaging and fun.

This project challenges conventional notions as to what constitutes a display and how we may interact with it. Proposing alternative approaches to manufacturing and configuring this medium, we explore the design space for autonomous pixels, whereby each pixel has its own embedded electronics.

The Spheres of Wellbeing are a set of three artefacts comprising of the Mindfulness Sphere, the Calming Sphere and the Identity Sphere. Collectively, these are designed to support the mental wellbeing of women, who suffer from severe mental health problems and who live in a secure, forensic hospital.

This project is a research collaboration and investigates the feasibility of incorporating technology into antenatal care provision for Syrian refugee women in the Bekaa region in Lebanon. The aim is to support healthy pregnancies, enable skilled attendance at birth, and provide follow-up healthcare.

This CHI 2018 workshop iterates on future directions for accessible digitally-enhanced learning tools inclusive of people with vision impairments. Topics include engagement with teachers and students during design, implementation, and evaluation; and designs supporting social and pedagogical goals during mixed-ability and specialized instruction.

This project is a research collaboration that explores how inter-personal skills such as empathy can be taught to counselling students within a highly collaborative training environment. It investigates the role of synchrony in bodily arousal and inter-personal reflection for skill development. It is led by Petr Slovak (Vienna Univ. of Technology).

As security technologies become more embedded into people’s everyday lives, it becomes more challenging to understand the contexts in which they are situated. This research explores the potential of using Twitter as a resource of experience-centered insights into security practices. Our findings begin to evidence complex social functions related to passwords.

This 24h design & hackathon event (30-31st May 2015) invited people with skills in software, design and healthcare to develop innovative technologies for those living with dementia. The intention was to motivate critical, even subversive, provocative designs that might attempt to raise questions rather than provide technical solutions.

Working in the HXD group (Microsoft Research), I deployed a series of data technologies for engaging the local community in voting. The project explored how data flows through a community, investigating the co-existing heterogeneity of temporal and spatial trajectories within the community and the role of data in constructing that community.

Panopticon is a video surrogate system developed by Dan Jackson that displays multiple sub-sequences in parallel to present a rapid overview of the entire sequence. A novel, precisely animated arrangement of slide thumbnails provides a consistent spatiotemporal layout while allowing any sub-sequence of the original video to be watched without interruption.

This CHI 2015 workshop explored the role of technology for maintaining and achieving wellbeing through the development of social and emotional skills, and possibilities for personal growth and development. We began to develop a richer conceptual and practical understanding of this research context to shape an agenda for future work.

Enabling Empathy was a CHI 2014 workshop to address the new challenges that HCI researcher face as the community deals with issues in medical, health and emotionally charged contexts, where empathizing with others is crucial in understanding the experience of living with specific conditions or to be sensitive to the emotions of vulnerable participants.

Designing Wellbeing was a DIS 2012 workshop that brought together researchers, designers and practitioners working on or interested in the topic of wellbeing in the field of interaction design. It provide a platform to share resources, create and explore new ideas for design (using .NET gadgeteer), and to build valuable future collaborations.

This project explored the design of digital technology in supporting a sense of self and human relationships for people living with dementia in an inpatient adult mental health unit of a UK hospital. Tales of I is an interactive art piece by Jayne Wallace that served as a window on both dementia care and the institution.

BinCam is a social persuasive system designed to motivate reflection and behavioural change in the food waste and recycling habits of young adults. The system logs disposed of items through images captured by a smart phone installed on the underside of the bin lid and uploads these to Facebook.

The Lovers’ box is an interactive artefact that enables couples in romantic relationships to reciprocally exchange video messages with their partner. Invited conversations and reflections about their relationship were found to help create space for meaningful inter-personal experiences and intimacy.

Funded by the EPSRC project SiDE (Social Inclusion through the Digital Economy), this project explores the potential of technology design as a means to assist care givers of people with Dementia in socially (re-)constructing facets of the person's sense of self, in nurturing feelings of belongingness to significant others, and of having a sense of purpose.

Driven by curiosity about the potential of antique artefacts to impact on wellbeing and the values that people attach to objects more generally, the Thinking Objects course - designed and led by Lindsay-Allason Jones - explored how participants handle and reflect about their relationship with ancient artefacts and their personal possessions.

This European project focused on the use of simulation-based and virtual reality testing at all stages of the design and development of assistive technologies within a wide ranges of areas (e.g. eHealth). It resulted in the development of a tool (n-backer) that allows designer to experience a simulation of being cognitively restricted.

Traq is a visual analytics tool specifically for 'blog data' developed by Dan Jackson. The tool provides multiple functions to explore and visualise the so called 'blogosphere' regarding a particular topic of interest and within a particular time-span, thereby assisting in the identification of trends in a particular domain (e.g. fair trade, health).

This project investigated how innovative forms of online product catalogues such as pageflips, carousells of products, or fish-eye lens views are perceived by users, and how successful they were in transporting product information compared to more traditional presentations, often in form of lists of products. >>PDF

BOA is an interactive tool that was designed and developed to assist young students to identify a suitable profession based on their personal interests and skills. It builds on the vocational choice theory of John L. Holland and translates its into small game-like activities for students to complete. The tool has been licensed to the company Provadis. >>LINK

Grimmix is an interactive story-telling computer game inspired by the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm. The game is programmed in Java, uses a 2D graphics engine (GTGE, Golden Studios), and is connected to a story engine which dynamically generates the course of the play dependent on the player's behaviour (informed by Baysian networks). >>PDF

WIS6 is an online service allowing for the systematic search and analysis of themes and arrangements of the coalition governments of the various federal states in Germany. Information about elections, future directions and goals that were agreed on can be compared to pre-election goals to identify where compromises were negotiated.