HCI Interactive technology for everyday health - on Earth and in space

1. HUMAN SYSTEMS INTERACTION FOR COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE: SPACE FOCUS Globally, Ben is interested in investigating designs to focus on enabling performance of teams in the constrained conditions of space, dealing with proximity, isolation, physical change. Colleagues of mine working in space refer to this as effectively a rapid aging process, which has now been proven to be the case. As such effects of space on performance is a major area of current research for the European and north American space agencies and they are investing in it. We are at the forefront of this work, meaning work has not only a research channel for relevance but multiple industrial applications.

2. TERRESTRIAL AGING Also, there are a variety of adaptations that come into play from this space aging, that have implications not only for better support for crews in space but for understanding designs to support elders as well. Just such Elder support is part of a recent application in the Health 2050 EPSRC call I am leading, and also relates to ECS's Center for Health Technology, so there are strong synergies between Ben's interest, my work in human performance systems interaction and ECS's focus in health tech. This space focus brings a new cutting edge research approach to this space for ECS.

3. Another aspect of Ben's project is his focus on Teams/Groups - there is very new work being done around group interaction, behaviour and influences on performance (eg leading workshop at Design of Information Systems Conference, 2019). Group rather than individually focussed work is a radical departure for technology design, but is gaining traction from cognitive science to behavioural design from discussions on mirror neuron activation to social contagion. We are only at the frontier of modelling and designing into these spaces. Ben's interest as well in cognitive performance, specifically in teams, is exactly on point in terms of how to design assets for teams to support social, shared distributed cognition as part of design.

Outcomes from Ben's work will be interdisciplinary, based in CS for future REF purposes, and influencing work from aging, physiology, space exploration, cognitive performance, teaming, groups work, and elder autonomy, to name a few.