Author: Scott

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Disability Neurodiversity News

Funding awarded to create a welcoming and inclusive campus

A technical drawing of a small university campus. The image is in greyscale with buildings drawn in a 3D perspective.
Image: UNSW Art & Design (2019)

In collaboration with Autism Spectrum Australia’s Autism Friendly team, we have been awarded a small grant from UNSW’s Division of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion to work on a project titled: Creating Welcoming and Inclusive Campuses.

This project will be the first of its kind in Australia; an environmental assessment of the UNSW Art & Design campus (Paddington) that will help us reflect on how we can make our university and resources more welcoming and inclusive for neurodivergent people. We hope that this pilot study will identify tools, processes and resources that can be used across all UNSW campuses, making the University a place that neurodivergent student, staff and visitors are able to engage with and feel supported throughout their time here.

In the coming months, we will develop a report and recommendations to be shared inside UNSW and beyond.

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Music News

Pocket operator sync app

Two black pocket operators which look like small calculators, sit side by side on a wooden desk. They are connected with short grey cables.

It’s been a while since I posted anything non-work-related… Keeping me sane during these Unprecedented Times has been a couple of Teenage Engineering’s pocket operators. They’re a good balance of fun and productivity (lots of the former; less of the latter), although I’ve been looking for a way to extend their capability without having to buy the complete (and expensive) set of these things.

Inspired by this Processing sketch by u/neel_on_reddit, I’ve made a similar app in Max that generates a sync ‘click’ to control the tempo of a connected pocket operator. If an audio input of a pocket operator is connected to the output of your computer (and sync mode is set to SY4), the incoming click will start, stop and change tempo. As another small extension, this app will also pass an audio file to the connected pocket operator, which will be played through the onboard speaker.

The pocket operator sync app (v001), built in Max.

As far as I can tell, it’s not possible to compile a standalone app from Max for multiple platforms. So at this stage, the app will only work on macOS. But it should be a simple case of compiling on Windows from Max for it to also work there. So I’ve made the Max patcher available here as well. Any feedback is welcome…

Categories
News Social robots

News article on our robot pet future

A toy white baby seal has what appears to be a dummy-like object in its mouth. This dummy has a power cable attached to it.
Image credit: Reuven Matalon.

This week I spoke to Ben Knight at the UNSW Newsroom, to share my thoughts on whether we might be able to expect robotic pets to become more widespread in the near future. This discussion seems particularly pertinent now, given that for many of us, we are not able to experience the social interactions and relationships that we were pre-Covid. The question is, could a robotic pet fulfil some of these relationships in the meantime?

Dr Belinda Dunstan was also quoted in the piece, and went on to speak further with John Stanley about the topic on 2GB radio. Belinda and I did our PhDs alongside one another in the Creative Robotics Lab, where Belinda focused on social robot morphologies before moving to the School of Built Environment.

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News Teaching

Nature Conservation Council partnership with Master of Design course

A 3D rendered model of a room with 2 long tree logs along either side as seating. 3 small round tables run down the centre of the room.
Image credit: Doruk Demircioglu (www.dorukdemircioglu.com)

In response to student feedback in the Master of Design program, I have been looking for ways to increase industry engagement and experience in the Interaction Design specialisation. Many Masters students are studying with one eye on employment, and so it’s particularly important to make sure the skills and knowledge they are developing is going to be relevant for current industry practice.

Similar to the partnership I have developed with Studio Messa for Integrated Project in the Bachelor of Design program, I have established a partnership with the Nature Conservation Council (NCC) for students in the final Interaction Design specialisation course for Masters students: Tangible Interfaces and Interactive Displays.

We were fortunate enough to have NCC Chief Executive, Chris Gambian and Organising Director, Jacqui Mumford deliver a real world brief for the class: to propose an interactive experience for visitors to the NCC 65th anniversary dinner to be held later in 2020. Students were tasked with not only pitching an experience that would be interesting and engaging for the attendees of the event, but also communicated and celebrated some of the key events in the history of the NCC.

Each work also had to reference the central themes of NCC campaigns: nature, climate and people power. The scope and subsequent feedback provided by Chris and Jacqui of the NCC was fantastic in giving students a taste of working for a real client, with real constraints. Students worked in interdisciplinary teams to develop lighting sculptures, table-top tangible interfaces, interactive lighting projections and educational games.

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News Teaching

Studio Messa partnership in Integrated Project course

A room lit by blue lights across the ceiling. There are a range of tables and seating around the room, which looks prepared for a cocktail party. The large window across the back of the room overlooks the Sydney CBD.
Image credit: Studio Messa

For the second time this year, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to work with Studio Messa to develop a project brief for Bachelor of Design students in the Integrated Project course. Previously run in the Summer Term 2-week intensive format, students in Term 2 approached this interdisciplinary brief over 11 weeks.

As an experiential design agency, Studio Messa is a great fit for Design students who have developed individual praxis and specialisation over the past 2 years or so in their degrees. The Integrated Project course is often the first chance they have to come together in teams, where a range of skills and interests is leveraged to create ambitious and interdisciplinary work.

Studio Messa Director, Peter Pengly and Creative Director, Kate Blank have been truly generous with their time and offered students some amazing insights into the realities of the industry. Peter and Kate gave students the following brief, with the timely challenge of also responding to Covid-19 limitations:

Establish a social or cultural issue that you would like to explore and create an immersive experience to convey key messages on that issue to at least 50 people. The experience should be brought to life through the lens of Studio Messa’s ‘A Curious Mind’ ethos, and enliven curiosity and discovery on your chosen theme with those who interact with it.

Studio Messa design brief ‘thematic’.

Students certainly ran wild with this brief. We saw educational installations to engage homeless populations with local communities; pop-up spaces to communicate the realities of coffee sustainability and farmer exploitation; guerrilla artworks to bring awareness to the impact of climate change; and large-scale celebrations of the history of Vietnamese diaspora in Australia.

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Ageing Autism News

Autism ASSIST seed funding awarded

A person holding an iPad over a postcard on a table. The iPad shows an animated augmented reality version of the postcard below.
Image credit: Auggd

The Autism ASSIST Project (Aiding and SuStaining Independence through Smart-home Technology) has been awarded $49,292 in funding as a result of the UNSW Ageing Futures 2020 seed funding grant program. This project will look at existing smart technology use by autistic adults living independently and through a co-design process, develop and evaluate a smart platform for increasing independence in daily life.

The project is led by Dr Lidan Zheng (Science), with Dr Jane Hwang (Medicine) and Dr Scott Brown (Art & Design).

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Conferences News

TEI 2020 conference

Image credit: Daniel Herron

The Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI 2020) is being held in Sydney, hosted by UTS. The theme for the conference this year is Future Bodies, Future Technologies, and will explore how we define bodies and how that leads us to design for them.

I have a double role at TEI 2020: I am Local Chair and Registration Chair, which is going to keep me very busy, but learning plenty about conference organisation. Fortunately, we have a great team and plenty of excellent research and practice to look forward to.

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Design methods News

LEGO Serious Play certification

A small LEGO model, including a treasure chest with coins and four LEGO minifigures standing outwardly around a blue sphere with grey cogs on top.

I was recently fortunate enough to be invited by the UNSW Founders to participate in LEGO Serious Play (LSP) certification training. I’m now a certified LEGO Serious Play facilitator! The workshop was coached by the excellent Michael Fearne, who introduced us to the history and theoretical underpinnings of the method, as well as giving us the opportunity to plan and ‘play out’ our own LSP sessions.

A certification document for LEGO Serious Play facilitation.
LSP certification from Pivotal Play.

It was interesting to see the parallels in the LSP method and my own approach to teaching and research, which use constructionist and play-based principles to engage students or study participants. This has sparked many new ideas for running design workshops in the future, and given me a great excuse to start buying LEGO for myself…

Categories
Disability News Social robots

Disability Innovation Institute news story

A small doll-like robot with a blue cap sits cross-legged on a workbench. Next to him a man in a blue jacket leans forward on the workbench.
Image credit: UNSW Sydney

The new Disability Innovation Institute at UNSW (DIIU) has posted an article about my work with Kaspar and the importance of creative practice in disability research.

The DIIU is an exciting initiative by UNSW, which promises to embed consideration of disability in research across the institution. Importantly, the DIIU brings an interdisciplinary approach to research and industry partnerships. This is an exciting opportunity to bring together the work of researchers at UNSW Art & Design with the sciences and humanities.

Categories
Autism News Social robots

Kaspar project in the news

A boy and male researcher stand beside the Kaspar robot. The boy's face is pixelated for privacy reasons.
Image credit: ABC News

We’ve been fortunate enough to be featured in the media for our pilot study with the Kaspar social robot over the past couple of months. ABC News ran a story with us on their TV bulletin and news radio.

This project is in collaboration with Dr David Silvera from the CSIRO, where have recently finished our first exploratory study with Kaspar and 3 autistic boys under the age of 5. The first stage was led by myself at the Creative Robotics Lab and the final 2 studies were carried out between a psychologist and children in a clinical therapy space. In addition to engaging the specialist knowledge of a therapist to lead the study, this allowed us to conduct the research in an environment that was familiar to each child and therefore less overwhelming or overstimulating. In these studies, Kaspar was used as a ‘peer’ in social story activities.

Social stories were developed as a targeted approach for each child in consultation with their parents. We began the process by developing activities relevant to each child, to introduce social and communication skills in a context specific to the child. During the subsequent clinical sessions, Kaspar would be used as a tool for facilitating these stories. In therapy where a peer (such as another child) might be used to help an autistic child learn social interaction skills, we believe Kaspar could be a useful scaffolding tool to prepare some children for this kind of interaction. Where the interaction of a human can be ambiguous and complex, the responses of Kaspar are clear and repeatable.

With the positive response we received from the children and their parents, we hope to expand the research through collaboration with autism services and practitioners.