Prof. Alistair Sutcliffe  (Centre Director)

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Brief Biography

Alistair Sutcliffe (MA Cantab- Natural Sciences, PhD Wales) is Professor of Systems Engineering, and Director of the HCI Research Centre, in the School of Informatics, University of Manchester, UK. Originally at ethologist, he has worked in the IT and finance industry, the civil service and City and Manchester Universities. His research spans software engineering, human computer interaction, cognitive and social science, with recent interests in scenario based design, methods for requirements engineering, analysis and modelling complex socio technical systems, visualisation and creative design. He is a leading authority on human factors in safety critical systems, requirements engineering and multimedia user interface design, has authored 6 books and 200+ publications on human computer interaction, requirements engineering, software and domain knowledge reuse. His recent books include: Multimedia and virtual reality: Designing multisensory user interfaces.  Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (2003) User-Centred Requirements Engineering.  Springer,  (2002) and The Domain Theory: Patterns for knowledge and software reuse, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (2002). He currently manages EPSRC projects ADVISES (E-science requirements analysis and visualisation) and ESRC/EPSRC Foresight project Developing Theory for Evolving Socio Technical Systems and was recently PI of EPSRC projects SIMP- Systems Integration for Major Projects, ISRE Immersive scenario based Requirements Engineering and CORK Corporate Knowledge Repository. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals in the software engineering and human computer interaction. He founded IFIP TC-13 Working Group 13.2 ‘Methodology for User Centred Design’, is editor of the ISO standard 14915, on Multimedia user interface design, co-chaired the ACM conference Designing Interactive Systems 2002 and is co-chair of IEEE Requirements Engineering conference in 2007. He was awarded the IFIP silver core in 1999, is a reviewer for EPSRC college, INRIA cognitive engineering projects 2002 & 2006, NSF Science of Design program and made recent plenary keynote presentations at IHM03, HCI05, and CAiSE06 conferences.

Research

I research in two areas of computer science; software engineering and human computer interaction (HCI). My publications include 9 books and 190 articles, of which 75 are in software engineering and 115 in human computer interaction (see publication list for details).

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Software Engineering

Two themes have dominated my software engineering research. Firstly, development of methods and tools for requirements engineering, in particular scenario based approaches. This work extends over 15 years and is summarised in the book User Centred Requirements Engineering (Springer). The second theme has been development of theory and models for knowledge and specification reuse, summarised in ‘The Domain Theory’ book (Lawrence Erlbaum).

My achievements in Requirements Engineering have been development of methods and tools for scenario based requirements analysis and validation, dealing with the difficult problems of coverage and sufficiency in scenario based validation, combinations of informal and formal representations to support reasoning in requirements analysis and defining requirements in complex socio-technical systems (projects NATURE, CREWS and CORK; IEEE publications). Research on the SIMP project created models and tools to support reasoning about requirements in complex socio-technical systems using Bayesian Belief nets; and developed evolutionary computing tools to evolve suitable combinations of system components given required fitness constraints in the system environment.

A specialisation in my RE research has addressed specification of safety critical requirements for interactive systems with a focus on predicting human error and software design to counteract or prevent such error.  The research has produced scenario based methods and guidelines for requirements specification and safety case arguments and developed BBN models for predicting human error in command and control systems (DATUM project, REJ publications).

Achievements in knowledge representation and reuse have been development of the first theory of domain knowledge to support reuse at the requirements/specification level, which synthesises cognitive theory (Lakoff & Johnson, Gentner) with object oriented schema to provide an interlingua between user/domain experts’ perceptions of knowledge and software engineering representations. The theory consists of an ontology of domain knowledge, generic classes of reusable requirements, and a library of domain models. It defines abstract models of interaction between the system environment and software systems, extending Jackson’s concept of ‘problem frames’- (NATURE project, IEEE publications). This research also specified processes for applying domain models in requirements engineering and knowledge management.  This work is progressing in an industrial application that is defining reuse libraries and application generation environments in collaboration with British Telecom.

In my earlier software engineering work I developed JSP design support tools (MAJIC project); produced integrated methods for user centred software engineering and developed meta-models and specification repositories for system development methods (AMADEUS project).

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Human Computer Interaction

The underlying theme of my HCI work is synthesising theory from cognitive and social science to create a model-theoretical approach to the design process that delivers methods, guidelines and tools to improve system effectiveness. In this area, my research achievements fall into three themes:

To improve design of advanced user interfaces I have applied cognitive theories to develop methods, models and design assistant tools for Multimedia and Virtual Reality.  This research created a new theory of interaction that augmented Norman’s action model, integrated it with Barnard’s ICS cognitive theory to enable reasoning about cognitive resources and limitations during human computer interaction, and then operationalised the interaction models to deliver design advice that is appropriate to different interaction contexts. This work is summarised in the book - Multisensory User Interface Design. Multimedia design methods were applied and validated in an industrial project funded by Philips Research and contributed extensively to the forthcoming ISO 14915 standard on multimedia user interface design (INTUITIVE and Multimedia Broker project, CHI publications). More recent work has focused on defining a theory of attractiveness in user interfaces that synthesises several influences on user reaction to design including usability, aesthetics and as well as functional utility. This has produced experimental analyses of user engagement, and guidelines for aesthetic and attractive design on the web.

I have researched design of information intensive user interfaces for explanation, information visualisation and retrieval. This theme started with empirical investigation of human discourse for modelling human computer explanation dialogues, then progressed to development of information searching support systems based on cognitive task modelling, development of visualisation tools and design of intelligent agents for information retrieval and broking over the Internet. Key achievements were development of the first comprehensive generalised task model  of information searching, which was implemented as an embedded user model to deliver contextually sensitive advice for users and control software services according to the user’s progress through an information search. Other achievements have been development of methods for visualisation design, and advanced visual interfaces for display of large scale information spaces (IDEAL, MISSAR, KBS Browser projects,  IJHCS publications). This is now being developed in the EPSRC ADVISES e-science project with is developing a sub language based interaction language for asking scientific questions and requesting analyses, coupled with a composable visual interface to deliver results as graphical overlays on geographic maps. The visualisation agenda is to synthesise a theory that predicts the trade offs between interactive controls and complex displays for effective task performances.
 
In HCI theory I have investigated bridging models of interaction based on Norman’s concepts and  collaborated with Prof J. Carroll (Virginia Tech) to augment his task artefact theory with a more sophisticated knowledge representation and methods for generalising claims for reuse and their subsequent application in user centred design. My theory work has also contributed to development of reusable HCI knowledge in the domain theory (ACM TOCHI, IJHCS publications). At the social technical systems level I am developing socio evolutionary theory of groups and the mediating effect of technology on the quality of social relationships in collaboration with Professor Robin Dunbar, School of Biological Science University of Liverpool. This work is funded by the EPSRC/ESRC Foresight Cognitive Systems Project ‘Developing Theory for Evolving Social technical Systems’.

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