Fellow Detail

My research focuses on investigating how humans perceive and use technology, and using the results to engineer novel interaction paradigms. I am qualified in both Computer Science (MSc, PhD) and Psychology (BA, CPsychol), and work across a number of domains, including healthcare, the Web/IoT and television.

I also strive to teach software engineering effectively (something which is still not covered well in higher education), by collaborating both with software engineers, and with industry. I’m currently developing a new course unit that will give undergraduates experience of using an open source code base, automated testing, issue tracking and continuous integration (as well as all the other challenges associated with feature development and bug fixing). To make this kind of course unit work, I believe it’s vital to involve software engineers in both development and teaching (I’ve worked as a developer in industry, and written code as a researcher, but get less hands-on experience now, and there is no substitute for that!), and I’ve obtained £20,000 of competitive Faculty funding to enable two of our RSEs to contribute to this work.

Developing my teaching practice has fueled a growing interest in research in the area of software quality and sustainability, and I’ve started to supervise student projects in this area, which has resulted in publications at SSSE (https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/uk-ac-man-scw:273117) and WSSSPE (http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1111925).