Matthew Simpson's Research Page

Honours projects (or projects which can be scaled for studio 6)

This is a short list of Honours (or Studio 6) ideas to assist you with choosing projects. If you are interested in any of these or something similar please contact me: matts@itee.uq.edu.au

The topics discussed below are:
* Interactive Tourist Experiences
* Streamlining collaborative meeting interaction
* Future of collaborative virtual design applications
* Usability and efficiency of collaborative virtual design - online.
* Information visualisation across physical/digital divide

Title: Interactive Tourist Experiences.
Keywords: TBA
Availability: semester/year
Prerequisites: N/A
Description: Brisbane prides itself on its River focus and history. Attempts have been made to share this experience through public access bike and footpaths along this precinct. These unfortunately cannot capture the full depth of historical knowledge surrounding the space.

A typical tourist tour experience is usually orientated on what you can physically see. The idea of this experience is to bring further virtual material to expand the contextual experience on the field trip. Due to the nature of the environment, each time a visitor uses this equipment on their tour (e.g. bike trip), they will be encountering a new theme and media, which is built up over time through the input of the previous visitors, and the physical experiences they encountered on their trips and tours.

Through the use of mobile and wireless technology the appreciation of this precinct can be extended and revealed to the general public. Users would be able to explore various themes as they travel down the rivers edge. A combination of physical and virtual information would be displayed at various nodes along the pathways to heighten the experience. Themes such as, for example, the river during the 1974 flood, Expo 88, the ecology of the area and perhaps even a look into the future with the North Bank development.

Title: Streamlining collaborative meeting interaction.
Keywords: TBA
Availability: semester/year
Prerequisites: TBA
Description: Meeting interaction is often cumbersome and ineffecient in terms of interaction. Most meetings revolve around the preparation of material which originates in a virtual format, while most meetings occur in a physical environment. How can you streamline the interactive process so participants can bring, work around and take away all the information discussed in a meeting with the supporting context.

Title: Future of collaborative virtual design applications.
Keywords: TBA
Availability: semester/year
Prerequisites: TBA
Description: So, how effective are current design applications? Explore the nature of collaborative virtual design applications to establish what assists design and what needs improvement. Are they comparable to collaborative physical design? How do they vary and is there any common ground to inform the development of future applications. Utilising findings from research into collaborative physical design, explore what is relevant in virtual design.

Title: Usability and efficiency of collaborative virtual design - online.
Keywords: TBA
Availability: semester/year
Prerequisites: TBA
Description: Much research has been done on cognitive loading as a method for informing how usable an application is. Utilise previous research in this area, to inform the intuitive nature of a select range of collaborative applications. Explore issues such as layout, intuitive construction and general usability on a range of design exercises at various points of the desig process. How does technology inform the usability or hamper the interaction achieved?

Title: Information visualisation across physical/digital divide
Keywords: TBA
Availability: semester/year
Prerequisites: TBA
Description: Explore the correlation and display of virtual information flow in physical public space. Building upon initial frameworks and approaches developed in studio 5, work on implementing a installation for the foyer space and in online form as well, which bridges mediums in not only the implementation but the imformation it is displaying.