marta

Socio-Technical Systems and Work-Home Boundaries Workshop

Below you can find my post on the Digital Epiphanies blog about the workshop that was organised during MobileHCI. My paper “I check my emails on the toilet”: Email Practices and Work-Home Boundary Management” was presented by my supervisor, Dr Anna L Cox, as I was attending the Doctoral Consortium at the same time.

On Sept. 23rd 2014 we held the “Socio-Technical Systems and Work-Home Boundaries” workshop during MobileHCI conference in Toronto, Canada.
This workshop was one of the outcomes of our Digital Epiphanies project, in an effort to open up the discussion to a broader range of researchers in the field of technology and work-home boundaries. Among the attendees were human-computer interaction (HCI) specialists, social scientists, and sociologists.
The workshop was divided into three parts: first, all papers were presented (see the workshop program for the list of papers), each followed by a short Q&A session.

(more…)

By marta, ago

Why you should do a Doctoral Consortium

In May my supervisor tweeted me the link to the MobileHCI Doctoral Consortium (chaired by Stephen Brewster and Keith Cheverst) and at that point I had no idea what a DC was. But, being as curious as I am and always trying to push myself out of my comfort zone, I decided to apply. I wrote the paper in a couple of hours, got some quick feedback and submitted it. A few months later I received my acceptance email. 
By then I learnt that a DC is an opportunity to
  1. talk about your research,
  2. get feedback from experts who are not directly involved in your research, but have a good understanding of the broader area, and
  3. network with peers (but not only). All this in a supportive but critical environment.
This is what you find out when you search for Doctoral Conosortium and gather information from the various websites. What I didn’t realise is how useful this actually is.

(more…)

By marta, ago

PhD Showcase at UCLiC

This is an internal event of my department to get all PhD students to talk about their work. First year students present a poster in a 3minute madness session, second year students give a longer presentation on their progress (10 minutes) and third year students have the option of how to present their work (talk or poster). Supervisors and research staff are then encourage give feedback to each student.

Here you can find some pictures from the event:  (more…)

By marta, ago

Visiting Microsoft Research, Cambridge

This week I visited Microsoft Research in Cambridge for a 2.5 day workshop on how to build a successful career in research and get to know more about the work that goes on in these labs.

It has been a fantastic opportunity to learn hands on about Azure, but also find out for example how computing can be used to cure cancer, capture medical imaging and predict bio-models. I had no idea Microsoft Research covered so many different topics related to computer science! We also got very good tips and tools to on how to write a paper, think strategically, present data and do interdisciplinary research.  (more…)

By marta, ago

CHI 2014 workshop – Personalised behaviour change technologies

Very excited to present my first PhD publication at CHI2014! It’s a workshop paper, so it will be available online here. The workshop was on Personalised Behaviour Change Technologies and brought together researchers with different backgrounds (anthropology, psychology, computer science). 
A big issue that came up during discussions was trying to define what we mean by ‘personalisation’. Secondly, we discussed whether we should develop technologies that are meant to be used for life, or ones we can graduate from. Other concerns included evaluation methods, design techniques and how behaviour change theories fit into these technologies.
Hopefully, we will be able to produce a special issue based on our discussions. 
Below you can find the abstract of my paper, wrote together with my supervisors, and the presentation slides. 

(more…)

By marta, ago

7 networking lessons I learnt at CHI 2014 (aka what I wish I had done)

I just came back from CHI conference (http://chi2014.acm.org/), and after talking with other PhD students I realised what I did wrong when trying to network. If only I had known this stuff before…. oh well, lesson learnt for the next upcoming conference!

1. Don’t aim only for the “big names”.

People that are like rockstars in your field might not have time to chat with you or, if they find a few minutes, they might not still be working on that paper you love citing so much. 

2. Don’t just go for questions at the end of a presentation talk.

Questions are good if you want a specific short answer on the paper they just presented, but it’s more likely that you want to have a long conversation with that person and that’s hardly going to happen at the end of a presentation. Especially cause people want to run off to the next session. 

(more…)

By marta, ago

UCL Centre for Behaviour Change

Yesterday I went to the launch of UCL Centre for Behaviour Change, created to bring together researcher and non-researchers interested in the field of behaviour change, to facilitate networking and communication among people with a common interest. I was particularly impressed with one of the speaker’s presentation, Prof. Alexi Marmot. Read more…

By marta, ago

How to present your research

The nice this about doing a PhD, among other stuff, is that the really encourage you to develop transferable skills. Therefore today I attended a workshop on how to make a presentation, held by Gabriel Brostow.      Most of the things are quite self-evident if you think about it, Read more…

By marta, ago

Timeline

So, clearly I never did a PhD in Italy, but I know several friends who did or are still in the process of.  After being here for 6 weeks one thing is clear: a PhD is totally different from here to there.  But is it, really? Or does it just Read more…

By marta, ago