Yearly Archives: 2012

Call for PhD students to attend BCS HCI ‘Delight’ Workshop

The SerenA RCUK project has identified an opportunity to fund the registration fee to enable 5 PhD students to attend Understanding Delight in Design: User Experience, Technologies and Tools workshop at BCS HCI 2012. The workshop will provide PhD students with ...

SerenA Contributions to Open Source Software

One of the enjoyable aspects of writing research software, is that often a free license is granted to play with and explore a vast variety of technologies, frameworks and programming libraries. The technologies that are engaged with the SerenA development have ...

The Semantic Notebook App

In my previous post ‘Taking the digital notebook a step further‘ we talked about the various ways in which people use their notebook and how they draw connections between different ideas. We highlighted the pro’s and con’s of digital note ...

Sembl: Tapping human knowledge and imagination, link by link

We recently had a meeting with Catherine Styles, the creator of the Sembl Project to discuss how Serena and Sembl are both investigating serendipity, but from very different angles. The Sembl project is taking place at the National Museum of Australia. ...

Community Radio Broadcast ‘Blue Skies Festival’

On Saturday 11th August 2012, SerenA played a part in the community radio broadcast at 'Blue Skies Festival', Dundee’s festival of kite flying, stargazing and rainbow chasing which runs from 10 to 12 August 2012. Blue Skies will be bringing a ...

Understanding ‘Delight’ in Design

What are ‘delightful’ interfaces? Do they exist? Could ‘delightful’ interfaces inspire serendipitous moments? If yes, how does this affect the user experience? Is ‘delight’ in design something measurable in strict terms? Or do we observe and understand  ‘delight’ through its ...

Making time for serendipity

Serendipity is about time and an attitude of mind. But it's not just about the individual: it also depends on the social context. Laura Dantonio proposed a Masters project that looked at the role of social media in facilitating serendipity. ...

How to ‘Respect Serendipity’ and ‘Get Lucky’

I've recently started a guest blog series) on Finnish-born IIkka Kakko's serendipity blog (www.respectserendipity.com). In it, I talk about my research so far as part of the SerenA project. I like the blog, not only because IIkka really does seem ...

The Serendipitous Community: SerenA at the Small Society Lab

Last month, SerenA took part in the Small Society Lab at Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA). This included a panel discussion around the idea of the Serendipitous Community; a space where connections can be made and serendipity encouraged. Chaired by Mel Woods, ...

Vaguely Drift

Observing the laptop-generation in conference, lecture, and conversation, writing to colleagues, checking football scores, reading emails, speaking eloquently, one eye on screen, the other on the roof, an ear on the talker, the other possibly on majestical internal ruminations, i ...