Highlights

Some Recent Work

• Deaf telephony: Community-based Co-design. A case study on our design method which fuses action research, industrial design approaches including participatory design techniques and education. It is a way of exploring a design space in a way that alleviates the restrictions of the designer's own viewpoint and bias. In a cyclical fashion the designers work according to their skills and learning and according to the users' expressed requirements and their learning. The researchers and the users end up being the design team. Our research also raises important ethical issues which are fundamentally concerns of reciprocity: what does the community get in return for helping our research careers? (2011)
• Cultural reinterpretation and resonance: The San and hip-hop. This paper shows that a hip-hop themed priming Virtual Environment improves the VE experience of the almost extinct San culture for users who have an affinity for the genre. (2011)
• Software engineering in developing communities. Paper that summarizes my views on how ICT4D can be integrated into software engineering. It has a strong bias towards action that is both effective and ethical. (2010)
• Being participated: a community approach. Good summary of work on indigenous knowledge. (2010)

Special Interest

• The role of outcome mapping in developing a rural telemedicine system. This paper on the work done with Bill Tucker reflects on how we can start using Action Research in Software Engineering. The trick is to find a way to evaluate projects in the action cycle beyond just SE testing (unit tests, etc). To that end we use Real Access/Real Impact of bridges.org, here we focus on the Outcome Mapping of the IDRC. The problem with M&E tools for design is that they do not provide design support. (2008)
• Constructivism, virtual reality and tools to support design. While expert designers and VE authors are able to perceive the affordances in the environment and objects of a 3D world novice designers do not. We use multiple representations (with scaffolding in how to read them) to highlight these affordances and simplify the visual display to
  help novices learn how to perceive the necessary information. (2008)
• Information and social support for semi-literate people living with HIV. We used a Virtual Environment (VE) to support people living with HIV. Participants appreciated the benefits but preferred real support groups not virtual ones. An unexpected benefit of VE's was that participants felt privileged at being given the opportunity to use a VE. It gave them a sense of power and achievement.(2007)
• User interfaces for communication bridges across the digital divide. Paper relates digital divide to the need for social (or cultural) intelligence in the design of user interfaces. The emphasis is on effective abstractions that can guide ICT designers who may be unsure of how to deal with cultural factors. (2006)
• VoIP deregulation in South Africa: Implications for underserviced areas. Policy work; although we had been doing research in VOIP for several years it only became legal in 2005. We argue that SA policy for telecommunications access needs to be changed further if effective access is to be rural communities. It reflects my bias towards using actual implemented ICT solutions for further reflection on policy implications. This is an attempt to counteract the SA predilection for producing beautiful policy statements that never get implemented. (2006)
• Exact from-region visibility culling. (2002)
• A field computer for animal trackers. (2001)
• Faster Phong shading via angular interpolation. (1989)
• On including part hierarchies in object-oriented languages, with an implementation in Smalltalk. (1987)

Some Notable Theses

• VRBridge: a Constructivist Approach to Supporting Interaction Design and End-User Authoring in Virtual Reality. Cara Winterbottom.
• Softbridge: a socially aware framework for communication bridges over digital divides. Bill Tucker.
• A Capacity Limited, Cognitive Constructionist Model of Virtual Presence. Dave Nunez
• Fast and Accurate Visibility Preprocessing. Shaun Nirenstein
• Predictive Hierarchical Level of Detail Optimization. Ashton Mason
• Complexity in Natural Scenes: A viewer centered metric for computing adaptive detail. (Mine!)