Digital Library
May 2011: recently moved on from the university to work for a company as a search engine developer. Therefore this site will not be maintained.. Bye bye!
Previously.. I managed two JISC projects: Usability and Contemporary User Experience in Digital Libraries (UX2.0) and AquaBrowser User Experience (AquaBrowserUX). I also involved in interaction design and web development for the project. Find out more about UX2.0:
- UX2 / AquaBrowserUX Project sites: JISC | Website | Wiki | AquaBrowserUX
- Twitter (project) (ID: ux2)
These projects also underpin the digital library services for Enabling Grids for E-SciencE (EGEE) and NeSC, facilitating content for grid computing and e-science training purposes - see UX2.0 Library. The services are based on custom-built web applications and engineered systems from off-the-shelf and open source systems including Apache Solr faceted/enterprise search infrastructure, Blacklight faceted search UI (Ruby on Rails), Fedora Repository (Java), Orbeon Forms (W3C XForms), CAS.
Read my blog 'Enhancing User Interactions in Digital Libraries' for more details on my work
What I'm mostly doing right now:
- Decorating: interaction design (IxD)/UI patterns and mockup with Haml/Sass, Javascript/CSS framework
- Plumbing: faceted searching and social networking infrastructure with Ruby on Rails.
- Enjoying: music, running, hill walking, photography, cinema.
Previously.., Ph.D., Post-Doc
Some of the projects I've completed at the University of Edinburgh involved technological developments of resource discovery services and metadata interoperability - metadata+ (also manager), d+ (also manager) and DEVIL.
While writing up my PhD thesis, I took up a post-doctoral research fellowship at the School of the Built Environment, Napier University. I submitted the thesis and defended the PhD ~ Computer Extraction of Human Faces ~ at De-Montfort University (CSE Department). The work focused on a prerequisite in facial recognition technology, i.e detecting human faces in video sequences via a novel cost-effective segmentation algorithm. The research was also related to the final year project of my undergraduate studies at the University of Nottingham: model-based coding of 3D human heads. Collaborating with Erik Hjelmås, part of the thesis was published in a paper: Face Detection: A Survey. It was the first comprehensive survey paper in the subject.
At Napier, I established a research unit investigating the implications of electronic commerce for the property and construction sector. The work was exploratory and culminated in a report commissioned by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and other publications. My favourite among the publications was a piece co-written with my colleague Dr Adarkwah Antwi: "Brains over brawn.com" published the Estates Gazette, probably the earliest mention of 'dot.com' in any publications. The RICS report was later made into a video involving a shooting session at the Channel4 HQ and memorising a long script!