Dr Simon Holland

The Music and Human-Computer Interaction Network (MIN) will connect academics, researchers, SMEs, charities and industrial partners in order to pool and expand ideas, drive new research, and develop collaborative projects around emerging issues in the field. The UK has an excellent track record of research in the two contributing areas, including a number of internationally recognised research centres and organisations around the country. The combined field is broad however, and communication and collaboration between researchers, charities and businesses is essential for both informed, relevant, high-impact research, and for charities and businesses to engage with and creatively explore the possibilities suggested by current research. Research in music and human computer interaction is useful not only to music and musicians - one of the UK's largest industries - but also to research generally into making computers easy to control and understand. Research aimed at making computers fluidly useful for music and musicians has inspired numerous innovations in human computer interaction, for example in gestural interfaces, data gloves and touch interfaces. Many musical activities involve coordinating the whole body, in real-time, often with other people, while also making significant perceptual and cognitive demands. Techniques for wearable motion capture originally developed for musicians are now being used in a range of clinical applications such as managing physical rehabilitation after stroke. Because of this long established synergy between music and HCI, a network that brings together researchers in music and HCI along with interested parties from industry and charities will have the capacity to create new theories, products, approaches and services for musicians, the music industry and computing generally. This network therefore aims to support communication and dialog between academics, charities, and SMEs working in fields such as digital music, creativity and interaction, assistive technology, accessible musical instruments, live performance, music production, haptic and tactile interactions, interactive machine learning and music technology for education.

This research will aim to design, develop and evaluate innovative digital systems to improve health and rehabilitation, with particular reference to stroke and other neurological conditions. The work will draw on leading edge research in human computer interaction and on wearable, haptic and other advanced technologies. Sources of inspiration will include recent work in musical cognition and rhythm perception and production. A key starting point for this research will be recent seminal research on the use of multi-limb haptics and motion sensing to exploit human biological entrainment mechanisms for purposes ranging from musical training to stroke and other neurological rehabilitation.

For distance learning students often it is difficult to facilitate creative studio-based activities in the same format as conventional universities. This can result in a short fall of distance learning students ‘maker-process’ skills and practice. The benefits of haptic technology for applied online education, such as e-crafts and e-design practice, is that it enables and enriches the student’s hands-on approach. Currently haptic technology is able to aid students’ interactions to 3D virtual environments. However, haptics that could afford greater sensory engagements with the maker-process with a fidelity akin to real-world is still to be developed. This project aims to embed haptics within a variety of ‘hands-on’ methods, designed by Open University (Engineering and Innovation school) academics. This will enable the development of a working haptic prototype which will focus on haptics and the ‘maker-process’ aiming to add value to core learning technology resources for undergraduate and post graduate programmes. In line with the OU’s ‘access to learning policies’ there is a greater onus placed onto inclusive learning, and the provision of accessible learning technology to include a variety of learners with a range of needs e.g. sensory impairment, motor skills etc… By increasing access to virtual immersive technologies a wider student body could be given access to engage with their own version of the maker-process using multimodal interactions.

There is evidence from numerous surveys in the UK that carers suffer from longstanding physical health problems and are strongly affected by stress, anxiety and depression. Research carried out by Cheffings, (2003) revealed that 50% of carers believed that their health was adversely affected by their caring role. Additionally, in an ageing population, family members are expected to take on more and more complex care tasks. In particular home carers can encounter feelings of isolation because they are less part of a professional community compared to e.g. staff in a care home. They need ways to find answers to care questions or psychological support to help them fulfil their role. Online information, advice and guidance and access to a community of peers and experts can help. The DISCOVER solution is an innovative, broadly accessible solution that is focused upon improving the quality of life of carers and the older people they care for through learning, informational access and support. DISCOVER aims to improve the digital skills of domiciliary care workers, to give them the ability to pass on these digital skills to the older people they care for and to provide opportunities for both carers and older people to learn these skills together. DISCOVER will provide access to e-Learning for digital skills (both explicit and embedded into all elements of training), access to carer skills; access to care management tools and communications, including the ability to output to telehealth systems; or provide updates to family; and act as an access point to a range of existing information and support networks that exist in each country where DISCOVER is deployed.

The proposed research is a series of 4 academic seminars to explore the concept of technological inclusion in relation to age, and to establish a new interdisciplinary network of researchers including experienced researchers, PhD students and early-career researchers, older people and service providers, to critically examine how older people are positioned in the age of digital information. The first 3 seminars will take place at the OU; the final one at Bletchley Park.

Cueing using metronomic rhythmic sensory stimulation has been shown to improve gait for stroke survivors, but most versions of this approach have used auditory and visual cues. In contrast, we have developed a prototype wearable system for rhythmic cueing based on haptics, which has been shown to be effective in pilot studies (Holland et al. 2015). The next step is to refine the current experimental system to make it practical for everyday use by therapists, and to determine what refinements will be needed for self-managed use by stroke survivors in the community. As part of this process we need to identify issues and requirements by drawing on the views of physiotherapists, nurses, interaction designers and stroke survivors. To apply the knowledge gained to improved design in an effective way we will use rapid prototyping - this involves building and modifying successive prototypes for representative users to interact with. This process goes through cycles, where user reactions feed into the next iteration of the prototype.