A simple picture exchange system developed by and for non-verbal people allowing the user to communicate their needs by building sentences from relevant images. It can be customised by the individual using their picture and photo vocabulary with the user taking photos and saving pictures to the app.

The application works in real time and allows the user to select their preferences, then rotate the device to present a full sized sentence to the listener – who will read it with them and respond to their request.

The beauty of Grace is that it ensures the interaction of the user with the listener, and mutual understanding of the user’s real needs help to increase communication opportunities and build trust.

The Grace app helps children with autism better develop their communications skills and is available in the App Store worldwide. It was developed by Lisa Domican in conjunction with software developer Steve Troughton-Smith, and with the support of O2 Ireland. The lovely Lisa has blogged about the development of the app and also about the benefits it has brought to her own children which is a great way to demonstrate the importance of such an app. The Grace App is now even available on the iPad, which is fantastic for anyone with motor problems, such as stroke victims.

If you have an old iPhone/iPod Touch or are thinking of upgrading, please consider donating your old iPhone/iPod Touch to a child with autism by contacting Lisa via email: hammiesaysATgmailDOTcom

You can also contact the Irish Autism Action charity direct about iPhone/iPod Touch donation, or you can donate to them directly via the I Want My Iphone for Autisim MyCharity.ie page.

You can learn more about Autism Action on their Blog Award winning group blog.

If I could choose any person to be my research mentor it would be Dr. Preece. This woman has a 35 page CV online describing her incredible academic career. As early as 1975 she was working on e-learning initiatives in the UK and after completing her PhD studies in 1985 she pursued research focused on ground-breaking topics such as information systems, computer mediated communication, human?computer interaction, and online communities. She eventually moved to the USA in 1996 to lecture in the University of Maryland Baltimore County, in the Information Systems Department. Today she is the Dean of this department, supporting a long list of PhD students. Her work has taken her all around the globe, she has published hundreds of papers and authored numerous HCI books. She has achieved so much, in what had been a traditionally male dominated field. Her career is certainly something to aspire to.

The Only Real Social Media Expert

Dr. Preece’s current research focuses on the design and management of digital social media, and it’s quite possible that Dr. Preece is one of the only people qualified to call themselves an actual “social media expert”. Back in 2000 when social media was just a glint in Biz Stone and Mark Zuckerberg’s eyes Dr. Preece was hard at work bringing together the usability focus of human-computer interaction and the broader human focus of sociability. She introduced the significance of understanding the interrelationships between people’s behaviour online, sociability and usability. She illustrated how people’s interactions create online communities, and that developers can influence their success or failure by how they design software and polices. This was a novel approach that she continues to pursue today.

I would love to bump into Dr. Preece someday, but it’s not because I would love to pick her brain about all of these fascinating topics we share an interest in. Instead I would ask her to tell me her story, because I bet it’s an incredible one.

This post was written for Ada Lovelace Day – an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.

These days technology like the iPhone helps us to track our own personal habits, Twitter gives us an insight into popular topics and analytics give us fascinating web usage statistics. Whilst technology has greatly enhanced our ability to collect interesting data about human behaviour, it’s important to realise that using such data to make conclusions about why we behave in such a way is unwise without investigating the differences between causality and correlation. Take for example the problematic question of whether the Internet is addictive or if addicts use the Internet.

The Relationship Between Psychology and Technology

Only thorough psychological research can investigate the motivations behind our behaviour. All of the modern day branches of psychology are governed by extremely strict rules that ensure that only legitimate and ethical research is conducted and published, and said research employs extensive statistical analyses on data derived from various methods including interviews, questionnaires, experiments, etc.

It is for these reasons that I believe that the relationship between psychology and technology needs to be much stronger. If we use psychology to understand and explain our interactions with technology today, we can help our future selves by using this information to make technology more accessible, usable and helpful for everyone.

There is absolutely no escaping the fact that one day you will be old. Most people regard getting older to be a physical decline, a frailty of the body, without considering the cognitive and social changes that occur as you age. It is for this reason that I take an interest in Irish research centres like the NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology and the CASALA Centre (soon to open in Dundalk IT) who aim to improve future technologies by conducting cognitive and social psychological research with older adults and people with disabilities.

In today’s Irish Times an article describes the recent Business of Ageing conference held in Dublin, highlights some of the fantastic assisted living technologies being developed here in Ireland and suggests this country could be a leader in developing technology for older adults.

Let’s hope this prediction comes true. Not only would I love to work in this area of research and development, I for one would like to continue being an early adopter of new technologies. I would be incredibly angry if, as I got older technology slipped out of my reach, the way the majority of older adults are excluded today.

Sleep Cycle is an app that turns you iPhone into a bio-alarm clock. Using the accelerometer built into the iPhone it reads specific movements common during sleep and wakes you up when you are sleeping lightly, aiming to give you a more refreshing awakening. Haven’t we all felt the frustration of being woken up during an especially interesting dream, and then felt dreadful for the day because of it?

This type of movement based bio-alarm clock has been around for awhile. You often find them as glorified watches with internal accelerometers, or overcomplicated devices that require placing motion detecting electrodes under your pillow case. The reason bio-alarm clocks work is due to the extensive sleep research that tells us how our body moves or doesn’t move during sleep.

How Does It Work?

Software like Sleep Cycle looks out for the right breathing patterns or muscle activity to determine what stage of sleep we are at. For example, during the REM stage of sleep (when we are dreaming) your body is essentially paralysed, this stops your body from acting out and hurting itself during a dream, but during light sleep your muscles will occasionally twitch. Another example is how during the deepest stage of sleep your breathing becomes rhythmic, but during REM sleep your breathing is rapid and shallow. These are distinct and measurable differences and are the biological indicators that bio-alarm clocks are looking out for.

The Sleep Cycle app on the iPhone doesn’t just wake you up though; it also produces a graph of your sleep pattern, so you get a general idea of how restful your sleep was. These graphs are more of a novelty than anything else and though I wouldn’t recommend you use them to make inferences about how healthy your sleeping behaviour is, it could provide you with a valuable insight when paired with keeping track of your routines, helping you to figure out what works best for you for a good night’s sleep.

I would argue that if you’re tweeting, you’re certainly not trying to sleep or doing what’s good for your body in preparation for shutting down for a few hours. I myself have suffered some restless nights and made a real effort to combat the problem, rather than accepting it and suffering through more zombie like days in the office.

Turn Off Your Computer 30 Minutes Before Sleep

If you’re suffering from occasional difficulty getting to sleep at night you should consider the effects of using a computer late at night. Studies have shown that the brain remains stimulated after using a computer (or watching television), which in turn makes your sleep restless. The simple act of shutting down the computer 30 minutes before you’re planning on going to sleep can help relax you.

Research has also shown that the bright light of your computer monitor (let’s also not forget that mobile phone screens also produce a bright light) suppresses the production of our sleep hormone melatonin. If you are suffering from an especially bad case of insomnia then try shutting down the computer at least two hours before planning on going to bed.

Though you may enjoy the calming effects of using the computer, your brain on the other hand is thinking “light = daytime”. Staring at your computer screen means keeping yourself alert and wide-awake and returning online to complain about your inability to sleep is simply aggravating the problem.

If you are used to the routine of using the computer right up until bedtime, try to create a new routine for yourself. Use the last 30 minutes of your day to read a chapter out of that book you’ve been meaning to finish, to relax in the shower, to tidy up your apartment. Stick to the new routine and see if it helps improve your sleep.

Is checking if anyone has replied to your latest tweet or commented on your blog really worth loosing sleep over?

Avoid Caffeine Within 6 Hours of Bedtime

Coffee. Internet users are it’s biggest fan, but it does more harm than good to you in the evenings.

Caffeine is a short term solution if you are low on sleep and need to remain active, it blocks adenosine reception so you feel alert, and injects adrenaline into your system to give you a boost. The trouble is, that the half-life of caffeine in your body is around six hours. Consider a cup of coffee at 6pm, half the caffeine in that cup will still be floating around in your body at midnight. By avoiding caffeine within at least 6 hours of your bedtime you’re giving yourself a better chance at being able to fall asleep and the less caffeine in your body the better your sleep will be.

Also, excessive caffeine consumption has a negative effect on your digestive system, so you may suffer from heartburn when you try to sleep at night. Coffee (even decaf!) reduces the pressure on the valve between the esophagus and the stomach so that the acidic contents of the stomach pass up to the esophagus leading to heartburn, which is far harder to cure when you’re lying down as it’s even easier for that acid to travel to your esophagus.

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If the above two tips don’t work for you, I would recommend talking to your doctor as persistent insomnia can have detrimental effects on your physical and mental well being.

You can also try the following guidelines:

• Get up at the same time every day, even at weekends. Irregular sleep patterns undermines your ability to sleep.
• Avoid daytime activities in bed (like eating or watching TV) but reading before bed may be helpful.
• Do not smoke before bedtime, nicotine is a stimulant and just like caffeine it can disturb your sleep.
• Avoid alcohol within four hours of bedtime, though it may induce sleep it makes sleep more fragile and broken throughout the night.
• If you are unable to sleep, leave your bed and engage in a quiet activity elsewhere (not TV or using the computer) and return to bed when you feel sleepy again.
• Go to bed only when you are sleepy. Do not extend your bedtime hours in the hope of sleeping longer, in most cases you may be awake for longer.
• Exercise. People who take regular exercise sleep better than those of us sitting in-front of our computer screen 12 hours a day.

I’m Mark Siggins – final year Cyberpsychology student in IADT and I’m looking for some volunteers for my MSc. Project. Its a study of Irish mobile phone usage and what happens when people are separated from their mobile phones. I’ve set up an online survey to get suitable participants (You must own a mobile phone, be aged 18-40 and live in Ireland).

A link to the questionnaire can be found here.

The online part takes about ten minutes and of course all replies will be confidential. The second part of the study will involve analysing your phone use for a 12 hour period – it’s explained in more detail in the questionnaire, but if anyone has any questions or concerns them please contact me at this address – siggins.mark@gmail.com

Thank you for your assistance.

Mark is looking for people to fill out his questionnaire and also for anyone willing to participate in an experiment – to go 12 hours without their mobile phone. If you’re up for the challenge I think this would be an eye opening experience. Of course, you can still fill out the survey without taking part in the experiment, as frightening as the thought might be.

I’m very much looking forward to the results of this research and hope to be able to publish a summary here when Mark has submitted his thesis to the college.

My name is Graham and I am doing a thesis on Facebook usage. The following is a link to a secure survey that I have made, asking basic Facebook usage questions and also incorporating a short personality questionnaire.

Open The Survey In A New Window

The whole survey will take no more than five minutes to do and is completely confidential; I can assure you that it is also anonymous. You need only type your initials. I would really appreciate it if you could find the time to do it, as I am struggling to get the required numbers. The only stipulation is that you are Irish, over 24, and have a facebbok profile. Thanking you in advance.

Graham Gilbert
Final Year MSc Cyberpsychology student at IADT

I’m rather interested in the results of this study and hopefully will be able to share the results of Graham’s study with you next year.

Having very much enjoyed this same event last year

Talks of interest to a Cyberpsychologist?

Mark Campbell from eMedia will be showcasing 3D Medical animations employed as elearning tools for life sciences.

Ronan Skehill from YourPinPoints shall discuss the business, societal and privacy issues surrounding location based services.

PhD Researcher David McKeown will be discussing the shortcomings of 2D mice and keyboards being used to interface with 3D environments, and demonstrating the use of wiimotes with 3D PC applications and robots.

Artist Miriam Lohan will introduce Sound Mapping – how to read a map by listening, perceiving presence and filtering information for navigation or pleasure.

PhD Student Fabiano Pinatti will explore how technology can support the nomadic/mobile aspects of modern work and life.

This research found that in comparison to 2006 there are far more female bloggers and that the majority of bloggers are no longer based within the IT industry. Non-Bloggers were found to be more concerned about the persistent nature of the Internet than Bloggers, but both had similar concern for issues of online privacy. Results found that Irish internet users have no preference for reading blogs based outside of Ireland and that the majority read a mixture of both Irish and international blogs, and did not rate either as more credible than the other. It was found that Irish internet users do not perceive it as highly important to know the identity of a blog author, but that over 60% of Irish bloggers publish online using their real name.

The primary motivation for Irish bloggers is the ability to articulate their ideas through writing and almost 52% consider their blogging as a form of journalism. The majority of Bloggers indicated that they have never lied on their blogs and that they actively attempt to verify information before posting an article. It was found that 35% of Irish bloggers do not feel connected to the Irish blogosphere, and that the most common blogosphere identified with was based around the author’s interests rather than geography. Most importantly, it was found that the impact of blogging on blogger’s lives was in no way negative and very positive in some respects.

This research is the first to investigate the psychological areas of interest surrounding blogging applied to an Irish audience, and though estimates have suggested only 1% of the Irish online population are blogging, this is steadily increasing. 35% of the Non-Bloggers surveyed indicated they had plans to blog in the future and blogging is definitely becoming increasingly more popular in Ireland, as demonstrated by the 40% increase in blogs registered at Irishblogs.ie between July 2008 and February 2009.

An increase in blogging in Ireland would be welcome due to its predominantly positive effects, such as increasing our shared intellectual capital, and, as this research indicates, blogging can in fact increase social capital too.

Furthermore, most previous research with regard to blogging has focused on personal journal style blogging, and it could be assumed that bloggers who are motivated by personal reasons were unrepresented in the sample that participated in this research. However, this could also suggest that Irish bloggers are actually less inclined to write what is considered a traditional form of blog – the diary style journal. This could indicate a cultural difference between Irish and non-Irish bloggers, or, a categorisation issue with regard to previous blog research.

Blogs are a highly personalised medium with the ability to involve the reading public in an integral manner, and unlike the traditional media they are not edited or gate kept and for this reason traditional journalists argue about how much trust to place in the content of blogs, however, it is argued that the comments system facilitates peer review.

It has been suggested that there aren’t many bloggers in Ireland and therefore there have been few arguments over the differences between journalists and bloggers in Ireland. Nevertheless, this research found that almost 52% of Irish bloggers consider their blogging as a form of journalism, with over 58% of this group using their real name to publish online.

However, over 10% of bloggers described incidents where content was illegitimately sourced from their blogs by the traditional Irish media. Over 58% of this content was written work and almost 30% was in the form of either photographs or photo-shopped images.