Roblin Blandford had this great idea to input his CV into Wordle to create a tag cloud - which is a visual representation of the most commonly found words in a piece of text. In mine you can clearly see that the most dominant word is Psychology. You can click it for a bigger version. Elly has created one too.
Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology (IADT) are in the process of recruiting for the fifth year of the Create Digital Media business training and mentoring programme. Create seeks to train and mentor 10 entrepreneurs/employees of small companies on a part-time basis, for one day every month. It’s a 12-month government-financed programme that will train participants in further developing their digital media companies and they are particularly interested in individuals involved in e-commerce, online advertising, mobile media and social media.
Create also offers incubation desk space at the Media Cube on the IADT campus or at the Digital Hub in Dublin City Centre and each selected individual will be assigned an average of €10,000 for customised training and mentoring in business skills related to digital media development of companies, services and products. For more information, visit www.createireland.ie.
Having studied at IADT for 5 years I can’t recommend it enough to prospective students. I’ve always found the college overflowing with highly skilled, extremely engaging and approachable lecturers, who make the learning process effortless. IADT also offer a part-time post graduate programme in Digital Media, the MA/MSc in Digital Media which is currently taking applications.
At the start of March I seemed pretty intent on beginning an ambitious post graduate research paper on trust formation online. Since then I have done extensive research into the topic and had to narrow down my research area, this is of course due to time/resource constraints (and the discovery of a very similar study published just recently).
Whilst researching trust online, I was quite drawn to all of the research on blogs and weblogs. The deeper I researched it on an international level (looking at American, Japanese and European literature) the more I realised how interesting it was that as a nation we have not embraced it. Especially considering the overwhelming statistics: In 2007 it was estimated that there were between 50 and 85 million blogs and at their current rate of growth, by 2010 there will be over 500 million blogs. Yet, it has been estimated that there are only about 3,000 or 4,000 Irish bloggers, in comparison to the 12 million bloggers in American or the 8 million bloggers in Japan. Even in the IT industry in Ireland, there is a severe lack of business blogging, despite the obvious benefits.
However, recent statistics published by Amárach claims that almost one in five Irish Internet users have started or contributed to a blog in the past year and if you look at the Alexa.com rankings, Blogger.com is the 10th most visited site by Irish Internet Users. Are there thousands more Irish bloggers out there? That are just unconnected to the blogosphere. Research has shown that some blogs are simply more connected to a blogosphere than others, with some not being connected at all. Or are Irish Internet Users bigger readers than writers? Research has shown that people are less likely to pay attention to a medium perceived as not being credible, and according to some reports trust in blogging in on the decrease (in Ireland) yet other reports show that the majority of Irish Internet users trust consumer opinions posted online.
There is a lot of conflicting data out there. So, naturally I’m fascinated.
I’ll be surveying Irish Internet Users (specifically bloggers and blog readers) to investigate their attitudes, perceptions and motivations, and comparing the results to existing international research. In order to interpret these results, I will also be applying existing social psychology, computer mediated communications and human computer interaction literature.
I’ll also be looking into issues of credibility, liability and the business implications (both positive and negative).
Any thoughts?
IADT are holding an open evening for prospective post graduate and mature students on this coming Thursday, the 24th of April. All the information is available here.
If anyone has an interest in the Cyberpsychology masters (or any of the IADT courses) the open evening would be the place to go. Especially since the course coordinator Dr. Grainne Kirwan will be there to answer all your questions, and so will some of the students from the course. If by any chance you cannot make it and still have an interest, I would be more than willing to answer any questions in the comments of this post.
In two weeks time I’m off to Limerick to attend the Congress of Psychology Students - this is an annual event where undergraduate and postgraduate psychology students (and sometimes their supervisors) present the research that they have conducted, usually in the last year or two. At this event two years ago I presented my own research, and plan on doing so once again at next year’s congress.
The congress is a wonderful opportunity to gather information about the current direction of Irish psychological research and based on the information from the timetable for presentations it appears that the majority of the research to be presented is coming from the traditional mainstream topics of scientific psychology. From almost 200 presentations taking place only about 10 of these are related to I.T in some way, which personally is a big disappointment, especially considering the ubiquity of communications technologies in Ireland and the number of I.T companies based here.
Applying psychological studies to technology has always been a niche in this country, which is surprising because it has so many positive and negative impacts upon Irish working life, home life, education etc. It is something that I feel passionately about, especially the importance of applying scientific methods to research in I.T - rather than the current climate of unreliable surveys and the media shaping public knowledge and ideas about how we use and interact with one another through technology.
I did however note an increase in the areas of research related to gay men and lesbians (though it is still a tiny percentage of the 200 presentations). There are of course many other areas of research that I have an interest in and below is a list of the selected presentations which I will aiming to attend.
The PermanentTSB website won a Golden Spider back in 2005 and since then hasn’t really changed it’s overall site design, infact, it has been virtually the same since 2002. A heuristic evalution of the site (undertaken in the Human Computer Interaction module of the MSc in Cyberpsychology) easily leads me to believe that it is in dire need of a redesign (yet their more recently launched “Yourmortgage.ie” is almost a replica of the main site). Out of a possible 23 heuristics, it only fully complied with 12 of them - meaning the site is littered with design inconsistencies, broken links, very clearly deviates from the current standard web practices (PDF files? really?) etc., etc.
It’s just another fine example of Irish web design firmly stuck in web 1.0. The .ie domain is virtually (no pun intended!) littered with them. I’m sure there are plenty more examples of badly designed Irish sites (not necessarily .ie) and would be thrilled to hear everyone’s own personal “favorites”.
Eircom.net is another firm favorite of mine for its sensational orange menu with white text, and dark grey text on a grey background for its sub-menu. Wonderful stuff.
I’m in the early stages of writing my second thesis. My first one, for my undergrad studies in Psychology Applied to I.T was based on online advertising, was only about 5,000+ words and I had about 80 participants in my experiments.
This one will be three times the size, it will weigh in at about 10,000 - 15,000 words and I’ll be needing about 1,000 volunteers to fill out multiple online surveys for me (this step won’t commence until at least September). So wish me luck! Below are some of the aims I have developed, they form the basis for my upcoming research.
Aims:
Though there is a lot of research with regard to the topic of trustworthiness online, almost all of this research focuses solely on e-commerce (eBay, Amazon etc.,) and does not delve into information exchange. Recently Wikipedia and Blogging has come under scrutiny by the traditional media for an apparent misrepresentation for information. However, this has in no way effected the popularity of these mediums. What I want to know is - why? Why do people trust certain websites and blogs but not others?
The next stage is to develop sets of hypothesis, which I’ve begun to do and have quite a few so far. I’m very much looking forward to getting feedback on my initial ideas from the college, I may have to alter the above aims as time progresses. If anyone would like to contribute some feedback or direct me towards any existing research, articles etc., please do.
If anyone else, like myself, is currently in the process of doing research into existing literature, online, let me suggest a wonderful tool called Zotero. It’s a file management system that works in conjunction with Firefox to help you sort, tag, reference, etc., research papers from sites such as Google Scholar.
It’s been quite some time since I’ve posted anything, been very busy and nothing new in the world of gadgets/technology has taken my interest, expect perhaps Blackle. Been busy changing jobs - I’m now working in Admin/ICT for the Health Service Executive in their mental health section. It’s Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, or flexi-time if I need to come in late, or go home early - which suits me perfectly, especially so for college in October.
I’ve my interview for the M.Sc. in Cyberpsychology at the beginning of September, I’m feeling confident about it, I can’t see how they’d refuse me. I’m putting all my eggs in one basket - I know this - but I honestly couldn’t find a Masters program that suited me the way this one does, so even if I don’t get in, I’d rather that than do a course I wasn’t excited about.
Update: Induction is on the 22nd. I start formal lectures on the 29th. Goodbye Saturdays. Hello education.
Since my last post I have officially graduated from college, you can see all the embarrassing photos of myself and my classmates in our graduation gowns and caps over on my bebo page. I spent some time in cork working/training in the 3Store on Patrick’s Street, and other than that I’ve just been playing around with my new toy. I finally got my dream camera - the Fuji Finepix S5600 - it was a graduation gift from my parents, and by gift I mean they handed me money and said “We were afraid of getting you the wrong one.”
So far, I’ve yet to master the finer “complicated” functions of the camera, which is frustrating but also makes me realise that for once in my life I should probably read the manual. The camera takes fantastic photos and it’s really quick, making multiple shots very easy to take. The 10x zoom is incredible, it makes you feel like a spy. It’s a lot of fun. Getting clear close-up shots of small objects isn’t easy though, having tried to take shots of a bearded dragon at the weekend I’ve come to the conclusion that I must (yes, must!) purchase a fisheye lens and macro, for panoramic and close-up shots. I don’t have any other negative comments, I’m very happy with my purchase, I did have one small problem with it though.
After less than a week of it being in my possession there was one very annoying problem – the additional memory card I purchased with it was faulty. I lost all of the photos I took at the weekend. However, I was pleasantly surprised to come up against no hassle whatsoever in Pixels, where I purchased the camera. When I explained the situation, they simply gave me a new memory card, none of the usual arguments or “I’ll have to talk to the manager” bull that I’m used to from sales people.
So, to make sure it was working perfectly with the replacement card, I took some shots of my dog Ben, who is definitely no stranger to the camera, in fact he is quite the little poser as you can see below.
I spent 4 days last week training for my new sales position in 3 Ireland and now I’m on one week paid holiday, fantastic, especially considering I only started working for them on the 23rd of October. I’m currently waiting for the store to open on Henry Street, I had considered being placed in the Grafton Street store but I know there will be a greater opportunity to sell in their flagship store when it eventually does open. Unfortunately 3 are rather secretive about anything that goes on internally so I wont be able to post any information about the new store or the company, so for now, I’ll simply have to direct you towards their media centre.
What I can tell you, is that I’m really excited about being involved, once more, in the roll-out of a new breed of retail environment. When I first started working for 3G in their first Eircom Broadband Studio it was a challenging and rewarding experience and of course it was fun to be surrounded by top of the range technology. Just like the O2 Experience Stores, the Broadband Studios are an example of how hands-on demonstrations of new technologies, and by giving customers a venue in which to interact with a new product, increases their likelihood of actually purchasing. This is exactly what the 3Stores will be about - trying before buying. From a personal perspective, I find that I’m much more likely to want to buy a new piece of electronics if I can first try it, feel it’s weight in my hand, and see what it can actually do for me. There’s nothing worse than being confronted with a plastic dummy or a picture in a brochure, even reading a reviewers opinion of a product is nothing in comparison to actually interacting with it.
Speaking of new technology, I’ve been using the new Firefox 2 for the last week and although at first I was a little put off by how similar it looks to the Apple browser Safari, I’ve actually found that two of its new features are very beneficial to me.
Spell Checking - as you type. This is the feature on OpenOffice.org (the free office suite) that converted me from a Microsoft Office user to an OpenOffice Writer. Anything you type within your browser is checked for spelling mistakes as you type them, it completely erases (no pun intended!) the need for any kind of “check spelling” options that most web-based e-mail services offer. It’s certainly made writing this blog post a lot easier, usually I would be writing this in OpenOffice first and then copying and pasting it (because, yes, I admit it, I’m really bad speller).
Search Suggestions - again, as you type. Whatever search engine you prefer, that lovely little search box built into Firefox dynamically updates a drop-down list of suggested search terms. Not only does this speed up your search, it also may suggest searches to you that you hadn’t even thought of. Thus opening you up to even more information or even, narrowing it down for you further, so you can find exactly what it is you’re looking for.
Firefox 2 is wonderful piece of new software that I applaud for it’s user friendly design, it’s almost endless possibilities in the ability to customise and thus improving your own efficiency as a user, and it’s completeness - features that every new version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer lacks. There is a definite need in the software market for development that is geared towards the user experience.
Hopefully the new MsC in Cyberpsychology in IADT will have some focus on user experience research as a way to improve software and hardware development. It’s a course that I shall be considering over the next couple of months as I research my options for next year (or later). On Monday evening, the 6th of November, IADT will be host to a Cyberpsychology seminar entitled “Cyberpsychology: An Emerging Discipline” and will be hosted by my thesis supervisor Dr.Grainne Kirwan. If anyone is interested in attending please contact IADT with your information in advance so you can be formally invited.