Background

DWRC was established in 1998 as a multi-disciplinary research centre in the School of Human Sciences at the University of Surrey. It now resides within the Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences and is affiliated to the Department of Sociology. Early work concentrated on understanding the social impact of new technologies such as mobile phones, e-books and the internet. Current work is focused on understanding new forms of media production and consumption, and developing ways of supporting them with novel media genres, formats, devices and services.

The centre runs a combination of PhD and post-doctoral research projects. These are funded by a variety of government and industrial sponsors. Government funding has come from UK research councils such as the EPSRC and ESRC, and from the EU. Industrial funding has been provided by companies such as Vodafone, Microsoft, Kodak, British Telecom, Orange, Hewlett Packard and Fujitsu. We also have a strategic partnership with the Faculty of Industrial Design at the Technical University of Eindhoven and encourage a flow of masters level projects and people between the two universities.

Approach

DWRC sees user-centred innovation as a creative non-linear process. We believe that successful innovation requires a four pronged approach:

• User research: what user need or desire will be met?
• Design research: is this an attractive, workable solution?
• Business research: is it economically viable?
• Technology research: how can it be achieved using existing or novel technologies?

To do this, we act as a catalyst for bringing together a range of disciplines from within the Faculty, the University and beyond. Our particular contribution is in field based user and design research in which we conduct ethnographic enquiries to inspire design. We refer to this as design ethnography. However, we like to work closely with product designers, business analysts and engineers to realise and test new technology prototypes in larger teams. For this reason, our staff come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, and often combine more than one discipline in their own research practice. These include sociology, anthropology, psychology, interaction design/HCI, media design, computer science and communications.

Research and innovation space

The digitization of media and its distribution over the internet is leading to the radical transformation of media practices, technologies and businesses. Individuals are learning and inventing new ways to take and share photographs, to watch TV, listen to music and play games – to name but a few examples. Companies are modifying processes to support these behaviours, publishing across a wider range of media, and finding new business models to survive and prosper.  With the advent of Web 2.0 and user generated content, there is also a blurring between amateur and professional practice which is further complicating the relationship between users and developers, consumers and producers, authors and audience. At Digital World, we see these changes as opportunities for two kinds of innovation research: one studying user’s own forms of new media innovation and the other exploring how these are shaped by alternative media technologies.

Application areas

The specific application areas we research vary over time and with the sponsors we collaborate with. However we work mainly on products for the consumer market with individuals, families and communities. In recent years we have begun to specialize in inclusive design projects with user groups usually disenfranchised from full engagement in the digital world.  This is because we recognize that many of the changes in media practice mentioned above are either themselves excluding certain groups, or providing new opportunities to address existing exclusion and disadvantage in society.  Some typical application areas are shown below, with more details available from the archive projects and recent funded projects pages.

• ICT for development (Storybank, Bespoke)
• ICT for older people (SUS-IT)
• Digital storytelling (StoryBank, Weegie, Mythical stories Photo displays, Forgotten images)
• Future communication (Cross media communication, StoryBank, Tabletop collaboration)
• Future photography (Weegie, Photo displays, Forgotten images, Photo ID)
• User experience (Media players, Digital DIY)
• Properties of sonic media (Sonic interventions, Musical collaboration)