Dr Emma Nicol
Lecturer In Information Behaviour
Computer and Information Sciences
Personal statement
I am a Lecturer in Information Behaviour in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences (CIS).
My main research interests are Information Behaviour and Human Computer Interaction (HCI).
My experience of empirical investigations of information seeking and user interactions with technology encompasses studies in many human contexts and occupational domains including Education, Healthcare, Law, FinTech and Cultural Heritage. Much of my research has been driven by a curiosity regarding the information and technological needs and practices of understudied and often vulnerable populations such as children and young people and older adults.
Recent projects
"Cumulative Revelations in Personal Data" (EPSRC), exploring the organisational security risks posed by the digital traces created by online personal information sharing. https://cumulative-revelations.github.io/revelations/
SIPA2 Improving the Pharmaceutical care of People with Sensory Impairment: https://sipa2project.co.uk/
Research Affiliations
I am a member of ACM SIGCHI and ASIS&T and participate in the Strathclyde iSchool Research Group (SISRG), Digital Health and Wellness Group (DHAWG) and Cybersecurity Research Group at CIS.
Citizenship
I have served as Programme Committee member for the Ageing and Accessibility track of CHI and for CHI Play and was co-organiser of workshops and panels on Ageing and Technology at CHI and MobileHCI and on Children and Technology at IDC. I have co-edited special issues of the International Journal of Child Computer Interaction and the International Journal of Mobile HCI. I review for CHI, MobileCHI, NordiCHI, DIS and many of the key conferences and journals in Information Science and HCI.
I am interested in mental health, wellbeing and widening access and was a mentor with the Disability and Wellbeing Service for many years.
Area of Expertise
- Information seeking behaviour
- User-centred Design
- Usability studies
- Participatory Methods
- Field Ethnography
Prize And Awards
- Top 10 IRIS 2022 LexisNexis Best Paper Award
- Recipient
- 25/2/2022
- Euan Minto Prize
- Recipient
- 2018
Publications
- Everyday digital traces
- Armstrong Andrea, Briggs Jo, Moncur Wendy, Carey Daniel Paul, Nicol Emma, Schafer Burkhard
- Big Data & Society Vol 10, pp. 1-13 (2023)
- https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231213827
- (Talking about) Failing better in research : the first rule of failure club is…you don’t talk about failure club
- Nicol Emma, Willson Rebekah, Julien Heidi, Greyson Devon, Given Lisa M
- Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology Vol 60, pp. 817-820 (2023)
- https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.868
- What the Dickens : post-mortem privacy and intergenerational trust
- Schafer Burkhard, Briggs Jo, Moncur Wendy, Nicol Emma, Azzopardi Leif
- Computer Law and Security Review Vol 49 (2023)
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clsr.2023.105800
- The SIPA2 STUDY : exploring the pharmaceutical care needs of older people with sensory impairment (OPwSI)
- Watson Mags, Lennon Marilyn, Macaden Leah, Smith Annetta, Jacob Sabrina Anne, Welsh Tomas, Fuzesi Peter, Nicol Emma, Broadfoot Kirsten, Cooper Lesley, Kamalakannan Sureshkumar
- Nordic Social Pharmacy Conference 2023 (2023)
- Revealing cumulative risks in online personal information : a data narrative study
- Nicol Emma, Briggs Jo, Moncur Wendy, Htait Amal, Carey Daniel, Azzopardi Leif, Schafer Burkhard
- The 25th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, pp. 1-25 (2022)
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3555214
- Information intermediaries and information resilience : working to support marginalised groups
- Nicol Emma, Willson Rebekah, Ruthven Ian, Elsweiler David, Buchanan George
- , pp. 469-473 (2022)
- https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.654
Teaching
I am programme leader for MSc Information Management and Deputy Director of PGT (Student Experience) at CIS.
I lead modules on a number of CIS's PGT programmes:
CS978 Legal, Ethical and Professional Issues for the Information Society
CS800 Health Information Governance
CS955 Information Law
and lead a module on the Graduate Apprenticeship in Information Technology & Software Development:
- CS355 User-centred Design
I supervise MSc dissertations projects across several PGT programmes.
Professional Activities
- Contribution of evidence to House of Lords COVID-19 Committee - Living online: the long term impact on wellbeing
- Contributor
- 11/12/2020
- 27th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (Event)
- Peer reviewer
- 9/11/2024
- The 2024 European Symposium on Usable Security (Event)
- Peer reviewer
- 30/9/2024
- 6th International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (Event)
- Peer reviewer
- 8/7/2024
- 86th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology
- Organiser
- 30/10/2023
- ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2024 (Event)
- Peer reviewer
- 1/10/2023
Projects
- Empirical investigation & user-centred development of touch-screen text entry methods older adults
- Dunlop, Mark (Principal Investigator) Komninos, Andreas (Researcher) Nicol, Emma (Researcher)
- "Mobile technologies now have a considerable impact on work and social lives, for example it is estimated that over 25% of emails are now opened on mobiles. As the older working population rises, due to both aging population demographics and increasing retirement age, an increasing number of digital economy workers will require to use mobile technologies for work into their mid/late 60s.
The proposed European Accessibility Act aims to require goods and services that are seen as critical for the citizen to participate in society to be accessible to disabled and older people - this is likely to cover information and communication technologies including mobile phones. Age UK encourage the UK Government to support the act and state that the EU must ensure that the scope of the act is broad enough to cover the needs of older people.
Text entry is core to mobile interaction such as email, social networking, instant messaging and interacting with services such as web or map searching and thus it is increasingly important to people's participation in work and society. The majority of smartphones now do not have any physical keyboard but rely on on-screen touch keyboards. These have been shown to be slower and more error-prone than traditional mini-physical keyboards, but are popular as they permit full screen services and larger reading area.
While there have been numerous studies into text entry usage on touchscreens, there has been very little work studying the effects of aging on text entry, and none on modern touchscreen phones where reduced visual acuity, reduced motor control and reduced working memory are all likely to have an impact. Currently industry is focussed on targeting the current main market of younger users with any devices designed for older users being extremely simplified phones rather than powerful smartphones people are becoming accustomed to. Our initial studies have also shown that older users have considerable trouble with modern smartphones but may be willing to adopt new keyboard layouts and technologies to compensate for this.
In this project we will conduct a detailed investigation into text entry for older adults. We will build on our initial results and current prototype keyboards to conduct participatory design sessions with older users to identify key design criteria for older adult text entry. We will quantitatively measure touchscreen tapping times for different age groups and develop accidental tap filters to reduce errors. We will formally evaluate keyboards based on our findings to assess our hypothesis that older people can successfully use appropriately designed touch-screen text entry methods." - 01-Jan-2013 - 30-Jan-2015
- Developing a theory of information resilience with constituency case workers
- Nicol, Emma (Principal Investigator) Ruthven, Ian (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2023 - 30-Jan-2026
- Strathclyde Centre for Doctoral Training in Human Rights-based Decision-Making
- Harkens, Adam (Co-investigator) Miyake, Esperanza (Co-investigator) Nicol, Emma (Co-investigator) Ntona, Maria (Co-investigator) Schippers, Birgit (Co-investigator) Webster, Elaine (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2023 - 31-Jan-2027
Contact
Dr
Emma
Nicol
Lecturer In Information Behaviour
Computer and Information Sciences
Email: emma.nicol@strath.ac.uk
Tel: Unlisted