Professor Margot Brereton

DO YOU NEED RESEARCH EXPERIENCE?  I currently supervise a vibrant cohort of PhD students and postdoctoral fellows. If you are interested in PhD, honours, Masters or postdoctoral research study, please contact me. In particular I am looking for students to work and to train in research on the funded  projects below.  Scholarships are available for qualified candidates. If you have skills/interests in design, user-centeed research, tangible interaction, visualisation, ethnographic research, participatory design, electronics design, app development,  IT  or software engineering,  and want to further develop your research skills through higher degree research, please do get in touch.

1. INTERACTION DESIGN WITH YOUNG CHILDREN (0-8) : As part fo the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, we are researching and co-designing technology use by and in the homes of children with intellectual disability. We are also researching how technologies might better to engage children with the wonders of nature and the outdoors, and engage them in creative and computational thinking to address environmental matters. Scholarships are available for students interested in these areas.
2. HUMAN INTERACTION WITH AI AND MACHINE LEARNING: Our goal Is to change the design of machine learning and AI systems so that humans and machines use their different abilities to learn together for mutual benefit – human-machine teaming. Machine learning has been commoditised in areas such as medical image reading, however it typically operates separately from humans, supplanting human skills and leading to deskilling. Using human-computer interaction research techniques, co-design and iterative prototyping we aim to devise and evaluate exemplar systems that support humans to interactively frame problems, explore and learn, while utilising and improving machine models, leading to a guiding framework for designing human-machine teaming. Domains of investigation are radiology training, environmental monitoring, and children’s learning.
3. AMBIENT NATURE NETWORK - NEW TECHNOLOGIES TO CONNECT PEOPLE TO AND THROUGH NATURE: This project aims to reconnect people with nature through new technology. Events in nature occur at times, places and scales that are hard to witness, leading to human disconnection from nature. This project proposes to address this issue by researching and designing new low-cost devices that combine environmental sensors with new interfaces to reveal local nature in parks and gardens in calm, engaging ways within and between homes in medium and high density environments. Outcomes will include new connected devices, playful interfaces and social sharing mechanisms, an evaluation with local groups, and a new theory of technology supported human-nature interaction. Benefits will include better community connection to nature, engagement in local citizen science, environmental initiatives and novel monitoring services and products.
4. CO-DESIGNING ACTIVITIES AND TECHNOLOGIES TO REVITALISE AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES: This project aims to understand how an Australian Indigenous language, Kuku Yalanji, is used across inter-generational settings and how to foster its use in everyday activities and with technologies. Many Indigenous languages, primarily spoken by Elders in small communities, risk being lost in a few decades together with the rich knowledge and cultural identity they embody. This project will use a community co-design research approach to understand language use and barriers and co-create new technologies and activities for everyday language use. Outcomes will be new knowledge about language use and revitalisation in small communities, new language tools, and Indigenous proto-enterprises at the intersection of culture, language and design. Other Australian languages may be considered.
5. MAKE AND CONNECT: ENABLING PEOPLE TO CONNECT THROUGH THEIR THINGS: The Internet of Things promises a future in which everyday objects are all connected to the internet enabling them to share data and communicate with one another. The vision is technology centric and the technology is difficult to build. We will research how internet enabled things can be designed and built by everyone young and old, with a domain focus on enabling social engagement and connectedness of older people and distributed families through new forms of connectedness. Outcomes will be new toolkits, a theoretical model, and example networks of objects connecting people in new ways.
6. NEW INFORMATION ACCESS AND SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR NEURODIVERSE PEOPLE:   This project aims to co-design new interfaces and algorithms for information seeking with people with diverse cognitive and sensory systems, creating web search technologies that are  accessible to all. Information access is key to independence in making choices in everyday living, however it is still not possible for many people with cognitive and sensory impairments in Australia. The project will demonstrate the value of diversity in IT design processes by engaging neurodiverse people in all steps of the process, through interviews, focus groups and iterative prototype testing. Outcomes will be new, inclusive search technologies and social technologies, and a new theoretical framework characterising the new forms of inclusive interactive social search. This project will result in new technologies for searching information and socialising on the web that will improve quality of life of people with neurodiversity, providing independence and social and cultural integration. It will generate new search engine algorithms  and new interfaces that will benefit all users of search engines still struggling to abstract their information needs to suit current technologies, and demonstrate the value of diversity in inclusive design.

My Experience

• Discipline Leader - Computer Human Interaction at Queensland  University of Technology
• Recipient of 10 Australian Research Council grants.
• 230 peer reviewed research publications
• Deployment of innovative long term functioning prototypes in several communities e.g Nnub digital noticeboard system, Rhub group mobile social software, and to come…. the Messaging Kettle (or Messaging Rice Cooker, or Message Sticks) which will be deployed to connect families between UK and Australia, within Indonesia and within Aboriginal families in Australia
• 20 PhD and 2Masters students graduated (6 from University of Queensland (my former workplace) and 14 from QUT) (Aloha May Ambe, Cara Wilson, Tshering Dema, Jennyfer Lawrence Taylor, Ravihansa Rajapakse, Haziq Abdullah, Ben Matthews, Jared Donovan, Clint Heyer, Fiona Redhead, Tim Cederman-Haysom, Brett Campbell, Ellya Zulhaikha, Hadi Mirisaee, Steve Snow, Amirudin Wahab, Irith Williams, Kate Vaisutis)
• Chair of OzCHI, Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 2010, 2017
• OzCHI Doctoral Colloquium Responder/Chair, 2006-2009 , 2011, 2012, 2019
• Chief Investigator, ARC Centre for the Digital Child, Key Researcher in the CRC for Interaction Design.
• Reviewing: ACM CHI, conference on Computer Human Interaction; PDC Participatory Design, DIS Designing Interactive Systems; Journal of Computer Supported Co-operative Work; OzCHI; The International Journal of Research in Engineering Design; Design Studies; ASME Design Theory and Methodology; CoDesigning; Design of Augmented Reality; Environments; DesignExpertise; Designing User Experience (DUX); ISWC (International Symposium on Wearable Computing); AUIC. European Commission.
• 2004 - Present: Member of the Editorial Board, CoDesign.
• ACM CHI Best paper award 2014
• ACM Highly Commended Paper Award, 2014, 2021
• QUT Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research and Teaching 2019

Type

Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes

Reference year

2019

Details

QUT STEMM (Science, Tech, Eng, Maths, Medicine) Diversity and Inclusion Award

Type

Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes

Reference year

2019

Details

Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research and Teaching

Type

Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes

Reference year

2017

Details

QUT Innovation Award - the messaging kettle

Type

Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes

Reference year

2015

Details

Association oF Computer Machinery (ACM) Computer Human Interaction 2014 Best Paper Award: Brereton, M., Roe, P., Schroeter, R., & Lee Hong, A. (2014, April). Beyond ethnography: engagement and reciprocity as foundations for design research out here. In Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 1183-1186). ACM.http://eprints.qut.edu.au/72128/4/72128(pub).pdf

Type

Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes

Reference year

2015

Details

Association oF Computer Machinery (ACM) Computer Human Interaction 2014 Honorable Mention Award:Rogers, Y., Paay, J., Brereton, M., Vaisutis, K. L., Marsden, G., & Vetere, F. (2014, April). Never too old: engaging retired people inventing the future with MaKey MaKey. In Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 3913-3922). ACM.http://eprints.qut.edu.au/72109/

Type

Academic Honours, Prestigious Awards or Prizes

Reference year

2014

Details

2004University of Queensland Enhancement of Student Learning Award

Title

Human-Machine Teaming:Designing Synergistic Learning of Humans and Machines

Primary fund type

CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant

Project ID

DP200103582

Start year

2020

Keywords

Title

Ambient Nature Network: New Technologies to Connect People to Nature

Primary fund type

CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant

Project ID

DP190101647

Start year

2019

Keywords

Title

ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child (ACDC)

Primary fund type

CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant

Project ID

CE200100022

Start year

2021

Keywords

early childhhood; longitudinal study; digital engagement; professional development; digital practice

Title

New Information Access Technologies for People with Intellectual Disability

Primary fund type

CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant

Project ID

LP160100800

Start year

2016

Keywords

Title

Make and Connect: Enabling People to Connect through their Things

Primary fund type

CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant

Project ID

DP150104001

Start year

2015

Keywords

Human-Computer Interaction; Participatory Design; User-centred Design

Title

Earth Soundscapes:A Human-computer Approach to Environmental Sound Analysis

Primary fund type

CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant

Project ID

DP170104004

Start year

2017

Keywords

Title

Bio-Acoustic Observatory: Engaging Birdwatchers to Monitor Biodiversity by Collaboratively Collecting and Analysing Big Audio Data

Primary fund type

CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant

Project ID

DP140102325

Start year

2014

Keywords

Computer Human Interaction; Crowd Sourcing; Interaction Design and Communities

Title

Digital noticeboards for remote Aboriginal communities: bringing web 2.0 participation to non-western cultures with low English and technical literacy

Primary fund type

CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant

Project ID

LP120200329

Start year

2012

Keywords

Noticeboard; Aboriginal Information System; Interaction Design; Participatory Web

Title

Cooperation and Reciprocity at the Local Scale Enabled by Social and Mobile Technologies: An Empirically Derived Theoretical Framework

Primary fund type

CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant

Project ID

DP110105127

Start year

2011

Keywords

Human-Computer Interaction Participatory Design Community Informatics

Title

Sociophysical Interactions: Understanding the Role of Social and Tangible Technologies in Maintaining Good Habits into Old Age

Primary fund type

CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant

Project ID

DP110101999

Start year

2011

Keywords

Human Computer Interaction; Human-Centred Design; Social Technologies; Ageing; User Experience; Embedded Interactions; Tangible Technologies

• Engaging Citizen Scientists in Ecological Acoustics Through Participatory Design
  PhD, Associate Supervisor
  Other supervisors: Professor Paul Roe

• Co-Design Beyond Words with Minimally-Verbal Children on the Autism Spectrum (2021)
• Development of Interfaces for Orthopaedic Surgeons to Control Minimally Invasive Surgical Robots During Knee Arthroscopy (2021)
• Engaging remote communities in technology design for connecting people to and through nature (2021)
• Relation-Centred Inquiry: Designing for Position Exchange in Families (2021)
• From Monitoring to Engagement: Co-Designing Future Technologies with Older Adults (2020)
• Ngana Wubulku Junkurr-Jiku Balkaway-Ka: The Intergenerational Co-Design of a Tangible Technology to Keep Active Use of the Kuku Yalanji Aboriginal Language Strong (2020)
• Making Collaborations to Design Personalised Technologies with People with an Intellectual Disability (2018)
• Virtual Birding: Extending Birdwatching to Review Acoustic Recordings (2017)
• Beyond Energy Savings: Exploring How Design Can Extend the Scope of Eco-Feedback for Users in the Home (2015)

• Travelling an Unfamiliar Road: Implications for the Entry of Design Practitioners into Healthcare (2016)