Projects
HCI After Dark
Founder and Head of the HCI After Dark Project
The HCI After Dark project is based at the Urban Informatics Lab at QUT. It employs a team of five cross-disciplinary researchers, designers and programmers who create technology for Safer Cities.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) found that the biggest personal safety concern for those living in major cities was the fear of walking alone after dark. In response, the Personal Safety in the City: Design Solutions for After Dark research study seeks to gain a greater perspective of the needs of people in urban environments after dark by innovating understandings of people’s interactions at night.
The insights gained are being used to create, develop and trial real world design solutions that will enable urban residents to feel safer as they go about their nightly activities.
The Swarm
Mobile Messaging System
Inventor of the Swarm Mobile Phone. A series of patents, publications and prototypes which are the result of Christine's PhD thesis.
Featured in New Scientist and Wired, hundreds of blogs and won numerous design awards.
The Swarm, unlike mobile technologies that reveal the user's status to all their contacts, the Swarm meets the challenge of allowing different identities to be expressed simultaneously in a range of contexts.
The importance of this feature was noted by Mark Zuckerburg the CEO of Facebook who called the limitations of a single user status "The Biggest Problem in Social Networking.”
Employment
- 2017 - 2018: Head of Research Blue Chip Vision.
- 2015 - 2017: Co-founder of Swarm Systems
- 2015 - 2017: Co-founder of Swarm Systems
- 2013 - 2015: Senior Research Fellow, Discovery Early Career Research Fellow (DECRA) and Vice Chancellor's Excellence Scholar in Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing with the Urban Informatics Research Lab at QUT.
- 2013 -2015: Head of the Human Computer Interaction After Dark Project at QUT. Designing Mobile Technologies for Personal Safety.
- 2012: Advisor for the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) on their Digital Identity and The Internet Policy.
- 2011: Senior Research Fellow on the ARC Funded Discovery Project ‘Sociophysical Interactions” exploring the use of Xbox Kinect to enhance interactivity.
- 2008 - 2010: Australian Postdoctoral Research Investigator for a three year QUT/ARC/Optus/Queensland Department of Housing project, ‘Swarms for Urban Villages: New Media Design to Augment Social Networks of Residents in Inner-City Developments.’
- 2007: Lead researcher on The Swarm project at The University of Melbourne as part of the ‘Intimacy Project’ for the Smart Internet Technology CRC. Roles included developing the architecture and interface for the Swarm phone into an avatar driven mobile device that allowed the user to simultaneously represent their identity in a number of contexts. This involved rapid prototyping, testing and evaluating the architecture and the interface, critically reflecting on the social and cultural values embedded in the artefact.
- 2007: Associate researcher for Nokia Research Labs in Norway and Lancaster University investigating mobile blogging to bring about personal life changes. The particular focus was on smoking cessation.
- 2006: Investigated user and provider perceptions of federated identity management systems for an ARC funded grant with Novell and he University of Melbourne.
- 2005: Sony Computer Science Labs in Paris to co-developed ‘Malleable Swarm’ a mobile phone prototype with the emphasis on communications via avatars embedded with music.
Education
2002 – 2006 Doctor of Philosophy. RMIT University. Department of Art, Design and Communication (major HCI)
2000 - 2002 Master of Arts Degree from RMIT University. Majoring in Communication and New Technology.
1999 Honors Year. The University of Melbourne. Law and Ethics.
1995 – 1998 Bachelor of Arts. The University of Melbourne. Double major,Cultural Theory and Political Science
1987 – 1989 Diploma of Creative Arts. The Australian Ballet School, Melbourne, Australia.
1986 – 1989 Victorian Dept. of Education Distance Education (High school education)
1985 - 1987 School of American Ballet, New York City, USA.
1983 – 1984 The Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia.
1977 – 1982 St. Leonard’s College, Brighton, Australia (Primary years)Publications & Patents
Christine's research generated 87 publications as well as intellectual property in the form of the Swarm patent portfolio.
Publications
Current citation count is 817
Christine has published her research extensively with eighty seven publications in top international peer reviewed journals and conferences such as CHI, CSCW Ubicomp and SIGGRAPH.
She is the co-editor the co-editor of the MIT Press book, 'From Social Butterfly to Urban Citizen: Urban Informatics, Social Media, Ubiquitous Computing, and Mobile Technology to Support Citizen Engagement’.
She is the co-author of the Top 100 Apps the Essential Guide published by the The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Patent Portfolio
Christine is the holder of the Swarm patent portfolio. The patents are managed by US patent attorneys Knobbe Marten.
- The portfolio consists of 10 patents with a priority date of 2003 and continue to generate new patents which keeps the invention situated in a state of the art technology space.
- The early Swarm patents such as US8489994 B2 support the process through which users customise their outgoing presence, while the more recent patents such as US9055126 B2 support the control and customisation of incoming digital content stream. The latest patent has a focus on using a mobile number to access other mobile networks.
Connect
christine.satchell@gmail.com
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