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The primary impact is AmbieSense Ltd., a start-up that has had up to 8 employees/consultants. The Company pioneered ambient, context-aware mobile applications and has been able to maintain its technological edge throughout. Secondary impact is through products developed and used by companies including Lonely Planet, Oslo Airport. AmbieSense Ltd. products and services have wide reach and social impact: Tourist trails; outdoor museums; educational historic trails. Customers include public sector: Aberdeen City Council. Benefits are a quality content experience delivered in a context-sensitive manner (social/economic). The significance is: information-rich touristic physical space; an enriching educational experience, connecting pupils with environments. Other technologies have also been built on the AmbieSense platform and patents have cited the underpinning work, demonstrating impact on professional services.
The case described shows that our research reporting on the limitations and challenges associated with traditional approaches to presentation and management of information search results for different types of users has led to design and implementation of non-conventional user interface technology - INVISQUE (Interactive Visual Search and Query Environment [7]). This technology has had a direct influence and usage in a range of domains including information seeking in Citizens Advice Bureaux and in the security domain both nationally (UK Ministry of Defence) and internationally (US Dept. of Homeland Security). The research has created a community of practice around the emerging field of Visual Analytics and has formed the basis of a successful FP7 project (EC grant €13.1M) bringing together a consortium of 18 industrial, internationally leading Visual Analytics researchers (e.g. PNNL, University of Konstanz, City University London), and police end-user partners, from across the UK, Europe and the US.
Researchers in the Organisations, Information and Knowledge (OAK) group have developed technologies for large-scale acquisition, integration and sense-making of information acquired from a variety of sources, including textual documents, the Web and multiple devices. These technologies have had:
Twelve years of our research into users' information behaviour has helped a wide variety of learners and Internet users to interact better with web-based information by equipping them with the skills and knowledge to develop their own agile models of information behaviour in the web environment. It has produced practical tools such as a toolkit for service providers, a methods book and awe-based resources evaluation framework that are employed nationally and internationally in secondary and higher education. The research is benefiting librarians, educators and learners dealing with complex information environments. Within the LIS (Library and Information Science) community, researchers, academics and practitioners are also benefiting from training current and next generation practitioners in the user engagement methods developed during the research.
Organisations in the social housing sector have a model of how to use information to monitor the outcomes of their activities. Drawing on research which places information in its organisational context, the mechanism of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships has been used to enable Nottingham City Homes to pioneer the evaluation of its activities focusing on a major investment programme called Decent Homes. Cited in Parliamentary debates, not only has the impact shifted the strategic direction of the organisation's activities, but also it has been adopted as a model of best practice for the sector.
Between 2010 and 2012, Professor Luciano Floridi transferred knowledge about epistemological issues in the philosophy of information to Sogeti, an international information technology consultancy; and, via Sogeti, to technology and business leaders in Europe and beyond, influencing their planning for and adaptation to technological change. In the realm of public policy, Floridi developed guidelines and protocols surrounding ethical problems concerning digital and online information. He chaired a European Commission group whose `manifesto' forms part of the EU's Digital Futures initiative; influenced thinking around IP and international trade agreements; and contributed to a UNESCO action plan on ensuring equitable access to information.
Europeana is the official European Union internet portal for cultural heritage located in European heritage institutions. Based on their research on user centred evaluations of information systems and Digital Library development, Strathclyde researchers were selected to evaluate the user experience of Europeana version 1.0. A series of user studies involving 89 people in 4 countries led to design recommendations based on Strathclyde's research which were incorporated into a new Europeana user interface (Europeana v2.0) leading to significant improvements in search capability and information access for users. Consequently, the latest version of Europeana is used by almost 4 million unique visitors from 241 countries who now benefit from increased user experience
Scotland's Health On the Web (SHOW) was the first Healthcare Information Network of its kind and was developed in an EU project between 1996 and 1999. The original aim was to develop ways of exploiting the Web to provide trustworthy and authoritative health information in a way that was easy to find. The resulting system was adopted as the major vehicle of NHS Scotland for providing healthcare information to public and professionals. Serviced by a specially appointed team, it currently supports around 400 sites, and in recent years usage has been high, averaging around 50 million website hits per month.
One third of a million people each week benefit from using the world's first door-to-door national multimodal travel information service by confirming, identifying or changing their travel plans. Developed by the UK Government, Transport Direct (www.transportdirect.info) integrates details of all travel modes and caters for over 100 billion potential routes. The service has been found to significantly influence intended modal choice. Since its launch in December 2004 it has handled over 110 million user sessions. Professor Glenn Lyons of UWE, and UWE research, played a key part in the shaping of the service design, cited by the Department for Transport (DfT) as an example of good practice in the use of research to support policy.
Research at Newcastle has made a significant contribution to the public services modernisation agenda in the areas of inter-agency working and information-sharing. The research showed that effective information-sharing required not just that different information systems are made compatible with each other, but also that people from different professional cultures are enabled to work together through a common understanding of information governance issues. In active collaboration with a range of service providers, a number of processes and tools were developed for the significant benefit of service users. They have been implemented in a variety of policy settings, including children's services and adult social care, and have informed current programmes funded by the UK government.