Projects
UserX looks for research projects with substantial user value, where:
- User needs are poorly understood by designers and developers or under-served by technology;
- User needs demand cross-disciplinary problem definition, research and solution design and execution, and these are currently constrained by bounded thinking;
- User needs would be best addressed through the integration of interface, user journey and solution design;
- The challenges require multi-year responses and do not have quick fixes;
- The challenges have global implications and, consequently, their solutions have international application; and
- The challenges have substantive impacts on national policy, industry and other agendas and have government attention.
UserX Drives Innovation through Highly Collaborative & Multidisciplinary Research.
The design and development of future goods and services and user experiences will increasingly rely on collaboration across multiple disciplines. UserX researchers provide deep and broad disciplinary expertise to complement our industry partners’ capabilities. UserX researchers have expertise in information and digital technologies, emerging/mixed reality technologies, electronic games, user experience, user analytics, design, and the creative arts.
UserX employs a creative design methodology that facilitates multi-disciplinary research collaboration at the inception of research problems, leading to the development of new, technology enabled, human-centred solutions for industry and society.
Research Model & Projects
Our research model is being refined and developed on the back of a number of collaborative projects and research proposals currently in progress. This work demonstrates how UserX is truly and transformationally integrative: combining cross-disciplinary expertise, a user focus, and cross-technology solutions to provide public and private sector partners with new, usable, and transformative research outputs.
Early stage projects funded and supported by the UserX Network cover a range of user needs and responses to industry challenges.
PROJECTS
Social Games Are Fun
We believe that the natural language processing capability of conversational voice interfaces and the engaging qualities of interactive storytelling games can provide people with social interaction difficulties with a playful, accessible, and cost-effective training platform to improve their social skills.
VR Machine Maintenance Training
UserX is supporting our fluid engineering industry partner’s investigation of the potential for interactive Virtual Reality (VR) to enable the reading, interpreting, and manipulating of machine states and support maintenance training.
Bringing Rocks to Life
UserX is assisting our geological records partner with the development of an innovative, interactive and immersive geology educational tool which will be made available to secondary schools and bring the world of rocks to life.
Smart School Bag
Helping kids with intellectual disabilities to pack their bags properly and ensure they are prepared for their daily activities.
Museum UX
Creating a User Experience framework which promotes the integration of emerging technologies into visitor experiences of cultural heritage spaces.
Gaming Fake News
Educating and empowering new media technology users to recognise and delete ‘fake news’ and misinformation distributed on social media platforms.
Rabbits on the Moon
Engaging young amblyopes in animated gameplay that emphasises binocular visual tasks as a key to success.
Empowering Young Aboriginals in Rural Victorian Communities Through Immersive VR Storytelling
Developing a theory-driven, immersive video narrative for an indigenous story in collaboration with Indigenous people and rural Victorian libraries.
Forest Classroom
Monitoring and supporting student engagement, attention, and comfort in a classroom setting through augmented reality (AR) applications.
Dreaming in Extreme Reality: Step into the Western Volcanic Plains
Enhancing secondary school ecological learning using Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR and VR).
Shout – Launchpad
Improving employee retention and mental wellbeing through technology-enabled and tailored employee reward and recognition capabilities.